On Sep 15, 2011 12:11 AM, "Andrew West" andrewcwest@gmail.com wrote:
On 14 September 2011 22:50, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
x.wikimedia.org subdomains use country codes (ISO 3166). x.wikipedia.org subdomains use language codes (ISO 639). "uk" is the language code for Ukrainian. In country codes, it is a recognised alternative code for the UK [1].
That's not quite true. "uk" has been "exceptionally reserved" at the request of the United Kingdom, as it is "required in order to support a particular application, as specified by the requesting body and limited to such use; any further use of such code elements is subject to approval by the ISO 3166/MA". Therefore it should not be used in applications of ISO 3166, and is not a recognised alternative code -- "gb" is the only official country code for the "United Kingdom". Nevertheless, the use of ISO 3166 country codes for wikimedia subdomains is just a wikimedia convention, and there is no law against us squatting on Ukraine's country code.
While you may be right that it isn't strictly accurate to call uk an alternative country code for the UK, it is definitely incorrect to call it Ukraine's country code. That is ua. uk is Ukrainian's language code, but that it a completely different standard.