Talk:.ss

Rejection of .SS ?

Some countries like Holland do not allow Car licence plates with SS, SD, and SA on them due to unpleasant associations during WWII with the Nazi regime of the period.

At the same time on the Allied side during WWII, SS continued to stand for the honourable Steam Ship.

Tabletop (talk) 05:04, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Is this bit about Nazi Germany really relevant to this article? Especially now that the TLD has been approved, this seems like an odd an irrelevant comment. --66.44.121.220 (talk) 05:22, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree, it's far too prominent here. It is sourced from one remark by a goverment official and the remark refers to unspecified "some people say" which IMHO makes it second-hand hearsay. Roger (talk) 07:57, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Agreed, it was valuable in the beginning, but seeing that noone picked it up in the media it is little more than heresay (by -admittedly- a government official). As far as I am concerned it can go... L.tak (talk) 09:23, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

I have implemented it (no objections on this page in 1.5 months); but it seems we don't have a unanimous decision, because my removal was reverted... Feel free to bring arguments to the dicussion here.. L.tak (talk) 07:24, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

History is perfectly relevant, and the comment was made by a fairly high-ranking government official (an Undersecretary), not some random guy. Further, we are talking about 1 single sentence! If the comment had been made by a lesser figure or our coverage was at least paragraph in length, I would be more inclined to accept undue weight arguments. --Cybercobra (talk) 08:40, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

But the figure said "some people say", and we have no source of that; and it was really only very shortly said to be an issue, running thus less than 1 news cycle. Per WP:NOTNEWS that is not enough and -even the 1 sentence- seems undue weight to me. I will start an rfc so we can get some wider idea from the community though to see if we can establish a consensus on the matter... L.tak (talk) 09:14, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Should the historical concern of the use of the abbreviation ss be noted?

Just to clarify the point of the discussion I requested comment on, I have started a new section. The question at hand is:

• Presently there is a text in the article of a S.Sudan Undersecretary stating that there "had initially been concerns about the ccTLD request's possible rejection due to SS also being an abbreviation for Schutzstaffel, the paramilitary force of Nazi Germany". Should that stay in, or should it be removed (see previous section for discussion)?

I'm not sure whether it's required to be removed, but it's not really very important, and the article would not suffer if it were to be removed... AnonMoos (talk) 16:45, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

It would suffer, albeit to an admittedly minor extent, in that part of .ss's history would be lost. Once the domain has existed longer and the article is expanded, the sentence's weight will be diluted even further. It makes for an interesting historical footnote; I'm not suggesting it be emphasized at all. --Cybercobra (talk) 17:40, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

• I'm inclined to leave it in. It is part of a wider cultural phenomenon, illustrated, for example, by Microsoft's "Windows update" which removed a swastika symbol from the Windows "Dingbats" font. Rich Farmbrough, 19:26, 7 December 2011 (UTC).
  
  • It was removed from "Bookshelf Symbol 7", not from the ordinary "WingDings" or "WebDings" fonts... AnonMoos (talk) 20:08, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Stay in. Gerardw (talk) 19:03, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

• I see no reason to remove it. Darkness Shines (talk) 22:00, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
• Some blogger ranting about this subject wouldn't be worth noting, but this comment was from a government official with responsibilities in this area. If nothing else, it's worth leaving in for the benefit of readers who think, "Gee, didn't anyone notice that this was the abbreviation for the Nazi entity?" JamesMLane t c 11:57, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
• There are only about 676 digrams in the Roman alphabet (ignoring some additions from the Scandanavians) and it probably would be difficult to think of many that you could be sure would not be offensive to someone somewhere and holy to someone else somewhere else, some in some languages and some in others. We cannot be expected to distort and mutilate every utterance just in case some VIP somewhere objects to the spelling of miSSing, or the University of Southhampton being referred to as the US. Someone already has referred to SteamShip, very appositely. How many acronyms did the Nazis have? Hundreds? If the Dutch objected to licence plates with SS, SA, etc, that is OK for them; I think it is silly and past time to drop such niggles, but at least they don't come after the rest of us for using the digram, nor using Southern Sun for a chain of hotels, nor for speaking of "Defense Unit" either in English or German. If some official in some government doesn't like the fact that errr... <wink-wink> non-northen-Sudan shares initials with certain evil echelons or bodies such as Southern Switzerland or sea snakes, then the remedy is in his own hands; rename the region to "Austral Sudan" or "Nether Sudan" or "Free Sudan" or something they think their sensitive spirits could tolerate. Why pick on WP? That objection is misdirected as well as undignified, and we don't have to take it seriously. We don't allocate such codes any more than we allocated the SS for the Schutzstaffel; we just present information. If we have to jump through this hoop this time, what do we as more nigglers think of pointless Obstructive Options ? I say, whether you keep the reference or not, reject the principle explicitly and firmly, no matter what you think of the country, the Schutzstaffel, or the SteamShips. JonRichfield (talk) 04:54, 25 December 2011 (UTC)
  • The issue here is precisely, and solely, whether to keep the reference. Wikipedia will neither reject the principle nor adopt it -- we're just reporting what opinions were expressed, whether or not we agree with them. JamesMLane t c 06:41, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

OK, sure. The only thing I think we should be guided by is whether it is desirable to the article as such, not anyone's partisan POV. In context, as things stand, it seems to me that the objection raised to keeping the material as it stands, is not errr... material. The article has nothing to do with Naziism or the perceived dignity of any Sudanese. If they want things changed, no problem, only here is not the place to initiate the change. JonRichfield (talk) 09:29, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

I completely agree with you that this is not the place to initiate the change. It's also not the place to oppose it. I join you in thinking that they should stick with .ss, but we don't suppress the other viewpoint just because some of us regard it as mistaken. JamesMLane t c 14:16, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

No problem. If I had left you with the impression that I disagree with the point with which you responded, I apologise. JonRichfield (talk) 17:21, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

• What matters is that even at the time it was not a big deal; and since there was no meaningful fuss raised, I see no reason to give it undue attention; and certainly no more than one sentence and good solid reference. If some significant number of nutcases (or sane concerned citizens, of course) start raising a fuss, or if it is reported that neo-Nazis are getting .ss domains in order to pay homage to the mustache guy's troops, then we can re-visit the issue and harken back to the Undersecretary's remark. In the meantime: no big deal, no need to include. --Orange Mike | Talk 18:09, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Ssounds OK to me. JonRichfield (talk) 20:19, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Leave it in! Avoiding using abbreviations which take the form 'SS', simply makes more poignant its association with WWII (Furthermore, I read an article recently, about a ship called The SS United States...do we change that too?) 78.149.191.84 (talk) 15:57, 5 January 2012 (UTC)