[Wikipedia-l] Re: Why do we have them??

[Jimmy Wales]

Tim Starling wrote:
> I think we can put the blame on our use of language code lists which are
> biased towards political rather than linguistic divisions.

Absolutely.  We started out using the ISO codes because they are
external to us (which is usually a good thing because it gives us one
less thing to argue about so we can just get our work done) and because
I assumed they were more or less sensible.

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.

--Jimbo