[Foundation-l] Fwd: ISO 639 JAC decision re mo/mol

[Marcus Buck]

Gerard Meijssen hett schreven:
> Hoi,
> Today I received the following e-mail. It demonstrates clearly that issues
> in the ISO-639 standard are dealt with eventually.
> Thanks,
>         GerardM
>   
It demonstrates that issues are dealt with when somebody complains about 
it. But it too demonstrates, that ISO codes are not a reliable base for 
decisions. They made errors when deciding on the original set of codes 
and codes can change when issues arise. This means that the language 
subcommittee shouldn't use the criterion "own ISO code exists" as a 
precondition. At the moment decisions of the language subcommittee are 
heavily based on the existence of ISO codes. There are many proposals 
for new languages where GerardM based the decision"eligible/not 
eligible" on the existence of an ISO code.

Btw: At the time, the Moldovan Wikipedia was proposed for closure, the 
ISO code of course still existed. GerardM opposed the closure then. I'd 
be interested what GerardM's position would be, if the Moldovan 
Wikipedia wouldn't have been closed then and it would still exist. If 
there were a proposal to close a still existing Moldovan Wikipedia today 
(after the ISO code change), what would be GerardM's position on it?

Marcus Buck
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Håvard Hjulstad <HHj at standard.no>
> Date: Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 11:43 AM
> Subject: ISO 639 JAC decision re mo/mol
>
>  The ISO 639 Registration Authorities' Joint Advisory Committee has decided:
>
>
>
> The identifiers *mo* and *mol* are deprecated
>
> leaving *ro* and *ron/rum* the current language identifiers to be used for
> the variant of the Romanian language also known as *Moldavian* and *Moldovan
> * in English and *moldave* in French. (The identifier *ron* is used in the
> ISO 639-2 T table; the identifier *rum* in the ISO 639-2 B table.)
>
>
>
> The identifiers *mo* and *mol* will not be assigned to different items, and
> recordings using these identifiers will not be invalid.
>
>
>
> Best regards,
>
> Håvard Hjulstad
>