- tz - lists.iana.org

Let's keep focused on the time zone code and data
by Paul Eggert June 6, 2012

June 6, 2012

I'd like to ask people to keep the email focused on the time zone code and data, and not engage in personal attacks, worry about which Wikipedia user did what, etc.

1 0

mailing list, tone, respect, bugs, suggestions
by Tobias Conradi June 6, 2012

June 6, 2012

was: Wikipedia - blocking time zone contributors - massive insertion of errors by AlanM1 - win-win if people cooperate On Wed, Jun 6, 2012 at 4:01 AM, David Patte <dpatte(a)relativedata.com> wrote: > I think this is the biggest issue with Conradi. I believe he has made 'some' > valuable comments and contributions over the last month (some - but not > all), Who sent more new bug reports and reminders of previously reported bugs than me? >but his attitude has turned the majority of this list against him What is your source for that. Maybe at first you could release a number of how many subscribers are on the list? > whether he has any points that have any merit or not. That would tell more about others than about me. > Mr. Conradi, if you so dearly want to 'fix bugs' in the db, as much as we > all do, I don't know how much all others do. I see no fix by the current TZ Coordinator at all. > I would suggest you learn how to present your suggestions as just > that - suggestions - and with humility. Why humility? Does that change the facts? >Maybe its an issue you have with translation, > or perhaps something else, but your presentation has turned > most people off providing you any futrther support for your ideas. Regrettably, because I think I sometimes make errors and am happy to learn from feedback. > You would > have gotten a lot further by granting those that have been on this list as > contributors or maintainers some respect; So you mean I didn't grant them some respect? I think I have gotten quite far. I have exposed lots of bugs in the database and in the management. If the management is not happy to hear this, and other people don't see the bugs, or are afraid to raise their voice, then shall I stop raising mine? What's up with the bugs in Siberia? > and I assure you that if you had > done that that you might have gained more consideration for your > 'suggestions'. Siberia stays wrong, despite people knowing it, because the one who reported it didn't show respect? What strange game is that? What's the purpose > If you have a suggestion for the database, please state it as a suggestion, Several instance where I titled emails with Propose/Proposal can be found at http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2012-May/thread.html The word "suggest" in a title of an email by me can be seen at http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2011-September/ "Post-1970 errors in Russian zones, suggest zones Asia/Tomsk, Asia/Barnaul " That is Siberia! > and back up your suggestion with documentation Can you show any bug report or proposal by me that came without? > - and stop accusing others of > not doing their part. Where did I do that? I think the only person that has an official part in fixing zone data bugs in the database is the current TZ Coordinator, named Paul Eggert. > That would help us all. "us"? Does that "us" include the users that are confronted with the IANA time zone database bugs? Bouvet Island, Siberia, place vs location, gmt vs utc, tz(a)elsie.nci.nih.gov vs tz(a)iana.org (the latter resulting in bouncing email)...? -- Tobias Conradi Rheinsberger Str. 18 10115 Berlin Germany http://tobiasconradi.com/

1 0

Re: [tz] Wikipedia - blocking time zone contributors - massive insertion of errors by AlanM1 - win-win if people cooperate
by Alan Mintz June 6, 2012

