[tz] On merging timezones - a radical proposal.

[Tim Parenti]

On 22 May 2013 20:49, <Paul_Koning at dell.com> wrote:

> > I think we are best served with the status quo.
>
> I think so too.  But various people have been grinding various political
> axes


I agree.  But I feel that people have taken the opportunity to grind those
axes, in part, because of confusion over what the status quo actually is.
As far as I'm aware, we currently match ISO 3166-1 with very few (albeit
contentious) exceptions.  Is that correct?

Since we can't possibly get the entire world to agree on a single standard
for this political aspect of the data, perhaps we'd be better served by
instead using some (minimal) threshold of agreement amongst multiple
standards?  Or perhaps not.  Frankly, I can see such an arrangement
potentially creating more issues than it solves.

Either way, I feel we should consider solidifying what our standard(s) are
going forward, perhaps even putting it in an official document like an RFC,
and then making sure our data matches.  Currently, Theory only says we use
ISO 3166-1 to "help decide", which opens the door to lots of the arguments
we've seen in recent months.

Regardless of what we pick, some people will inevitably not like it (that
won't be anything new), but at least we'd be able to point to something
that says "this is how we've chosen to do things."

--
Tim Parenti
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