[tz] Request for change to the tz database

[Brian Inglis]

On 2021-02-08 16:06, Philip Paeps wrote:
> On 2021-02-09 06:31:22 (+0800), John Hawkinson wrote:
>> Paul Eggert <eggert at cs.ucla.edu> wrote on Mon,  8 Feb 2021
>> at 17:24:39 EST in <5428025b-2f3c-3e09-7594-37d8e135fbd7 at cs.ucla.edu>:
>>
>>> The compromise proposal I made in November (see URL below) received only one
>>> comment <https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2020-November/029568.html> , which
>>> suggested to not bother with a compromise and to just rename the entry then.
>>
>> I did not reply to your compromise proposal because I thought it was clear 
>> from my prior input that I agreed with the idea that an interim compromise was 
>> pointless and summary renaming was appropriate. I suspect many others who 
>> expressed themselves before similarly did not offer their opinion, because it 
>> would feel like repetition.
> 
> (It was I who posted the only comment on Paul's proposal in November expressing 
> a preference for summary renaming.)
> 
> Note that I am not opposed to the compromise proposal Paul suggested. Though my 
> preference for summary renaming stands.  It is clear that we will eventually 
> have a Europe/Kyiv.  We might as well get it over with. We have an established 
> and reasonably exercised backward compatibility mechanism for people who need 
> it.  Trying out forward compatibility seems to provide few benefits.

I doubt any of these posters actually use software that displays Kiev: they have 
made no mention of products or projects, and have been told to spam this 
address! They could also be Russian provocateurs.
How can we know they are Ukrainian, as it is useful if Russian controlled 
systems can maintain or masquerade as Ukrainian identities, used in media 
campaigns to their own ends?

Similar reasoning applies to similar posts about other locales.
No change should be required if we are using internal identifier names.

We should decide that either all location identifiers be maintained as the 
current English identifiers as they are identifier names relevant only to 
technical communications, or all should be renamed to their local Latinizations 
e.g. Roma, Lisboa, as opinions of their their local users take precedence.
Then table reconsideration for five (or ten) years to see if anything changes.
"Rough concensus and running code" matters, unnecessary fiddling causes bugs!

Mumbai vs Bombay is the only name change I would consider commonly recognized by 
most English speakers, but Kolkata, Kyiv, etc. are not, and neither are most 
country and city renamings in recent decades, nor are they widely used when they 
appear in the press, often requiring their previous names to provide relevancy.

[I still see widely recognized names such as Burma and Rangoon used in the 
popular press to explain what's going on in what's now called Myanmar, as few 
recognize the latter; people have no interest or care about what happens in 
countries whose names they no longer recognize. Languages and names are about 
communication and comprehension: change names if you want to hinder 
communication and comprehension, and interest and caring as consequences.]

-- 
Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

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