On 2022-09-19 14:10:14+0100, David via tz <tz@iana.org> wrote:
Thank you for your reply, Sanghyeon.
Alas, yet another rule is "Do not change established names if they only marginally violate the above guidelines. For example, do not change the existing name Europe/Rome to Europe/Milan merely because Milan's population has grown to be somewhat greater than Rome's." I think it is exactly the case here.
I understand your point but it is puzzling to think how outside this list Guayaquil has a bigger relationship to Ecuador than Quito for the majority of users. I asked several Ecuadorian friends if this is common when selecting a time zone because I found it odd, and they were as puzzled as me.
Yes, it's odd, but at least it have some connection to Ecuador. Until you see that Laotian, Cambodian (and to a degree, Northern Vietnamese) users need to set their timezone to Asia/Bangkok, which is a city in an unrelated country.
I know that someone else raised this on a really old version of Red Hat, and I brought it up because it is an issue on Ubuntu. In both operating systems they feed from this list upstream and they won't make changes. I am pretty sure that this is something that affects a huge variety of OS that use this list.
It wasn't and it isn't my intention to convince you to make any changes, just merely making you aware of the impact it is having on users. Other operating systems allow the selection of Quito and I found it odd, that's all.
Thanks again for taking the time to reply.
On 19/09/2022 13:36, Seo Sanghyeon wrote:
2022년 9월 19일 (월) 오후 7:22, David via tz <tz@iana.org>님이 작성:
The city that is listed for the mainland is Guayaquil, with no mention of the capital Quito. Guayaquil is the second most populous city in Ecuador, but why it is the only city listed is odd.
It is akin to choosing Marseilles as the only city for France instead of Paris.
Is there any chance of having Quito added?
https://data.iana.org/time-zones/theory.html explains how tz database chooses timezone identifier. It is "Use the most populous among locations in a region", so it is not necessarily the capital. If Marseilles had more population than Paris, Marseilles would have been chosen. In fact, it is Asia/Shanghai, not Asia/Beijing, for the same reason.
Now, Guayaquil seems to be the second most populous city in Ecuador, but I think it was more populous than Quito in the past, and even now their population is similar. Since another rule is "Among locations with similar populations, pick the best-known location", maybe it was better to choose Quito, since I think it is better known because it is the capital.
Alas, yet another rule is "Do not change established names if they only marginally violate the above guidelines. For example, do not change the existing name Europe/Rome to Europe/Milan merely because Milan's population has grown to be somewhat greater than Rome's." I think it is exactly the case here. For better or worse, America/Guayaquil is now established, so it won't be changed to America/Quito, even if Quito is now more populous than Guayaquil.
So no, there is no chance of having Quito added.
-- Danh