Enforcing ISO-3166-1

[Shane Kerr]

On 2001-02-21 12:48:44 +0000, Cathy Murphy wrote:
> 
> So it's a matter of balancing, and we are trying to determine where we
> should draw the line. Do we anticipate those most common mistakes,
> knowing that there is the potential for creating bogus data, but
> understanding that we are making submission easier? Or do we play
> tough and shift the entire burden to those submitting templates?

Well, perhaps you could post a sample list here, and we can see if the
entries are indeed obvious to the readers.  From my experiences with
this topic, I feel that you can safely "auto-correct" most of the
problems with almost no mismatches.  The examples you gave of Brasil and
UK, for instance, are extremely common.  Things like Britian are also
fairly common - not much ambiguity there, just wrongness.  ;)

Other cases that call for more tact should probably just be omitted.
While I'd give good odds that an entry for Korea probably means "South
Korea", you can't know for sure.

One thing I do think is that any correction that occurs should be made
clear to the user:

  Shane Kerr,

  We have updated your contact information.  Because you refused to
  follow the directions we provide here:

    http://www.arin.net/some-directions.html

  We corrected the address you submitted.  
  
    Country code: Netherlands 

  Became:

    Country code: NL

  If this is incorrect, please submit the correct data in the correct
  format.

  Love,
  ARIN

The usual legal disclaimers would of course have to be attached. 

The real answer to this is of course a web (or other GUI) interface, so
the user can pick from a list.  ;)

Shane