Duplicate Busters: Survey #2

[Frank Ellermann]

Doug Ewell wrote:
 
   [NCRs]
>>> The Registry is moving to UTF-8.  This has been decided.
>> s/decided/proposed in various drafts/
> Based on rough WG consensus.

Okay, "proposed in various drafts based on rough consensus".

An alleged WG rough consensus in conflict with say RFC 1591
or 2026 would be not too impressing, but this doesn't affect
the NCR issue (my POV, somebody saying DOOM could disagree).

> He's a democratic editor too.

That was not my impression wrt the disputed territory codes,
and technical decisions based on voting could be a nightmare.
Hopefully they won't try to introduce a "democratic reviewer"
here... <shudder />

 [Ge'ez]
> RFC 4646 doesn't prohibit this list from adding Description
> fields beyond those in the source standards.  They must not
> conflict with the existing description(s).

It's hard to predict what might become a future conflict with
the relevant source standards, and a simple strategy to stay
out of any potential trouble is to never make up descriptions.

For variants and (in theory) "registered" (non-639) languages
it's of course necessary to find descriptions.

 [Ainu]
> The existing Registry could not have helped users of Ainu
> (China) from mistakenly choosing "Ainu" thinking that it
> referred to their language. 

It could, adding a *comment* about this plausible pitfall.

> The new Registry will offer both "Ainu (China)" and "Ainu
> (Japan)".  But by continuing to offer plain "Ainu" as an
> alternative description for the latter, we perpetuate the
> likelihood that someone will see "Ainu" and choose the
> wrong subtag.

I proposed to preserve the historical info in a *comment*,
not in an alternative description.

>> It's the job of *Comments* to offer opinions of this
>> list.  Descriptions are supposed to reflect sources,
>> there is no Ge'ez in the source.
 
> This is a proposal to change something in draft-4646bis
> that has been in place since 4646, and as such, it
> belongs on LTRU.

Okay, discuss it where you want, democratic or otherwise.

I'd be willing to submit a modification request pro forma
if folks want this fixed, but I'm not hot about it.  And
without NCRs losing Ge'ez could be arguably a Bad Thing.

 Frank