Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Languages/Primary language names in Ethnologue 12

Reasons for changes from SIL codes to ISO 639-3

I added a comment today explaining more fully why some SIL codes (about 10% of them, I understand) had to change when they were incorporated in ISO 639-3. The problem is that I have this on personal communication from Gary Simons, who was the one who was in charge of the change-over, so that sort-of counts as original research. Does Wikipedia allow for citations of "personal communication"? If not, maybe I can track down some published source that documents the reasons for changes. AlbertBickford (talk) 01:31, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

This isn't an article, so citations aren't that important. I think we can take your word for it and count this as your ref. You'd want a real ref though if you add this info to our ISO or Ethnologue article. — kwami (talk) 14:48, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Upper- vs. lower-case on codes

Since these are pre-ISO codes, should they be upper case, which was the convention for SIL codes in Ethnologue at the time? I think it wouldn't be too hard to copy the source code for the page to another file, run a simple stream editing program over it to change all the codes to upper case, and then paste it back into Wikipedia. AlbertBickford (talk) 19:27, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Capitalization isn't meaningful, and would make them more difficult to read, and this isn't an article, so I'd say no. — kwami (talk) 09:47, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Actually, in this case, capitalization *is* meaningful, as it indicates whether a code is ISO or pre-ISO. But, as you say, this isn't an article, so I'm not adamant about making the change. AlbertBickford (talk) 17:57, 28 February 2014 (UTC)