On 6/27/05, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
As it turns out, though, the ISO codes are highly politicized and often just plain wrong. This means that we have inconsistencies that are hard to correct after the fact, because it involves community issues, etc.
I hope that over time, we will get better and better at this and the existing nonsense will be ironed out over time. I view this as a longterm project that is going to take a few years.
One argument about politicization of ISO codes:
Serbo-Croatian standard language had two three letters code with describing differences between alphabets: SCR for SC written in Latin (Roman) alphabet and SCC for SC written in Cyrillic alphabet. Now, SCR is assumed as "Croatian before Croatian" and SCC as "Serbian before Serbian". In the fact, more then 50% (maybe 60%, maybe 70%) of Serbian books during 70s and 80s are written in Latin alphabet and there were one important cultural movement between world wars in Croatia which assumed writing in Cyrillic. (As well as during SFRY some Croatians, very rare, are writing in Cyrillic.)
I am not sure what is the sense of such decision of ISO.