Judy Schmidtdunno what anyone else thinks but I don't think using the Bortle scale helps people understand what you're trying to communicate any better than, say, "heavily light polluted urban sky" or "exquisitely dark sky with no light pollution" or something in between. Sure, it's shorter, but is the idea being communicated to anyone who doesn't already know who and what Bortle was/is? not really. and we're stuck with using a guy's name in a time when we're trying to stop doing that. you end up with the same problem seismologists have with the Richter scale.
Gorgeous na Shock!@spacegeck I'm not familiar with the problem, but is the problem with using a guy's name that the guy is usually incredibly racist/sexist? I don't know Bortle or Richter's politics, but IIRC that was the issue with the Charlotte's Webb telescope.
@indigoparadox I don't know anything about Bortle or Richter, but naming them after people doesn't make sense. When trying to explain science to the general public, simply naming things what they are makes it easier to communicate. The less jargon, the better. Seismologists are generally moving to the moment magnitude scale, as far as I know. It's different from Richter's scale, but it's worth noting that the new scale is not named after anyone.
Science is a collective effort, and the more conscious decisions we make to reflect that, the better. And then we don't ever need to dig into any individual's personal beliefs at all, beyond how it affects the quality of their work and the people around them.