Avoiding Problems by Avoiding Decisions

[Allan Sandfeld Jensen]

On Friday 14 May 2004 11:04, Antonio Larrosa wrote:
> On Thursday 13 May 2004 18:06, George Staikos wrote:
>
> I thought of a proposal yesterday that might be good enough for everyone
> (at least I hope it is).
>
> The way I see it, the ISO 3166 list doesn't only contain country names, but
> contain two versions of them, the short name (until the ',') and the full
> long name (which is a longer description of the country). We could use only
> the short name in order to provide a better non-cluttered user interface,
> and only use the "long name" when it's necessary in order to distinguish
> two countries with the same "short name".
>
> > On May 13, 2004 11:02, Waldo Bastian wrote:
> > > On Thu May 13 2004 16:50, George Staikos wrote:
> > > > http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma/02iso-3166-code-lis
> > > >ts /l is t-en1.html
> > >
> > > TAIWAN, PROVINCE OF CHINA 	TW
> > > PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED 	PS
>
> In this cases, the short names are "Taiwan" and "Palestinian Territory",
> which I suppose is right for the people living on those countries, and our
> decision would be backed up by the ISO list, which is what George is trying
> to do the way I see it (find a way to back up our decisions in a "neutral"
> way).
>
> Also, Macedonia would still be Macedonia, since the list says:
>
> MACEDONIA, THE FORMER YUGOSLAV REPUBLIC OF
>
> whose long name is too long for an enjoyable user experience with our
> desktop :)
>
> The only "problem" would be repeated names like
> VIRGIN ISLANDS, BRITISH
> VIRGIN ISLANDS, U.S.
> but as I said, our policy could be to use the long (complete) name in those
> cases, since it would be silly to use the short names there.
>
> Would everyone agree to choose that policy when naming countries?
>
Almost. In case of duplicate names there should be a little "creative" 
flexibility. For instance the two Koreas would make most sense to rename to 
North and South Korea, even if those versions are not on the list.

`Allan