[tz] Request for change to the tz database

John Hawkinson jhawk at alum.mit.edu
Mon Feb 8 21:19:24 UTC 2021


Replies to several recent messages (from Paul, Paul, and Kim) inline:

Paul Eggert <eggert at cs.ucla.edu> wrote on Mon,  8 Feb 2021
at 15:35:35 EST in <9b41fd25-14a2-c265-2668-caba0e853808 at cs.ucla.edu>:

> Should I ask the tz mailing list moderators (who are not me) to filter out
> routine duplicate requests such as this one? At some point the duplicates
> start to drown out the more-useful email.

If we had prepared a standard boilerplate answer that explained the issues and our position on them effectively, I think we could consider doing that. But we have not done so. Saying "go search the list archives" is not very user-friendly, and I don't think it's a reasonable request.

Further, we have a pending proposal from Paul Eggert on how to address this -- a transition strategy, if you will. I'm not sure how much under discussion that really is, or if it is adopted by fiat or default, but nonetheless, the state of play today is rather different than it was four months ago.


Paul Ganssle <paul at ganssle.io> wrote on Mon,  8 Feb 2021
at 15:45:36 EST in <d9bf3264-af1b-7802-ef2e-859560b1d416 at ganssle.io>:

> Huge +1 on this. I find the Kiev spam on this list /extremely/ annoying.

This language and this sentiment is actually offensive.
The people advocating for Kiev-not-Kiev are not "spamming" the list. They are not sending email to the list that is unsolicited (if that even means anything for a mailing list). They are not sending email to the list that is commercial in nature. To be "spam," they need to meet both of thoses tests.

I understand some people like to use the word "spam" to refer to things that are simply "annoying," but that's not what it means, and it's not a nice thing to do. We should not do it on this list.


I will say, also, that a recent email about this reminded me of a rather significant hole in the common "[tz identifiers are not supposed to be user-visible, use tzselect() or something instead]" approach. And that is that there are quite a few situations where the tz identifier for a location is presented (e.g. "What is my system set to?" or databases and websites that display information about a locality and present its tz identifier). That only reinforces in my mind that, despite our desire to think otherwise, tz identifiers are indeed user-visible and pretending otherwise is just pretending.

(I'm also struck that there is rarely a direct inquiry into what exact software the user is using that results in being presented with a tz identifier choice. I'd like to hope, if we were truly trying to be helpful, that we would ask that question.)


> It seems like the rule against delving into politics is completely
> counter-productive because so many e-mails and responses are spent
> explaining it to new people. Ideally once we realized something is a
> political hot-button that we're going to get a lot of e-mail about, we'd
> put it into some automated or semi-automated holding queue where the
> e-mail is held and the user gets an automated response pointing at the
> relevant entry in the FAQ.

Well, I think it would be reasonable to produce such a FAQ and publish it, but I don't think we should pretermit discussion. And given, above, that the position that would be in that FAQ seem to be changing every few months, it's good cause not to automate the response to such inquiries.


Kim Davies <kim.davies at iana.org> wrote on Mon,  8 Feb 2021
at 15:56:33 EST in <6FD15B30-1F90-4DAE-9307-A17A3EE4A3B0 at iana.org>:

> If there is general support for the IANA team performing an initial
> triage for non-subscribers based on the content of their submission,
> we can work on setting something up. As Paul alludes to at present
> we are moderating non-subscriber submissions, but only to do a
> summary check that it is ‘on-topic’, i.e. related to time zone
> issues.

Culturally speaking, this is not really how most Internet mailing lists work.
I do not think that the magnitude of the "problem" supports a solution of that nature.

Indeed, I think the emails to us are useful "check" on our administrative authority.
If we were getting 1 inquiry from a new person about Kyiv each week, or each day, that would be telling us something.
(Something which, I would argue, we should listen to).

As it is, we're barely hitting one per month, on the average.

--
jhawk at alum.mit.edu
John Hawkinson


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