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

David Patte dpatte at relativedata.com
Wed Oct 10 02:49:59 UTC 2018


Numbers are not political. Using the name of a place in the languuage of 
a place is slightly more political. using an American derived name for a 
place that is not in the USA is definitely political. America/Montreal 
is totally insulting after two American invasions.


On 2018-10-09 22:27, Tim Parenti wrote:
> 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 
> <mailto:Paul.Koning at dell.com>> wrote:
>
>
>
>     > On Oct 9, 2018, at 3:15 PM, Michael Douglass
>     <mikeadouglass at gmail.com <mailto: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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