
[pdf] Comments on 'PILE OF POO' Derivatives: Feedback on PDAM2 October 2017 - ribasushi
https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2017/17393-wg2-emoji-feedback.pdf
======
ribasushi
The linked document contains a summary of comments on various proposals to the
Emoji subset of Unicode. The entire thing is definitely worth a read, but a
notable excerpt:

1F979 FROWNING PILE OF POO: Question on the justification for encoding this
character, and whether it will encourage the encoding of other emotions on
PILE OF POO; request to remove character.

MICHAEL EVERSON: This character is damaging to both ISO/IEC 10646 and the
Unicode Standard. It is bad enough that the ESC came up with it, but it
beggars believe that the UTC actually approved it. Organic waste isn’t cute.
The existing PILE OF POO character was added for compatibility with Japanese
telco sets. It is a pity that Apple followed Softbank rather than KDDI in its
reference glyph, since a coil of dog dirt with stink lines and flies is surely
the only proper semantic. The idea that our 5 committees would sanction
further cute graphic characters based on this should embarrass absolutely
everyone who votes yes on such an excrescence. Will we have a CRYING PILE OF
POO next? PILE OF POO WITH TONGUE STICKING OUT? PILE OF POO WITH QUESTION
MARKS FOR EYES? PILE OF POO WITH KARAOKE MIC? Will we have to encode a neutral
FACELESS PILE OF POO? As an ordinary user, I don’t want this kind of crap on
my phone. As a representative of the National Standards Authority of Ireland,
I have to wonder what possible good could come of encoding such a character.
Bullying, perhaps? Requested change: Remove this character from the PDAM and
reject its encoding.

ANDREW WEST: I'm concerned that this character will open the floodgates for an
open-ended set of PILE OF POO emoji with emotions, such as CRYING PILE OF POO,
PILE OF POO WITH LOOK OF TRIUMPH, PILE OF POO SCREAMING IN FEAR, etc. Is there
really any need to add a range of emotions to PILE OF POO? I personally think
that changing PILE OF POO to a de facto SMILING PILE OF POO was wrong, but
adding F|FROWNING PILE OF POO as a counterpart is even worse. If this is
accepted then there will be no neutral, expressionless PILE OF POO, so at
least a PILE OF POO WITH NO FACE would be required to be encoded to restore
some balance. I recommend removing FROWNING PILE OF POO pending further study
and public consultation on the need for additional PILE OF POO emoji.

~~~
ribasushi
Demystified abbreviation soup:

WG2: [http://unicode.org/wg2/](http://unicode.org/wg2/)

ESC: Emoji SubCommittee of WG2

PDAM: Proposed Draft AMmendment (
[http://www.unicode.org/faq/alpha_soup.html](http://www.unicode.org/faq/alpha_soup.html)
)

------
techdragon
Obviously the solution is to allow composing poo + face or face + poo like how
we just got face + skin tone modification characters. This pushes the issue
down to implementations. ;-)

On the point of emoji composition, wtf were they thinking with their half
assed skin tone only stuff. Why can I have all these wonderful accurate skin
tones, but my beer is always pale golden, and symbols such as the check mark
and heavy cross out, are only green or black and black or red respectfully, to
say nothing further of the panorama of colour in the symbolic box character
sections and how irritating it is I cannot select which colour I want my
zodiac symbols.

