Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 15:12:44 -0700 From: "Paul Schauble" <Paul.Schauble@ticketmaster.com> Message-ID: <0165EECEBB4CF745ACF095E1176B03EA12C7FFE3@SUNCA-EXB-AV1.ticketmaster.corp> | I suggested some time ago that zones should be named according to the | authority that declared the zone. Does that work in the US, where all zones are under the authority of the Dept of Transport (or something like that) - you'd still need additional names to determine just which of the multiple different zones they meant - and even then dealing with historical names would mean that you can't just use the names the relevant dept assign, as they don't usually bother to provide names for things which are no longer current, but we need them. Just stop arguing about this silly issue - it doesn't really matter what the zones are called. City names are a fairly good choice, as it is very unlikely that a single city doesn't have a single timezone history and rules. Further, the biggest city is a good choice, as it is unlikely that people aren't going to know if the local time is different than whatever is the biggest regional city. Definitions of cities don't need to be precise - nothing really important depends upon the results - we aren't specifying the time that applies in that city, just using its name as the label for a time zone (where any unique label would do just as well - which is why when the city that would normally be selected doesn't have a unique enough name, we just pick another.) A "city" is just what some outsider would consider to be that city, so as far as I'm concerned, if I arrive at Heathrowe (or Gatwick) I'm in London. On the other hand, if I'm in Essen, I'm in Essen, the city, Ruhrgebiet, or Rhein-Ruhr is a region name, not a city, so they're not really options for us to choose. Stability is not too much of an issue either, nothing depends upon "biggest" that's just a convenient way to (try to) pick cities without having these endless absurd arguments. That's why "most important" is never going to work - all that would ever do is cause arguments, never settle any. Once picked, we retain the same city name, even if something else becomes bigger - at least until it is clear that some other city is substantially larger and going to remain that way. Whether we should be using Rome or Milan in Italy, I'll leave to someone who understands Italian geography and politics - if it should be Milan, we can just fix it (and of course, keep Rome as an alias). That is, if everyone who knows enough to have an opinion on this (which certainly excludes me) agrees that Milan is substantially bigger than Rome, and that isn't likely to change. If the issue is debatable enough for anyone to argue (reasonably) about, then we should just stick with what we have. The same for Calcutta/Mumbai and Karachi/Lahor. We already had the Beijing/Shanghai discussion, and while it may alter in the future, things don't yet seem clear cut enough to make a change there. kre