Re: Meta-comment: use of "red" / "black" terminology...

[Henry Spencer <henry@spsystems.net>]

On Tue, 11 Nov 2003, Stephen Kent wrote:
> ...We need to 
> refer to inbound and outbound directions in discussion processing, 
> and these directions have to be expressed relative to the sides of 
> the IPsec barrier...
> We could use "protected" for "red" and "unprotected" for "black" if 
> that makes it easier for folks to remember.

Or "tame" and "wild".

"Red" and "black" are really poor choices, because they are not clearly,
unambiguously associated with the meanings we want to convey.  *Both* of
those colors have some negative associations -- in electric power wiring,
"black means death", the black wire is the "hot" wire -- so if we are
going to use colors at all, those are the wrong pair.  Black and white, or
red and green, would be better.  But even those suffer from ambiguity and
cultural bias.  It's better to use words that are close to what we *mean*
than to unnecessarily introduce a potentially-confusing metaphor. 

                                                          Henry Spencer
                                                       henry@spsystems.net