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Rejected emoji proposals

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Re: Rejected emoji proposals

#141

Post by bXVsbGVy »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #45
bXVsbGVy wrote: post #6

I find fascinating that many of those were rejected, but "Pregnant man" and male bride were approved. https://emojipedia.org/pregnant-man/ https://emojiguide.com/people-body/man-with-veil/

Just like how eggplant and peach emoji are used for representing things other than fruit and vegetables, I'd expect pregnant man to find its own niche in time. It doesn't take a genius to guess that it will be used by a lot of guys who just ate an enormous burrito.

Agreed. But bearded women will likely only be used to bully.

Re: Rejected emoji proposals

#142

Post by skissane »

pyuser583 wrote: post #138
skissane wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> England, Scotland, and Wales all have Unicode flags. So do British Overseas territories (e.g UK Virgin Islands) and crown dependencies (e.g. Jersey). As do US Territories (e.g. Puerto Rico). With the exception of England, Scotland and Wales, all of that’s just due to following ISO 3166-1, which covers both countries and significant external territories; you might say that it treats the layer as if they were in some…

I don’t see UKs “country” being much different from the US “states.” In some ways US states are even more independent. England doesn’t have its own government or Capitol, nor does it want one. Sure Scotland was independent, about 500 years ago, but I don’t think that’s very important to the Unicode consortium. I suspect the concern is simply upkeep. There 50 state flags, and they are changed pretty frequently.

I think what’s actually important to the Unicode Consortium is this - “countries” get RGI, non-“countries” don’t. Too many of the latter. But we don’t want to decide what is a “country” - we don’t want to evaluate ourselves factors like those you mention (degree of independence), since that’s politically fraught and largely beyond our expertise. We just want to defer to some existing international standard and let them take all the heat - and such a standard exists, ISO 3166.

ISO 3166-1 lists “countries”; it also lists many (but not all) “dependent territories” and one or two “special areas”, but there is a well-established international precedent for treating the latter two as if they were “countries” (see e.g. ccTLDs). However, ISO 3166-2 also labels subdivisions as “countries”, but only in two cases - the UK and the Netherlands. The Netherlands case is irrelevant for flags, because all of its “countries” either have 3166-1 codes too, or else lack flags. But the UK has three “countries” which do have flags, so those flags get RGI. Denmark and France contain “countries” too, but not according to 3166-2; but even if 3166-2 was updated to include them, it still wouldn’t make a difference, since they all either have 3166-1 codes too or lack their own flag.

Maybe, someone will convince Hawaii to declare itself a “country within the United States”, and 3166-2 will then be updated to list Hawaii as a “country” - then the Hawaiian flag would get Unicode RGI status. I really doubt all the other 49 would ever do that though.

Re: Rejected emoji proposals

#143

Post by pyuser583 »

skissane wrote: post #142
pyuser583 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see UKs “country” being much different from the US “states.” In some ways US states are even more independent. England doesn’t have its own government or Capitol, nor does it want one. Sure Scotland was independent, about 500 years ago, but I don’t think that’s very important to the Unicode consortium. I suspect the concern is simply upkeep. There 50 state flags, and they are changed pretty frequently.

I think what’s actually important to the Unicode Consortium is this - “countries” get RGI, non-“countries” don’t. Too many of the latter. But we don’t want to decide what is a “country” - we don’t want to evaluate ourselves factors like those you mention (degree of independence), since that’s politically fraught and largely beyond our expertise. We just want to defer to some existing international standard and let th…

You kind of sent me on a scavenger hunt … I learned that Scotland and France were both founded in the same year: 843.

I understand the importance of standards, but I think the importance of the word “country” is a bit overblown.

The USSR had countries, some of which had 3166-1 codes, and some of which did not.

And ultimately why would the name country be that important?

Re: Rejected emoji proposals

#145

Post by WirelessGigabit »

a1371 wrote: post #35
bXVsbGVy wrote: post #6

I find fascinating that many of those were rejected, but "Pregnant man" and male bride were approved. https://emojipedia.org/pregnant-man/ https://emojiguide.com/people-body/man-with-veil/

Look up proposal L2/20-190. They provide a number of good reasons for pregnant man. To summarize: - It avoids gender stereotyping of men in Parenthood. - couples say "we are pregnant". The term pregnant is culturally used for men too as their search shows. - the emoji is not just for pregnancy, it is also for feeling bloated, full, and hungry. I sometimes used this emoji for saying that I'm expecting something. My pa…

The problem is that the definition of the emoji says Pregnant Man Emoji.

So using it for anything other than that defeats accessibility for visually impaired people.

Also, 'we are pregnant' is weird, being pregnant is the act of developing offspring within the body.

Re: Rejected emoji proposals

#146

Post by jerojero »

1101010010 wrote: post #130
jerojero wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In simple emoji fashion, I would use the "rolling eyes" emoji to express my discontent with your post.

Do you think that would be more or less respectful than using your words to communicate in polite discourse?

Thinking emoji, shrugging person (genderless) emoji. Get used to it.

Emojis, emotes, gifs, reaction images, these all add extra complexity to the way we communicate. Not everyone needs to be a writer; what's this thing about respect? Obviously I am being facetious because I believe you to have quite a strong and antiquated view of how language works.

