[tz] Crimea to switch to Moscow Time as of March 30, 2014

[Russ Allbery]

Julian Cable <julian.cable at bbc.co.uk> writes:

> Yes, I would, which suggests that a 'disputed' country is a bad idea,
> but that putting the zones in each country works better.

> It is important to NOT choose.

Unfortunately, putting the zone in both countries is also choosing, since
in some of these cases there is a hot political debate over whether the
dispute exists.  See, for example, the historic situation with Taiwan, in
which *both* parties hotly contested the idea that there are two separate
countries.  (I realize that this has evolved over time and is far more
complex than my simple sentence.)

We used to run into these problems quite routinely with Usenet newsgroup
naming.  My experience is that there is simply no safe option.  Everything
you do, including merely acknowledging the existence of a dispute, will
anger someone.  The best you can do is manage to find an approach that
angers as few people as possible, or somehow punt the problem to some
other authority that you can follow blindly and thereby dodge
responsibility for the problem.  (And frequently even *that* just moves
the problem to a debate over which authority to punt to.)

-- 
Russ Allbery (eagle at eyrie.org)              <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>