[tz] KyivNotKiev

[John Hawkinson]

This particular tangent is not very helpful, I think.

Although we haven't directly confronted the question recently, I think the project policy in the event of a disputed set of time rules in a single geographic region is to have both rules available, so that folks on the ground can choose as they wish.

This is a natural outgrowth of the fact that we don't define borders. Most disputes about time in a particular place are really a question of whether it belongs in one of two adjacent regions.

As a result, a switch to numeric tz identifiers would not do anything to reduce discussion about occupied areas during World War II, or whether to modify or add a new rule in the event of major political change in location that affects civil timekeeping practices. It'd only affect how we choose to name the rules, and even then, there would be similar discussions in the numeric-to-location mapping project, whether that were a tz subproject or another one entirely.


Also, if we're worried about the list time, I guarantee you that the few hundred messages we have seen in the past ten years about Kyiv vs. Kiev would pale in comparison to the thousands of messages in a single month we would see if there were a serious proposal to go to numeric identifiers. (I'm quite confident that there would be *a lot* of discussion.)


p.s.: Would someone like to talk about the effect of New START on global civil timekeeping? I jest! Start a new thread if you must.

--
jhawk at alum.mit.edu
John Hawkinson

John Alvord <johngrahamalvord at gmail.com> wrote on Sat, 28 Nov 2020
at 11:43:08 EST in <CACd6g0vn=vyKY8BY4MoL_XeKt30nZy99jFK8v4ySLcPf7_JJJg at mail.gmail.com>:

> Imagine all the list time that would be saved if the keys were in some
> increasing numerical order.
> 
> On Sat, Nov 28, 2020 at 8:36 AM Phake Nick <c933103 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > The tz database follow the principle of ground truth, as in the time being
> > used on the ground, hence even for area occupied by Axis force in the WWII
> > and have their clock changed by the occupying authority, those changes are
> > still being recorded accordingly in the tz database.