June 6, 2012

I apologize to the list. I'll try to keep this brief, and I will _not_ engage in a flame war. I have no desire to work with someone who, I've now learned, just cannot be worked with. Constructive comments from others are welcome. At 2012-06-05 17:31, Tobias Conradi wrote: >In Wikipedia several accounts that added Olson/IANA time zone >information have been blocked and marked as sock puppets of Tobias >Conradi. Since User:Tobias Conradi did not edit since years, because a >handful of people once decided to block him, the only evidence for >"sock puppeting" is given as "behavioral". > >Behavioral for the User:TimeOfChange is to edit time articles: >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/TimeOfChange >No single talk page edit or anything else. > >Lately User Royaume du Maroc got blocked, who created: >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Florida Are you denying that you are "Royaume du Maroc" (RdM)? I've known about you for less than a month and it's clear to me that you are he. Give us a break and seek help. Seemingly coincidentally, I did some work on WP at the same time as RdM because I realized there were issues after first reporting to this list about a minor one. He seems fixated on the order in which things happened. I certainly don't care. Take all the credit you want. I simply want to get things right, and you can no longer do that, given that your past actions have you banned indefinitely. >BUT NOW THE REAL PROBLEM. AlanM1 is deleting IANA time zone from >Wikipedia e.g. Shiprock, South_Pole, Longyearbyen, Ljubljana >http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_tz_database_time_zones&di… I've spent a bunch of time on this in the last couple of days. I worked with the 2010e release on which the WP data was supposed to be based, and found numerous inconsistencies. Today, I decided that, versus correcting those, I might as well just use the latest data available - 2012c. The list on that page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones) is now consistent with what comes out of the Perl DateTime::TimeZone package, based on the 2012c release, merged with the zone.tab file from the same release (to get the coordinates and comments, which are not part of the perl package). This is also consistent with the 7 continent files. I still have to explore the relatively small list of diffs (including those you mentioned) to see why they were there before and not now. I suspect they are links. Note that the whole thing is a work in progress. I hardly had time to go get a burger after finishing hours of work on this before your drivel hit the list. >and at the same time introducing >| [[ISO_3166-1:|ISO_3166-1:]] >| >| [[PST8PDT]] > >into a list that claims to be based on a zone.tab listing. PST8PDT is >not in the current zone.tab file. No, it doesn't claim to be based on the zone.tab file. It's based on the 7 continent files. >Also the minus signs are changed into hyphen minuses, so that UTC >offset articles which use the minus sign are now reached via >redirects. OMG, the sky is falling! The way I read WP:MOS, I've used the correct character. The fact that the individual UTC* articles (which you created) use a different character doesn't change that at all. I will, however, investigate. What does this nitpicky bit of WP style have to do with the TZ mailing list? Is it really the right tone to take? >Furthermore the order of the elements in that list is not more the >same as in zone.tab, and the first column that allowed sorting in that >order got removed by AlanM1. Why is that order important? They are in order of the TZ identifier, which is the primary key of the database, and the logical order one would expect a list in, instead of the arbitrary and seemingly purposeless and undocumented number that was there. >Maybe some readers here with an account on Wikipedia can revert the >introduced errors and explain to AlanM1 what the errors are. You have yet to report anything that would be considered an error, and certainly not in a tone that would make anyone want to continue working with you (or at all). >E.g. due to South_Pole removal in the data templates, at >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Antarctica >there is now "[[ISO 3166-1:IANA time zone id not in >Template:Tz/country code|IANA time zone id not in Template:Tz/country >code]]" As I said, work in progress. Fixing any broken links is next. >Also due to not using the data templates at >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones >Wikipedia is now open to inconsistency between this list and data >display in other places. Before the change the list showed to a wide >extend the data contained in the templates, so people could easily >check for correctness. I did use those templates, and the data in the individual column templates are now all in sync. The problem is that I was unable to save the template-using version of the "List of tz database time zones" article, apparently because of the resulting complexity of all those template transclusions. If you had read the change log, or given me time to document it on the talk page, you would have seen my note about that: "(Update to 2012c, data added directly to article because of performance problems when templated. This may be a temporary problem - will try again later.)" You never saw this problem because you didn't use the templates for the last 140 or so rows. I spent quite a lot of time on it, trying to reduce the number of transclusions and ultimately gave up, hoping that the problem was temporary. I'll note that your last version of the page (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_tz_database_time_zones&ol…) takes almost a _minute_ to appear, while my current version of it (with the data in the page instead of transcluded) takes about 3 seconds. >If the data in the templates is well maintained then it could be used >in the infoboxes on the city pages, then thousands of articles could >display information offset information obtain from IANA. It is. It was just the "List of tz database time zones" that is unable to use them (for the moment).

