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<p>I think the fact that we have a 200-e-mail thread about this
every time someone brings up the issue of Ukraine (or, less
frequently, another one of these political arguments) means that
the policy about not getting into political arguments is <i>failing</i>,
because no one's time is being saved here.<br>
<br>
If there's going to be a rule about not wanting to get involved in
the political stuff, it should actually be enforced. Hold any
e-mail that mentions Kiev or Kyiv or Ukraine in a moderation queue
and only let through the ones with simple factual information. Or
add a second mailing list `tz-nomenclature@` or `tz-political@`
where that sort of thing is on topic, and impose bans (temporary
or permanent) on people who bring it up on the main list.<br>
<br>
Either that or abandon the pretense that we don't engage in
political arguments at all and invite people to make their own
political arguments. Otherwise one is in danger of imposing an <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://siderea.livejournal.com/1230660.html">asshole
filter</a> (somewhat crudely named and described on a site with
an unfortunate color scheme¹, but an important concept
nonetheless) — where people are rewarded for ignoring the FAQ
and/or violating the cultural norms of the list.<br>
<br>
Best.<br>
Paul<br>
<br>
¹On the "asshole filter" site, there's a "Readability" checkbox
that will switch the site into a much more reasonable color
scheme.<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 11/28/20 4:07 PM, Brian Inglis
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:327da16d-48b0-ab88-5a9f-68ab68103c7a@SystematicSw.ab.ca">Folks,
<br>
<br>
If we are regarding these as English identifiers, we should be
ignoring all these political arguments, and *STOP* adding
alternate spellings, exccept for technical reasons when time zones
split or combine.
<br>
<br>
Alternate spellings and scripts are localization issues that
should be dealt with by the likes of CLDR and ICU libraries. If
the characters to be used were not in the POSIX base character
set, we would have no hesitation just saying *NO*; we should have
no hesitation just saying *NO* to political arguments! Whether
there are more occurrences on more sites should have no relevance
once the identifier has been assigned, just as other location
selection criteria such as population are considered irrelevant
once an identifier has been assigned.
<br>
<br>
We have dropped posixrules and eliminated many other legacy rules
and zones, we should in the course of time, eliminate all the
alternate spellings, keeping only the base zone identifiers.
<br>
<br>
Otherwise we appear to have given up any basis for resisting these
political complaints and we should just add a link anytime anyone
has any political objection to how we identify it.
<br>
If this change is made, I would promptly expect growing demands
for more political changes, as we have been shown to waver in the
face of political demands unrelated to technical issues.
<br>
There will be more demands to change or add official or remove
unofficial zone identifiers on political bases.
<br>
<br>
And for most English speakers the locations under discussion will
for decades continue to be referred to as Ukraine, Crimea,
Sebastopol, Kiev, etc. regardless of what the locals want to call
it or have others call it.
<br>
Few English speakers will recognize or assign any meaning to new
names, unless both appear together regularly with explanations on
common social and tabloid media web sites, which is unlikely as it
not click bait.
<br>
Those sites will continue to use the old spellings, as their
primary focus is getting their readers attention, with words they
recognize and could use.
<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
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