[PATCH 0/2] Follow Australian common usage and update CST/CST to CST/CDT and EST/EST to EST/EDT etc [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]
After reading the 'Procedures for Maintaining the Time Zone Database' document and the comments in the Australasia data file about how the Australian abbreviations were decided I've come to a better understanding of the current situation and the tz database maintainers position on using common usage for abbreviations. I've come to the conclusion that while I still think 'A' should be added to the front of the Australian abbreviations, we are yet to give conclusive evidence that this is in fact what is the most common usage in Australia (even though as an Australian I know it is). Despite the that fact that these abbreviations are defined on multiple government websites the TZ database maintainers have clearly laid out the terms for changes (no matter how much I disagree, and how difficult proving common usage is) However there *is* one abbreviations common usage that we have proven using the similar methods used by the maintainers for surveying usage. Which is backed up by each government website regardless of the inconsistent use of a leading 'A'. The 'Procedures for Maintaining the Time Zone Database' document clearly states we should first attempt to resolve any concern with the TZ Coordinator, but so far Paul has remained silent on this issue choosing rather to respond only in regards to the use of the leading 'A'. I'm appealing to Paul to please respond either accepting this patch or voicing any remaining concerns. For those that missed our results here they are: * Google search results, do Australians more often use "EDT" or "EST"? 875,000 "Eastern Standard Time (EST)" site:.au 655,000 "Eastern Standard Time (AEST)" site:.au 6 "Eastern Summer Time (EST)" site:.au 64 "Eastern Summer Time (AEST)" site:.au 30,500 "Eastern Daylight Time (EDT)" site:.au 180,000 "Eastern Daylight Time (AEDT)" site:.au 357,000 "Central Standard Time (CST)" site:.au 316 "Central Standard Time (ACST)" site:.au 4 "Central Summer Time (CST)" site:.au 0 "Central Summer Time (ACST)" site:.au 19,600 "Central Daylight Time (CDT)" site:.au 157 "Central Daylight Time (ACDT)" site:.au Here we are only looking at cases where the time zone abbreviation has been defined as anything else is misleading. These results show that the abbreviation for Daylight time EDT/AEDT/CDT/ACDT is overwhelmingly greater than the usage of the abbreviation for Summer time EST/AEST/CST/ACST. The reason for the current situation is documented in the Australasia data file:
From John Mackin (1991-03-06): "We in Australia have _never_ referred to DST as `daylight' time. It is called `summer' time. Now by a happy coincidence, `summer' and `standard' happen to start with the same letter; hence, the abbreviation does _not_ change..."
There is no survey of common use, just one man's assertion that this is what the abbreviation should be no matter how ridiculous it is to use the same abbreviation for two different phrases within the same time zone. Aside from the many other problems I have with his statements (such as not a single reference to show the use of the abbreviations) there is one thing that I would like to point out. These three letters are used as identifiers so that they can be associated with a phrase by human (its already been stated they are useless computationally), and in Johns own words they are abbreviations or as a trusty dictionary will show 'shortening something by omitting parts of it'. It does not matter what letter the word starts with its not an acronym it's an abbreviation. Take the this Australian island for example 'C'o'c'os Islands 'T'ime (CCT). Using the same abbreviations for different phrase's while probably done with good intentions has been a confusing mistake all along with no references of its common use. Having said all this the survey results speak for themselves. Please fix this issue. The following two emails contain patches for the Australasia and Antarctica data files. As well as the abbreviations I have updated the comments section for Australia to include the justification for this update and also updated a couple of out-dated links. Thanks for your time, Timothy Arceri
I would like to thank Timothy for his work on this, and for creating the patchfile. We reviewed it offline, and had over 190 visits (so far) to the forum thread where it was discussed and prepared, and no negative comments at all where posted. I also reviewed the patch and found it consistant with the intentions discussed. In general, the patch changes the tz files in order to now represent summer time in Australia and the Australian antarctic territories using 'd' abbreviations for daylight saving time periods. No other abbreviations were not changed in this proposal. The patch will be loaded on our ftp server at ftp://ftp.relativedata.com/pub this evening for any that might want to download and test it. We do hope that the patch is considered by the maintainers of tz, and applied to forthcoming tz releases.
