On 27 July 2014 08:25, Clive D.W. Feather <clive@davros.org> wrote:
If we know or have good reason to believe that the data is completely bogus, then there's no point in retaining it.
There are two distinct steps here; 1) knowing it is wrong 2) knowing what is right It is important not to conflate the two. What many (most?) of the list want is for the change to occur only when both steps are true. What is proposed is for the change to happen only when the first step occurs (or is claimed - few of us can actually judge whether it is wrong). The reason for requiring both steps to happen before change is that many (most?) on the place a huge value on stability. We want there to be the absolute minimum changes necessary to the data, as that stability is hugely valuable to end-user applications. ie, stability is the "point in retaining it" you describe. As an example, consider Sierra Leone https://github.com/eggert/tz/commit/4b4e789d5c5ee79366b4606d139cbb9eb1d5a28d... https://github.com/jodastephen/tzdiff/commit/c812da9e12bd6f8aa52fa2dd758e236... where two separate sets of DST affecting 13 years and dates as recent as 1960 have been obilterated. Where is the discussion of this specific (huge) change? Where is the justification? And there are many other examples. Stephen