ActionView::Helpers::FormOptionsHelper COUNTRIES constant controversially labels Taiwan a province of China

rubyonrails-core
1

I'm sure a few of you out there use the country_options_for_select which is a very useful helper for quickly adding all the countries to a select list which works well for user signups and credit card processing. I am responsible for website at OEM.com, we get a fair amount of Asian traffic and we have received numerous complaints to the labeling of Taiwan as a province of China, regardless of where your stance is, I would think we would want to keep rails as neutral as possible which is why I created a patch and ticket to fix the COUNTRIES constant to just label Taiwan, as... Taiwan. Please leave some feedback on the issue as to what you guys think. Ticket URL posted below:

http://rails.lighthouseapp.com/projects/8994-ruby-on-rails/tickets/715-actionview-helpers-formoptionshelper-countries-constant-controversally-labels-taiwan-a-province-of-china

Have a great week!

-Greg

2

I'm sure a few of you out there use the country_options_for_select which is a very useful helper for quickly adding all the countries to a select list which works well for user signups and credit card processing. I am responsible for website at OEM.com, we get a fair amount of Asian traffic and we have received numerous complaints to the labeling of Taiwan as a province of China, regardless of where your stance is, I would think we would want to keep rails as neutral as possible which is why I created a patch and ticket to fix the COUNTRIES constant to just label Taiwan, as... Taiwan. Please leave some feedback on the issue as to what you guys think. Ticket URL posted below:

Firstly I'm sorry for the controversy this list has caused your customers.

The list as it stands come from the ISO standard # 3166, and is the best neutral option for us when it comes to finding a country list. Whatever faults the list may have, it comes from UN sources.

Making the change you suggest may seem from your perspective to be returning the list to a neutral state, but it's likely to be perceived by others as a provacative statement in support of taiwanese independence.

We won't accept patches which cause this list to differ from the ISO list, I'm sorry. You can make the changes in your own application relatively easily, and I'd suggest that that's the best option for you.