Subject: [Ltru] Bogus language tags in Wikipedia

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2008 19:28:31 -0600

Kent Karlsson <kent dot karlsson14 at comhem dot se> wrote:

> Though not formally a language tag, Wikipedia, for instance, uses
> fiu-vro (a collection code augmented extlang style with a home-grown
> code for Võro) as the language prefix for Võro Wikipedia, not
> et-something. Not that I think using a collection code that way is at
> all good (or even use macrolanguage codes that way), I'm just noting
> that they DON'T use et-... .

Using a collection code may not be good, but making up their own
3-letter subtag 'vro' is just about the worst thing anyone can do with
language tags.  If the tag they need doesn't exist, they should be using
a private-use tag, such as "x-voro" or "fiu-x-voro" or even "qaa".  As
long as they have a page somewhere that shows their assignments, that's
their "private agreement."  Or they could request a registration on
ietf-languages.  Anything is better than making up their own tag in the
non-private space.

Unfortunately, it's not the only time Wikipedia has done that, and it
doesn't even matter if the code already exists in ISO 639-3:

- "bat-smg" for Samogitian ('smg' is Simbali)
- "cbk-zam" for Zamboanga Chavacano ('zam' is Miahuatlán Zapotec)
- "map-bms" for Banyumasan ('bms' is Bilma Kanuri)

and probably others; I stopped checking after three examples.

This is much worse than slightly imprecise tagging, or tagging that
doesn't exhibit perfect fallback behavior; this is cowboy tagging.

--
Doug Ewell  *  Arvada, Colorado, USA  *  RFC 4645  *  UTN #14
http://www.ewellic.org
http://www1.ietf.org/html.charters/ltru-charter.html
http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages  ˆ

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From: Peter Constable <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2008 20:26:07 -0700

> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
> Doug Ewell

> doesn't exhibit perfect fallback behavior; this is cowboy tagging.

I agree. May the fleas of 4000 open-range longhorns infest their applications.

Peter