On 04/04/2015 03:28 AM, Paul Eggert wrote:
the large distance between the areas covered by Pacific Standard Time and Pitcairn Standard Time make this very different
They are not different if one excludes political considerations and focuses on timekeeping considerations, which is what we ought to do here. And there are other examples involving nearby countries sharing abbreviations, e.g., Iraq sharing "AST" with Saudi Arabia, even though Iraq is not in Arabia.
Are you considering the "situation on the ground" rule political? I think AST (a.k.a Arabia Standard Time) in its both full and abbreviated forms is used to denote time in Iraq both locally and internationally and it was not the TZ database who first introduced this tradition. Here are several completely apolitical reasons to back my line of thought: 1. I think there is a wide agreement that "Minsk time" and "Moscow time" are not the same terms and both are used separately to denote time in their respective countries (or regions); 2. According to (1) and due to the lack of historical or common abbreviation for "Minsk time" community should have picked the abbreviation as per standard procedure which would have suggested MINT or BYT (and absolutely not MSK) as it was mentioned before; 3. I've brought up an example of Kazakhstan which while being in the same situation as Belarus was, have preserved its own time zone abbreviations and haven't had it replaced. I think the argument that Europe/Minsk was using MSK several decades ago is somewhat far-fetched as it was really using "Moscow time" and not the "Minsk time". And I'm really hoping that its usage here is truly not biased and is not just to cement previously made questionable decision which wouldn't have been taken in a first place if the community was aware of all the facts involved. -- Dzmitry Kazimirchyk