<br>Hi, Stephane, all, thanks, my comments are below.<br><br>--C. E. Whitehead<br>cewcathar@yahoo.com<br><br><b><i>Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer@nic.fr></i></b> wrote:<blockquote class="replbq" style="border-left: 2px solid rgb(16, 16, 255); margin-left: 5px; padding-left: 5px;"> On Sat, Mar 31, 2007 at 08:34:50AM -0700,<br> Peter Constable <petercon@microsoft.com> wrote <br> a message of 301 lines which said:<br><br>> So, what's the best policy for this list when we get requests for<br>> subtags that have associated political issues?<br><br>> a) Reject any request with political issues to ensure this list<br>> avoids politics?<br><br>Certainly not. This would give veto power to anyone in the<br>world. Anyone could shout "This proposal is politically wrong" and<br>then stall all the process.<br><br>+1. <br><br>> b) Evaluate any request solely on non-political criteria? <br><br>b) is certainly a very sensible choice but:<br><br>> (We would
still need to ensure that subtags are non-offensive.)<br><br>Unrealistic: even saying that Taiwan is a country (a pure fact) is<br>labeled "offensive" by the Chinese dictators. <br><br>In many countries, there are similar cases (until very recently, there<br>was officially no Kurds in Turkey, only "Mountain Turks"; of course,<br>there was noone speaking kurdish - ku - for the same reason). (See for<br>instance<br>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/05/AR2005100501939_pf.html)<br><br></petercon@microsoft.com></blockquote>Thanks for this reminder! (I agree this is common.)<br>But, of course I do still think we must look to see if a subtag is offensive to anyone--although you are right we cannot automatically reject it on just that ground--<br>that is, if its being offensive cannot be reasonably avoided;<br>and if it's not offensive to any groups in the community to which it applies;<br><br>mostly it's just not got to be offensive to
speakers of the community to which it applies.<br><br>(that might be the case if we also registered the standard orthorgraphy for Belarussian--right now only the Latin is registered it seems:<br>one common name used to denote the standard orthography might be offensive to some users who think that the standard is the best way for the Belarussian community to go, <br>while for others who are forced to read/write in the standard but do not favor it, that common name is not at all offensive)<br><br>--cew<br><br><p> 
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