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In reference to: Should we have country specific tags?

I just saw the tag was created. Personally, I hate using abbreviations for things. I really think the site should use full country names and stick with instead. Abbreviations only lead to trouble, and an abbreviated country that someone isn't familiar with may lead to confusion.

Should we allow or disallow abbreviated country names as tags?
Should the abbreviations be synonymized with the full country name?

Note: I went ahead and changed it to the full country as I believe it should be.

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  • Country codes would work well. Full names are problematic, especially for USA, UAE ect. – Rarity Apr 11 '12 at 22:27
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    What is the purpose of the country codes? When we ask questions on Programmers about development methods, we don't limit the scope to countries. What I'm getting at is: Do we really need these localization tags? – jmort253 Apr 12 '12 at 4:42
  • @jmort253, make your case here, quickly! :) – Benjol Apr 12 '12 at 9:59
  • @Benjol - Decisions can be reversed. It's only been 24 hours. there are examples of reversed decisions that occurred on SO years after the site's public launch. In other words, just because we use country tags today doesn't mean we have to keep using them tomorrow, a week from now, or a year from now. So I think my case still stands. :) This is the quickest moving beta I've participated in yet though, I must say. – jmort253 Apr 12 '12 at 14:24
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    @jmort253, lol, I now notice that you HAD made your case, and I'd even commented on it :) – Benjol Apr 13 '12 at 6:36
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That was my fault, for which I apologise.

What we should do is agree on canonical forms for how we are going to refer to country names. For example: is a bit unwieldy compared to or just , Similarly, pedants might argue that should really be which actually exceeds the length allowed for a tag (this is just css magic here).

What we should do, once we have said forms, is to create tag synonyms so people who use abbreviations do not create duplicate tags; as a side effect, all questions are then correctly tagged in the form the site uses, without intervention.

Then, when I type without thinking, it'll become automagically.

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