policy wrt politics (was RE: be-tarask language subtag registration form)

Stephane Bortzmeyer bortzmeyer at nic.fr
Mon Apr 2 14:46:52 CEST 2007


On Sat, Mar 31, 2007 at 08:34:50AM -0700,
 Peter Constable <petercon at microsoft.com> wrote 
 a message of 301 lines which said:

> So, what's the best policy for this list when we get requests for
> subtags that have associated political issues?

> a) Reject any request with political issues to ensure this list
> avoids politics?

Certainly not. This would give veto power to anyone in the
world. Anyone could shout "This proposal is politically wrong" and
then stall all the process.

> b)      Evaluate any request solely on non-political criteria? 

b) is certainly a very sensible choice but:

> (We would still need to ensure that subtags are non-offensive.)

Unrealistic: even saying that Taiwan is a country (a pure fact) is
labeled "offensive" by the Chinese dictators. 

In many countries, there are similar cases (until very recently, there
was officially no Kurds in Turkey, only "Mountain Turks"; of course,
there was noone speaking kurdish - ku - for the same reason). (See for
instance
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/05/AR2005100501939_pf.html)





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