3 2

Wikipedia - blocking time zone contributors - massive insertion of errors by AlanM1 - win-win if people cooperate
by Tobias Conradi June 6, 2012

June 6, 2012

In Wikipedia several accounts that added Olson/IANA time zone information have been blocked and marked as sock puppets of Tobias Conradi. Since User:Tobias Conradi did not edit since years, because a handful of people once decided to block him, the only evidence for "sock puppeting" is given as "behavioral". Behavioral for the User:TimeOfChange is to edit time articles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/TimeOfChange No single talk page edit or anything else. Lately User Royaume du Maroc got blocked, who created: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Florida A listing of states that have more than one IANA time zone http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Time_in_the_United_States&diff=49… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Idaho Expanding the listing, maybe to create more state specific articles http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Time_in_the_United_States&diff=49… Then User:AlanM1 jumps in, who later in a discussion when User Royaume du Maroc was already blocked writes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Archiv… "... I created some and edited some other "Time in state" articles for the purpose of specifying exactly which counties (or other divisions) are in which time zones. He jumped on it at the same time, apparently prompted by my email to the tz list" - this AlanM1 seems to be on the tz mailing list. I emailed one Alan (an "Alan Mintz") that is on the list showing that it was the other way around, and AlanM1 jumped on it, but AlanM1 did not fix his claim in WP. Does AlanM1 believe Royaume du Maroc did a time travel? BUT NOW THE REAL PROBLEM. AlanM1 is deleting IANA time zone from Wikipedia e.g. Shiprock, South_Pole, Longyearbyen, Ljubljana http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_tz_database_time_zones&di… and at the same time introducing | [[ISO_3166-1:|ISO_3166-1:]] | | [[PST8PDT]] into a list that claims to be based on a zone.tab listing. PST8PDT is not in the current zone.tab file. Also the minus signs are changed into hyphen minuses, so that UTC offset articles which use the minus sign are now reached via redirects. Furthermore the order of the elements in that list is not more the same as in zone.tab, and the first column that allowed sorting in that order got removed by AlanM1. Maybe some readers here with an account on Wikipedia can revert the introduced errors and explain to AlanM1 what the errors are. E.g. due to South_Pole removal in the data templates, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Antarctica there is now "[[ISO 3166-1:IANA time zone id not in Template:Tz/country code|IANA time zone id not in Template:Tz/country code]]" Also due to not using the data templates at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones Wikipedia is now open to inconsistency between this list and data display in other places. Before the change the list showed to a wide extend the data contained in the templates, so people could easily check for correctness. If the data in the templates is well maintained then it could be used in the infoboxes on the city pages, then thousands of articles could display information offset information obtain from IANA. That way also the tz mailing list could attract more feedback on time zone changes. It could be a win-win for IANA and Wikipedia. -- Tobias Conradi Rheinsberger Str. 18 10115 Berlin Germany http://tobiasconradi.com/

1 0

time zone abbreviations - French vs English
by Tobias Conradi June 5, 2012

June 5, 2012

was: tz abbreviations / zdump for programmers On Tue, Jun 5, 2012 at 1:43 AM, Paul Eggert <eggert(a)cs.ucla.edu> wrote: > On 06/04/2012 11:39 AM, Boruch Baum wrote: >> Do the French in Quebec have the same >> TZ name and abbreviation as the Anglos there? > > Yes, absolutely. This is a common situation > in many parts of the world. That was someone without giving evidence, it follows Tobias with giving evidence. No they don't universally: HNE vs EST https://www.google.com/search?q=19h00+%22HNE%22+site%3Aqc.ca Two other pairs are: HAEC vs CEST HEC vs CET -- Tobias Conradi Rheinsberger Str. 18 10115 Berlin Germany http://tobiasconradi.com/

1 0

renaming the mailing list in the code and data files
by Mariano Absatz - el Baby May 30, 2012

May 30, 2012

Since the old tz(a)elsie.nci.nih.gov mailing list no longer exist (in fact, there's no mx record, the name is actually a cname and the target host doesn't even seem to be accepting packets on port 25) it might be a good idea to rename the list in the code and data files where it is present. I wrote 2 small patches (attached) that do this against tzdata2012c and tzcode2012b. I don't see much of an urgency in doing this, but we might apply the patch whenever we have a new set of files to release. Regards -- Mariano Absatz - El Baby www.clueless.com.ar

2 1

[OT] tz humor
by Mariano Absatz - el Baby May 30, 2012

May 30, 2012

It seems like xkcd is turning us obsolete: http://xkcd.com/1061/ :) -- Mariano Absatz - El Baby www.clueless.com.ar

2 1

Re: [tz] Bug - Statement by Paul Eggert (a TZ Coordinator) on update process not agreeing with IANA sources
by SM May 29, 2012

