[tz] Reason for removal of several TZ

[Tim Parenti]

On 3 December 2017 at 21:13, <Paul.Koning at dell.com> wrote:

> It seems to me the notion of "official" doesn't always work.  Sometimes a
> particular term is established merely by enough usage.  In fact, that's how
> the English language works.
>

Indeed.  The standard isn't "official", merely "widely accepted".


> So perhaps the same thinking should be applied here: it doesn't really
> matter where TZ names come from.  Even if they were originally just an
> acronym thought up by PE or ADO, they become "real" if enough people use
> them as such.
>
> Now if you're dealing with invented names that haven't gotten any
> significant currency, that's different, then deleting them makes sense.
> But if the pushback is "wait a minute, everyone around here has been using
> that designation for at least a decade" then that makes it real enough to
> be preserved.  That assumes there isn't contrary input from an actual
> "official" source, of course.


Oh, certainly.  Obviously official government documents would meet that
standard, but other things could, too, hence the requests for use by
newspapers and media outlets, for example.  It's a big part of why the
Australian abbreviations were changed to reflect common usage
<https://github.com/eggert/tz/commit/62df86e10cb45ed931850f7298fa063ffea07544>
a few years back.  If it's indeed true that "everyone…has been using that
designation", then it's generally easy to point to prominent examples.

Unfortunately, most online compendia of world time zones — like those
Thomas linked — tend to source their data, knowingly or unknowingly, from tz or
its derivations, so they don't really count for these purposes.

--
Tim Parenti
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