Avoiding Problems by Avoiding Decisions

[George Staikos]

On May 14, 2004 05:04, Antonio Larrosa 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".
>
> 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).
> 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?

  That looks quite reasonable to me (as you might expect).

-- 
George Staikos
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