[tz] Some thoughts about the way forward

[Tom Lane]

Paul Eggert via tz <tz at iana.org> writes:
> On 9/24/21 1:28 PM, Michael H Deckers via tz wrote:
>>> The stuff in 'backzone' is lower quality, and adding lower-quality 
>>> data is not strictly an improvement.

>>     Not true: Europe/Belfast, Europe/Guernsey, Europe/Jersey,
>>     Europe/Isle_of_Man are not of "lower quality",

> You're correct, I should have written "is often of lower quality".

I think the current hoo-hah has been brought on precisely by shoving
stuff into backzone despite there *not* being an argument that it's
of poor quality.

I still think there's room to resolve the unhappiness by adopting
a three-way classification such as I suggested upthread.  There's
surely room to negotiate where the boundary between the "in by
default" and "out by default" groups falls.  It seems you'd prefer
a strict standard, akin to "in only if it's documented to a level
similar to the in-scope zones".  Unfortunately, that seems like
a pretty squishy standard, since there are in-scope zones with
only the scantiest of documentation (South Georgia and Suriname
being the first couple of examples I came across).  I think the
rule I suggested, "in unless there are documented concerns about
correctness", would be a lot simpler to apply and easier to defend.

			regards, tom lane