[Gnso-newgtld-wg-wt5] Notes and Action Items -- remarks about ISO 3166 terminology used

Nick Wenban-Smith Nick.Wenban-Smith at nominet.uk
Wed Sep 5 13:08:15 UTC 2018


Thanks Jaap!

Agreed that clear, precise and consistent terminology should be used in both the WT5 outputs and the next iteration of the AGB. 

Sent from my iPhone

> On 5 Sep 2018, at 13:36, Jaap Akkerhuis <jaap at NLnetLabs.nl> wrote:
> 
> A quick scan of the working document shows rather inconsistent use of
> ISO 3166 related terms.
> 
> Quite some of these uses stem from citing the AGB. There is not a lot to
> do about that, we should not change history too much. But for the current
> document we could do better I hope.
> 
> Often one reads things like "codes listed in the ISO 3166-2 standard".
> What really is meant here is "codes listed in the standard ISO 3166
> Part 2". What makes this important is that people are confusing the -2
> suffix with the length of the code. We should be more careful in using
> proper terminology and if one wants to use "3166-1" as a shortcut for
> "ISO 3166 Part 2" it should somewhere be explained.
> 
> An example of unclear use is a sentence like:
> 
>    "meaningful representations of a country or territory name on
>    the ISO 3166-2 standard"
> 
> What is really meant here? Country and territory names appear in ISO
> 3166 Part one, ISO 3166 Part 2 talks about subdivisions only. (It might
> be quoted from an old AGB so can't be changed, but it is still
> confusing),
> 
> Something like "ISO 3166 3-letter codes, country subdivisions (3166
> Alpha-2)" becomes quite confusing very fast. in general ISO talks
> about alpha-3 etc. codes and 3166 Part 1 had alpha-2 and alpha-3
> codes. ISO 3166 Part 2 is about codes for subdivision codes. These
> codes are not related to the alpha-3 codes of Part 1 but consist of
> alpha-2 codes from part 1 followed by "up to 3 characters".
> 
> 
> The working document talks about alpha-3 or 2 codes, 2/3 characters,
> and 2/3 letter codes etc. Most times they seem to be used denoting the
> same but I'm not always when non-ASCII codes are involved.
> 
> I know, it is hard to be consistent it the terminology but it is worth
> the effort.
> 
>    jaap
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