[tz] Proposed reversions, for moving forward

[Lester Caine]

On 08/08/14 23:22, Tim Parenti wrote:
> I think points 1, 2, and 4 are pretty much undisputed.  Point 3 is the
> current point of contention, but I think we should be moving to a
> solution wherein data like this that somehow got into previous releases
> despite having no basis in fact should be removed from the main files
> and instead be added to a separate file for data of "dubious"
> provenance, which users can choose to use or ignore at-will.

The problem here is simply 'users can choose to use or ignore at-will'
if that is done at a distribution level! I've never had a problem that
some of the data's accuracy can be disputed, and I do feel that the
ignoring of pre-1970 data has been overcome - the Russian data is nice
to see - but if the answers returned when checking historic data on a
timezone depend on what data has been loaded then we are back with the
problem! I've reached the point where I'd rather see a 'not available'
rather than a 'this is todays guess' so we KNOW we have to switch to an
alternate source?

Paul - Getting things second correct is perhaps where some of the
problem is coming from. I'd just be happy with hour correct. Anything
better is just a bonus, but while 5 years ago normalizing data was
probably a rarity, things like Derick's port of data to PHP has meant
that we are using this as a reference today! In the future I CAN see a
case for storing the version of tz used along with the timezone on a
normalization. That may sound like overkill, but it is the only way to
detect that something has changed ...

-- 
Lester Caine - G8HFL
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