Thanks for the feedback, and thanks for pointing out the value of time.

@Newton

I couldn't have said it better myself. And I didn't; you did. I'm terribly impressed and grateful. Thank you!

—Michael B.

Newton again…

For the looks of the new posts and comments, I can safely assume that the group of people with whom I work discussed the idea a slightly more than many people (at least more than some that are commenting).

As soon as we saw the first post on the subject, we came up with a presentation to start "passing on the word" to those around us. Why? Because the distinction worked.

The first thing we did in our presentation was to explain why we were presenting. The speech at this point was: "the objective here is resignify terms commonly used and show what tend to be the natural consequences of this distinction"

An example (a massively less meaningful example, if I may) we used to support the idea was around the words: deffect and failure. Our speech at this point was: "These words, in some dictionaries today, still have the same meaning. But in our context, they are different. These words existed long before software engineering came along, but, at some point in history, someone thought that, within our context, different meanings could usefully be applied to relate to different things. And this is what the software community began doing around the terms 'testing' and 'checking'."

After this presentation, people indeed playfully made their own observations on the usage. Jokes like: "I have to cross out testing experience from my resume", "so, our 4-year-long project wasn't 'Brazil Test Center', it should have been 'Brazil Check Center'." They even corrected me in another presentation I made later that day about an internal tool we came up with.

So, if I may, my short and objective answers to the questions you were asked are (and I say this because in a more indirect way, I was asked the same things during that presentation):

Do you want to change the language?
Mere change in vocabulary is not the objective, but yes. It's better to have two words for two meanings than having two words with the same meaning and lack the benefits of the distinction. Nowadays, no one argues the difference between deffect and failure (part of this comes because, in practical terms, they're the same – and I will be happy if someone disagrees here, because if defends our point). I wasn't asked this particular question because people understood the benefits of the distinction. They realized that the change makes sense, but the other questions followed.

Won't saying "check" be confusing?
Yes, in the beginning.

Won't this undermine our goal of industry-standard terminology?
Yes, for the better.

Won't calling certain kinds of tests "checks" fly in the face of years of documentation and books?
Yes, but having the distinction in mind, this won't be a problem. I believe it will even help, because people will have to interpret if the author means checking or testing, which might make the readers go beyond what the author meant because he didn't have the distinction at work at the time.

If someone made me the last question, it would be like this:
Isn't this yet another case of them wanting testing to be done their way, all the time, everywhere?
I would pull out the "testing industry" vs "writing industry" point here.

Hope this helps… once again, thanks…

I'm making my own notes and observations and I think the discussion has a while to run. I might not agree/be convinced/have need for the distinction (yet – I can't predict how the discussion will go from my, hopefully, open-minded perspective) – but I'll keep it friendly/professional (http://testers-headache.blogspot.com/2009/08/feedback-friend-or-foe.html) to let the discussion progress.

With regard to discussions: I think they need a time to clarify – usually for the sender and receivers to synch (as mentioned in The Tipping Point) or to have a shared perspective (as Tor Norrentranders wrote in The User Illusion) – otherwise information (between sender & receiver) is not meaningful – it's just chaos and disorder. Then it's easy to talk past each other.

Discussion not done yet….