Decisions this site makes about country names/status?
For example, this site refers to the country as East Timor, despite the 'official' English name and more common name I see being Timor-Leste (although both answers are accepted in quizzes). How does the site decide which name to use? Having made a quiz recently centred around the letters countries begin and end with, this one gave me food for thought.
Also, the UN majority recognises Palestine as a country and has done for a while (146 member states) - is the site just defaulting to the USA's stance on the matter? The opposite is the case for Kosovo - this site recognises it as a country, yet around half of the UN does not (104 member states). What criteria does this site use to justify recognising Kosovo but not Palestine? Another weird one is Taiwan, which seems to have very little support (11 member states plus the Vatican) to be recognised as its own country, yet JetPunk recognises it as one.
This post is not to criticise any of these decisions at all, I'm not personally invested or anything - I simply just don't currently know how they were made, and having enjoyed this site for ages I am curious to know.
Taiwan and Vatican City control their territory. Palestine does not. But what about Abkhazia, which has forced the Georgian government out of its territory? How about Yemen, where the Houthis are arguably more powerful than the Republic now? Should the country be treated as government-controlled, Houthi-controlled, split into two different countries, split into a bunch of quasi-states for every combatant, or just be greyed out as a Palestine-level clusterfuck?
How about East Timor and Ivory Coast? The English names are probably more common, at least in the states, but where do we draw the line? Wikipedia now uses Timor-Leste. Should JetPunk?
It’s ultimately up to the Quizmaster, and while his picks haven't been totally consistent, I think he does a good job.
For instance, in the case of Taiwan, it's clearly its own fully independent country, regardless of what other countries have to say to please China.
Yemen (and Syria) are definitely harder cases to say, but I think ultimately they should stay the way they are. The state government and the rebels may be at odds and controlling different territory, but it is still within Yemen