[tz] Wrong spelling of a city in a timezone name

[Tim Parenti]

This may not be based in anything more than my understanding from having
seen these discussions play out time and time again over the years… but I
do think there's something more worth stating, if only for the mailing list
archives:

It seems our general "consensus" sentiment toward these sorts of requests
is that they're an extension of tz's goal to be descriptive, not
prescriptive.  This at least matches the similar discussion at CLDR:
https://unicode.org/cldr/trac/ticket/10185#comment:2

Yes, our choice of English is arbitrary, but it is historical and there is
a large (although certainly not insurmountable) amount of inertia behind
it.  Since it is regarded as a *lingua franca*, there are a wide body of
sources with wide-ranging opinions on matters of geopolitics, which tz can
leverage in helping decide how to record things.  We, then, aim only to
record rough consensus, much like other international standards
organizations do, and attempt to leave the politics themselves to the
politicians.

Of course, even this can be regarded as a political stance, and in some
sense, it is.  And there are those who will still interpret that as *the
maintainers* taking a side on any given geopolitical issue… but that can't
really be helped.  In cases of conflict, even the most meticulously-crafted
"neutral" deferential position will naturally reflect the biases of some
group of "others" — in our case, the biases of the news organizations and
other entities to whom we defer in choosing to source our data.  As long as
we are upfront about that (and I think, for the most part, we are), then we
are meeting the broader stated goal of being "useful even if not 100%
accurate".

And so, we do what we can to be diplomatic when the inevitable arises.
(Which can, as Paul points out, include filtering duplication to ensure
quality of discussion.)  But if the necessity of that diplomacy grates on
anyone, in either direction, then perhaps this isn't the list for them.  ;)

--
Tim Parenti


On Tue, 9 Oct 2018 at 16:08, <Paul.Koning at dell.com> wrote:

>
>
> > On Oct 9, 2018, at 3:15 PM, Michael Douglass <mikeadouglass at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > So soon after the last one.
> >
> > Is it still too soon to suggest opaque ids again?
>
> Yes.
>
>         paul
>
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