May 29, 2012

At 13:53 26-05-2012, Tobias Conradi wrote: >Maybe your point of view is that of the RFC 6557 authors. I can only express my view as an individual. I don't know whether the authors of RFC 6557 share my point of view. >But I wonder whether IANA doesn't want to have some say about what >happens in a project linked from the IANA homepage >http://www.iana.org/. At a guess some information about IANA actions may be in Section 8 of RFC 6557. >The IANA time zone data is referred to by RFC4833, RFC5545, The TZ database reference in RFC 4833 mentioned "Eggert, P. and A. Olson". There is a link to http://www.twinsun.com/tz/tz-link.htm >How do you think an extreme case is defined? Is it an extreme case to >have Russian zones wrong for more than half a year and to have no zone >covering Bouvet Island, which has a UTC offset defined by Norwegian >law? I leave it to the time zone community or Paul Eggert to see whether a case is extreme as it is easier than coming up with a definition. In my opinion the above examples seem more of a matter for Paul Eggert to decide or the time zone community to agree upon. Regards, -sm

4 5

IETF RFC 6557 vs Paul Eggert
by Tobias Conradi May 29, 2012

May 29, 2012

http://www.ietf.org/ The mission of the IETF is to make the Internet work better by producing high quality, relevant technical documents that influence the way people design, use, and manage the Internet. http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6557 ------ To be clear, the TZ Coordinator SHALL NOT set time zone policy for a region but use judgment and whatever available sources exist to assess what the average person on street would think the time actually is, or in case of historical corrections, was. ------ Either "average person on street" is to be taken literal, and if there are no streets and no average persons, the section does not apply. Or Paul Eggert (TZ Coordinator) is obliged to adhere to that section in the Bouvet Island case, where Norwegian laws clearly show that the time officially is UTC+01:00 on that island, irrespective of presence of human beings. http://www.lovdata.no/all/hl-20070126-004.html ----- § 6. Norsk normaltid Normaltiden i Norge er én time foran koordinert universaltid (UTC+1). ----- -- Tobias Conradi Rheinsberger Str. 18 10115 Berlin Germany http://tobiasconradi.com/

1 0

Stable fixed length identifiers for IANA time zones
by Tobias Conradi May 26, 2012

May 26, 2012

Steven, Mark, I checked the latest timezone.xml contained in core.zip linked from http://cldr.unicode.org/index/bcp47-extension Are the values for the names that are not /[a-z]{5}/ , e.g. <type name="mxstis" ... > already permanently fixed? What happens if Santa Isabel gets an UN/LOCODE in the future? I am using UN/LOCODEs since at least 2003 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=UN/LOCODE&diff=prev&oldid=1414613 In my system the first two letters never map into a set of ISO 3166-1 countries (current and former) without one set member being or having been the country for the location, e.g. "jeruslm", the first letters, JE, stand for Jersey, which never was a country where Jerusalem was located. If there is "usnavajo" placing "navajo" below "us", then <type name="jeruslm" alias="Asia/Jerusalem Asia/Tel_Aviv Israel" description="Jerusalem"/> is inconsistent, since Asia/Jerusalem is used for Israel, which would lead to "iljerusalem" or so and instead of "hebron" and "gaza" it would be "pshebron" and "psgaza" Since UN/LOCODE doesn't use the numbers 0 and 1, I created private codes using "1" in third position, so for Santa Isabel I would use MX1SI or in lower case mx1si for Hebron PS1HB, Gaza PS1GZ That way the codes all can be of the same length, namely 5 characters. Tobias On Fri, May 25, 2012 at 5:10 PM, Steven R. Loomis <srl(a)icu-project.org> wrote: > On 05/24/2012 04:27 PM, Tobias Conradi wrote: ... > E.g. CLDR has created UN/LOCODE based codes: > http://cldr.unicode.org/development/development-process/design-proposals/bc… > > > This a draft design document proposing what is now the 'tz' field of IETF > BCP 47 Extension U < https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6067> referencing UTS35 > and data < > http://unicode.org/reports/tr35/#Unicode_Language_and_Locale_Identifiers>. > However, it is not relevant to simply the discussion of "." and "-", > instead, the UN/LOCODE based codes (with some additions) were needed due to > length restrictions. -- Tobias Conradi Rheinsberger Str. 18 10115 Berlin Germany http://tobiasconradi.com/

1 1