Oh wow I'm not taking any stand in any direction regarding these issues. Country borders are a very slippery slope. Very.
My policy is the following:
If there is no real reason to "limit" countries that someone can select, then don't limit it. Typically, let users fill a free text field.
If there is a reason (like how post services will work, Visa issues, etc) then use the political cuts that are convenient and phrase it as little political as possible
If you are doing open source then the list of countries is configuration and not hardcoded (can be pre-configured though)
As a general rule, stay out of politics when doing code :)
That’s the point Rémy. One should not. Political issues are kind of new taboo but thanks to internet we can more sure about what’s going on by just talking to few people online from the same country. It may take time but it’s more responsible way. Though I do respect your choice here.
The issue is you are assuming by “talking to few people online from the same country” will just make you competent to make right decisions for those political disputes. But the reality is those issues are usually involving multiple countries, histories, economic factors. Who are we here to make the decision? And if it’s just your private project, it’s fine, but for an open source project, it gets worse if any political sides slipped in, because it will have a bigger influence to whoever is using or learn from the project. So focus on being neutral and like Remy said, let the clients make decisions.
Oh well but who am I to decide if Crimea is part of Russia or if Taiwan is independent. As a developer that's not really my problem and in fact I have clients in China that would be very offended if considered Taiwan and independent or vice versa. So it's up to my clients to decide.
Although if you edit a service yourself it's a different story, but politics and software should be orthogonal issues :)
If you read the woocommerce PR discussion, you will find that they resolved by choosing CLDR, which is “a much more politically neutral approach to list countries in a more loose way”. So, yeah, we're all in agreement :)
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
We're a place where coders share, stay up-to-date and grow their careers.
Oh wow I'm not taking any stand in any direction regarding these issues. Country borders are a very slippery slope. Very.
My policy is the following:
As a general rule, stay out of politics when doing code :)
That’s the point Rémy. One should not. Political issues are kind of new taboo but thanks to internet we can more sure about what’s going on by just talking to few people online from the same country. It may take time but it’s more responsible way. Though I do respect your choice here.
The issue is you are assuming by “talking to few people online from the same country” will just make you competent to make right decisions for those political disputes. But the reality is those issues are usually involving multiple countries, histories, economic factors. Who are we here to make the decision? And if it’s just your private project, it’s fine, but for an open source project, it gets worse if any political sides slipped in, because it will have a bigger influence to whoever is using or learn from the project. So focus on being neutral and like Remy said, let the clients make decisions.
Oh well but who am I to decide if Crimea is part of Russia or if Taiwan is independent. As a developer that's not really my problem and in fact I have clients in China that would be very offended if considered Taiwan and independent or vice versa. So it's up to my clients to decide.
Although if you edit a service yourself it's a different story, but politics and software should be orthogonal issues :)
If you read the woocommerce PR discussion, you will find that they resolved by choosing CLDR, which is “a much more politically neutral approach to list countries in a more loose way”. So, yeah, we're all in agreement :)