Avoiding Problems by Avoiding Decisions

[Don Sanders]

On Friday 14 May 2004 19:04, 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-lists /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?

After reading Jason Keirstead's post and following his links I suggest 
that in addition to this the flags should be removed as well.

FWIW that is what GNOME and Red Hat have decided to do. I think the 
flags are the cause of more insult/offense than the names and that it 
makes sense to completely remove them.

I repeat the link Jason gave as I think it's worth following:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2003-November/msg00267.html

and a couple others in the thread I think are especially relevant:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2003-November/msg00302.html
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2003-November/msg00359.html

Don.