<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">I don't think anyone's disagreeing that
there are at least two variants of the orthography of this language. I
think the politics come in when the variants represent certain political
sectors and you have an instance, such as Wikipedia, where a 2- or 3-character
regionless ISO language tag is desired. While speakers of American and
British English haven't had a particularly hard time contributing to the
same Wikipedia (a greater amount of content and slightly less spelling
consistency is seen as advantageous for all, given limited resources and
time), this is not always the case.</font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">As far as the "be" Wikipedia,
the two groups are not amenable to working together because of political
biases so WMF needs to make a choice as far as what content populates its
"be" namespace. That's very political because it implies a preference.
On the other hand, I'd like to think that we don't represent a bias as
to the "right" variant of a language.</font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">We should be careful now and in the
future to disregard the politics of the implementation that led to the
request and consider requests on their descriptive merits. I don't think
the descriptive needs for these tags were ever political or debatable.
If I'm wrong on that, I'm sure someone will enlighten me.</font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">Regards,</font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">Karen Broome<br>
Metadata Systems Designer<br>
Sony Pictures Entertainment<br>
310.244.4384</font>
<br>
<br>
<br>
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<td width=40%><font size=1 face="sans-serif"><b>Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer@nic.fr></b>
</font>
<br><font size=1 face="sans-serif">Sent by: ietf-languages-bounces@alvestrand.no</font>
<p><font size=1 face="sans-serif">04/02/2007 05:46 AM</font>
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<div align=right><font size=1 face="sans-serif">To</font></div>
<td><font size=1 face="sans-serif">Peter Constable <petercon@microsoft.com></font>
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<td>
<div align=right><font size=1 face="sans-serif">cc</font></div>
<td><font size=1 face="sans-serif">"ietf-languages@alvestrand.no"
<ietf-languages@alvestrand.no></font>
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<td>
<div align=right><font size=1 face="sans-serif">Subject</font></div>
<td><font size=1 face="sans-serif">Re: policy wrt politics (was RE: be-tarask
language subtag registration form)</font></table>
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<br>
<br><tt><font size=2>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>
> 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>
<br>
<br>
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