I just want to remind the list, I think we may have overemphasized the surveys. Sampling the Internet is not good data, and there is a massive effect from the deployment of the tz database that is nearly impossible to control for.
(That is, because today's tz database uses 'EST' and friends, many many web resources will choose to do so as well.)
I have already pointed out this and other flaws with using search surveys. But it seemed that none of our other evidence was being taken seriously. So we tried to create a survey that would remove the situation the you have described as well as removing other false positives. The survey is still not a perfect but I believe it is much better than the previous methods used. ________________________________________ From: tz-bounces@iana.org [tz-bounces@iana.org] On Behalf Of John Hawkinson [jhawk@mit.edu] Sent: Thursday, 11 April 2013 8:43 PM To: tz@iana.org Subject: Re: [tz] [PATCH 0/2] Follow Australian common usage and update CST/CST to CST/CDT and EST/EST to EST/EDT etc [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED] Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote on Wed, 10 Apr 2013 at 22:53:38 -0700 in <51664FE2.8030309@cs.ucla.edu>:
Thanks for doing all that legwork, including the search surveys. I will look at it in the next few days; something like this needs a bit of time to review properly. I also hope that others can find the time to look over the survey results.
I just want to remind the list, I think we may have overemphasized the surveys. Sampling the Internet is not good data, and there is a massive effect from the deployment of the tz database that is nearly impossible to control for. (That is, because today's tz database uses 'EST' and friends, many many web resources will choose to do so as well.) And, also, Steve Jobs was not wrong when he observed (in less polite terms?) that users may not always have an accurate idea of what they actually want. A person's expectation of what is most convenient/best/fun/usable/desirable may not match up with reality, and it is very hard to engineer good studies to measure these things, even with a lot of time, money, and human subject research -- none of which we really have. Sorry if this email is redundant. --jhawk@mit.edu John Hawkinson