Written language always has had a visual component, languages like japanese have written words that comprise entire concepts and can be interpreted in many different ways (kind of like an image). But emojis also do something pretty remarkable in that they are very much universal, of course, people use certain emojis in different ways. But more often than not they can allow from context-based communication between people of different languages in a much simpler and straight forward way. Let me give you an example: You travel to Germany, you don't know German but you go into Grindr and you send hot face emoji, eggplant emoji, and a question mark to a guy. I assure you that, although crude, he will more or less get the message.

In fact, symbols are already used in everyday language. More often than not, if I'm confused about something just sending a question mark (?) will be enough to express it. Sending several question marks (????) will communicate stronger confusion.

Language is what we make of it, if you think reducing the need of using words to express complex ideas is bad then just send more emojis and you'll be communicating, in fewer space, more. How is that bad? On telegram, sometimes I communicate exclusively using stickers with certain friends. It seems to me like, maybe, you might be annoyed because communication has grown more complex than it used to be. People laugh at boomers not knowing how to use emojis.

Re: Rejected emoji proposals

#147

Post by wlonkly »

anigbrowl wrote: post #16

The idea that unicode proposals have to be submitted to the unicode consortium is trash. It's be better to declare parts of the unicode standard open access (like the 2.4GHz wifi band) and just let people exchange/trade emoji sets.

I think you just invented Multicode.

Re: Rejected emoji proposals

#148

Post by wlonkly »

nadow wrote: post #40

no matter how you slice it, the Jain Svastika is just not a good emoji idea.

Poke around on Google Maps in Kyoto, you'll see _lots_ of swastikas representing temples. It's definitely jarring at first for Western sensibilities, but from India east to the Pacific, people kept using the swastika for what it meant before the Nazis.

(And _since_ they use it -- especially symbolically to mean "temple"! -- it needs to be represented in Unicode.)

Re: Rejected emoji proposals

#149

Post by skissane »

pyuser583 wrote: post #143
skissane wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what’s actually important to the Unicode Consortium is this - “countries” get RGI, non-“countries” don’t. Too many of the latter. But we don’t want to decide what is a “country” - we don’t want to evaluate ourselves factors like those you mention (degree of independence), since that’s politically fraught and largely beyond our expertise. We just want to defer to some existing international standard and let th…

You kind of sent me on a scavenger hunt … I learned that Scotland and France were both founded in the same year: 843. I understand the importance of standards, but I think the importance of the word “country” is a bit overblown. The USSR had countries, some of which had 3166-1 codes, and some of which did not. And ultimately why would the name country be that important?

> The USSR had countries, some of which had 3166-1 codes, and some of which did not.

During the negotiations over the UN Charter, the Soviets claimed that the Union Republics which made up the USSR were sovereign states, with the right to secede, and hence should all be allowed to join the UN - along with the Soviet Union. The West refused - the claim of sovereignty was rather unbelievable (as if Stalin would really let anyone secede!), and it would have given the Soviet Union 16 (or more) votes in the General Assembly, which everyone else saw as unfair. Negotiations had reached an impasse, when a diplomatic compromise emerged - two of the Union Republics (Ukraine and Byelorussia) would become UN members, along with the Soviet Union as a whole; the others wouldn’t. Hence, the UN considered them to be “countries”, and since ISO 3166-1 gets its country list from the UN Statistical Division, it did too. It never made much sense from the perspective of reality, it was simply a historical diplomatic fudge.

> And ultimately why would the name country be that important?

I think it is important because (1) it is an exception to their general rule “countries/dependencies only, but not subdivisions thereof” which is defensible using the text of ISO 3166; (2) it is numerically a very limited exception-it doesn’t threaten to open the floodgates; (3) if someone claims “this is unfair bias in favour of the UK”, they can say “no, it is only because of the text of the standards, we are not engaging in any favouritism”; (4) in spite of all the above, there is a lot of political/popular pressure to give in to the demand, due to Scottish and Welsh nationalism; (5) no comparable political pressure exists for US state flags, because no US state has a mainstream nationalist movement

Re: Rejected emoji proposals

#150

Post by LeanderK »

pfp wrote: post #31
kilroy123 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? We use slack and all staff has access to add new emojis. You can just imagine how that would turn out...

Well, at least then you could think of the addons as local slang. It's still unnecessary, but limited to the social circle at your workplace. I didn't have a huge beef with the proprietary emojis on old skool Skype and MSN, TBH - they were technically bound to those platforms, and the platforms mostly to private social spheres where they'd form part of the local slang. (And where Skype was used at work in the 00's, p…

> Modern day emojis being part of unicode implies that they're somehow universally understood, and that it's fine to sprinkle them around in any kind of social context. Quite horrifying, really.

This just reads a bit like someone older ranting at the younger generation being glued to their smartphone all the time. Modern day emojis are part of our writing system. I use them all the time, from Slack to WhatsApp. They are universally understood, to a limit of course, but I see everybody else using them too and no "office drama" because Alice misunderstood the emoji Bob was using. They make it easier for me to express my emotions and they are as naturally as speaking. There's nothing extraordinarily horrifying really.

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