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.
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
I think you are correct that a lot of the est/cst website hits during daylight time are actually caused by the use of tz data on those sites. So, oddly, tz itself may be one of the major hidden factors that has prevented its own update - which doesn't quite seem right. On 2013-04-11 6:43, John Hawkinson wrote:
there is a massive effect from the deployment of the tz database that is nearly impossible to control for.
--
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
Just a thought, Australian TV can be readily watched via youtube and other sites. A quick look found Australian Sky News clips referring to AEST for instance. And I think this might have been discussed, but I assume news and media orgs have guides on how to write time. Surely they'd be willing to provide the relevant portions of those guides? On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 11:43 AM, John Hawkinson <jhawk@mit.edu> wrote:
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
-- Kevin Lyda Galway, Ireland US Citizen overseas? We can vote. Register now: http://www.votefromabroad.org/
Kevin Lyda <kevin@ie.suberic.net> writes:
Just a thought, Australian TV can be readily watched via youtube and other sites. A quick look found Australian Sky News clips referring to AEST for instance.
I did this research earlier and sent it to the list, but I can see how it would have gotten lost in the traffic on this topic. Some news stations use AEST, some use EST, and quite a few (rather entertainingly) use AEST and EST both, interchangeably, even on the same page and in the same contexts. However, all the ones I found were reliable about using either AEDT or EDT to refer to summer time. I'm increasingly of the opinion that the tz database should just use the most unambiguous abbreviations (AEST/AEDT) even if there isn't a clear consensus in general usage. The point that the abbreviations are useless for software and therefore should be set to whatever is vaguely useful for people is, I think, the most compelling argument stated to date, there's a lot of noise in any possible data due to the number of people who are using the tz database itself to generate the abbreviation, and I don't see any real benefit to be gained from continuing to use the ambiguous definitions. It's obvious that the AEST/AEDT abbreviations are not going to *confuse* anyone; they're clearly in widespread use in Australia already. So they seem to be a monotonic, if minor, improvement in clarity and usefulness. -- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
On 2013-04-12 Russ Allbery wrote:
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the tz database should just use the most unambiguous abbreviations (AEST/AEDT) even if there isn't a clear consensus in general usage.
I am tempted to agree, particularly since (prompted by Rich Tibbett's proposed patch on github) I finally got around to surveying general usage and it appears that there is a working (though by no means universal) consensus in Australia to use abbreviations like "AEST" and "AEDT", and furthmore, we appear to have been mistaken in our assumptions about abbreviation usage in the past. Details are in the attached proposed patch, which I've pushed into the experimental tz version on github. I couldn't resist adding a quote about the daylight-saving preferences of "chuckleheaded Queenslanders and straw-chewing yokels from the West".
Great to see this going ahead. Thanks to Paul and others who have helped with this. As has been mentioned previously it seems tz itself has been adding to the confusion over the years (our systems included) and I hope to see that confusion eased by this change. Thanks again, Tim -----Original Message----- From: tz-bounces@iana.org [mailto:tz-bounces@iana.org] On Behalf Of Paul Eggert Sent: Monday, 30 June 2014 5:47 PM To: Russ Allbery; Time Zone Mailing List 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] On 2013-04-12 Russ Allbery wrote:
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the tz database should just use the most unambiguous abbreviations (AEST/AEDT) even if there isn't a clear consensus in general usage.
I am tempted to agree, particularly since (prompted by Rich Tibbett's proposed patch on github) I finally got around to surveying general usage and it appears that there is a working (though by no means universal) consensus in Australia to use abbreviations like "AEST" and "AEDT", and furthmore, we appear to have been mistaken in our assumptions about abbreviation usage in the past. Details are in the attached proposed patch, which I've pushed into the experimental tz version on github. I couldn't resist adding a quote about the daylight-saving preferences of "chuckleheaded Queenslanders and straw-chewing yokels from the West".
participants (6)
-
David Patte ₯ -
John Hawkinson -
Kevin Lyda -
Paul Eggert -
Russ Allbery -
Timothy Arceri