Another term for User when referring to...Users?

[tmekelburg1]

"There are only two industries that call their customers ‘users’: illegal drugs and software.” Edward Tufte

“There are only two industries that refer to their customers as ‘users’, one is of course IT, the other is the illegal drugs trade…” — Edward Tufte

Full disclosure, I did not fact check the accuracy of illegal drugs and software (IT) as the only two industries who call their staff \ customers 'Users'.

I am, however, trying to get rid of 'User' from our policies and standards documents. So far using staff or employees has worked out well. Then I came across the phrase 'user level passwords' in our AUP and thought staff level passwords didn't sound right.

While, I do welcome suggestions for this fix, the main point of the post is to get the Community's thoughts on improving the language used in IT/Security that may not age well as time goes on. I had heard of this quote before and didn't think much about it until one of our Counselors, who specializes in addiction, mentioned this as well. They weren't offended necessarily but it did spark up a good conversation on the matter.     

[ericgeater]

Your post reminded me of something else.  I consider accountholder a good way to describe a role which may use an account.  voicemailaudit or journaling are a couple of examples that represent a named account which a person probably won't interact with.  The accountholder, then, is the role of the account itself.

[tmekelburg1]

Accountholder as one word does check out and it does have the added benefit of easy indexing. Probably works out well in database field naming conventions, e.g., accountholder_firstname, accountholder_lastname, etc. 

Extant is an interesting word for sure. I feel like you deserve to make up your own word for that specific of a definition. 

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[rslade]

> jmikesmith (Newcomer III) posted a new reply in Tech Talk on 03-24-2021 08:57 AM

> How about "workers"? Define it to include managers/executives, but not
> administrators.

So, you're saying that those of us in IT and security don't do any work?

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[jmikesmith]

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@rslade wrote:
> jmikesmith (Newcomer III) posted a new reply in Tech Talk on 03-24-2021 08:57 AM

> How about "workers"? Define it to include managers/executives, but not
> administrators.

So, you're saying that those of us in IT and security don't do any work?

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Administration isn't work! It's fun! 😉

Mike