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

[Tim Parenti]

Numbers, when arbitrarily assigned, can be quite political, too.  As are
time zones themselves.  Nearly everything can be made political, and that
is the point.  Nothing we can do will "free this project from politics" in
any complete sense.

To be clear, though, there is a difference between the general concept of
English (which is spoken as a primarily language in several countries, and
used secondarily by many organizations in nearly every country), and US
English specifically.  I, at least, have taken what measures I can to
ensure we're dealing with the former, and not the latter, when it comes to
place names.

--
Tim Parenti


On Tue, 9 Oct 2018 at 22:50, David Patte <dpatte at relativedata.com> wrote:

> 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> 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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