On Sat, May 12, 2012 at 4:57 AM, Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
The Theory file is not a formal definition; it's an attempt to write down common-sense rules about what's in the database. I suppose it might help to clarify it somewhat -- thus, for example, perhaps "uninhabited" might be clarified to have its common interpretation "no permanent inhabitants". No inhabitant is permanent. But speaking of regions having population for more than X consecutive days is more robust. Even better delete any reference to population.
I imagine it's possible to haggle over any such definition indefinitely, but we do have limited resources, and to be honest I'd rather leave it alone than haggle about it. Deleting the definition is saving even more time. No question to that part of the Theory file anymore.
Another way to think of it is that we have enough trouble worrying about locations containing permanent inhabitants, without also having to worry about transitory populations where data are even harder to come by and are more likely to be incorrect or in conflict. Is there conflicting information for HM or BV, the two ISO 3166-1 codes which seem to be currently the only ones that are not mapped to any zone?
We're better off spending our limited resources in areas where the need is real and where we have real data. Do you think the need reported for a zone for HM during the last hours is not real?
Do you think the data reported for HM is not real data? -- Tobias Conradi Rheinsberger Str. 18 10115 Berlin Germany http://tobiasconradi.com/