[idea for proposed bill] Regional Time Standards Act

Grosseschnauzer

Grosseschnauzer

TNPer
In looking at the threads that were opened during much of my leave of absence, I've notice a trend of increasing confusion over the actual time certain acts are supposed to take place, and confusion over what location reflects that time especially for those in a different time zone. Some of the posts I've seen seem to create a 24 or 25 hour window to start or end certain events. Which isn't what we should be seeing.

It shouldn't be a problem. but it is. What I propose to offer is a bill to require that all times for any official act in TNP be expressed in UTC/GMT and may be translated into other additional time zones in addition to the "official time" expressed in UTC/GMT.

(Yes, it is now possible to a have a 25 hour window, if one considers that Samoa, and American Samoa, are only 25 miles or so and a full 24 hours apart on the clock at the same time. In other words, when Samoa is at 1:00 pm Wednesday, American Samoa is at 1:00 pm Tuesday; both are now on opposite sides of the international date line, but in the same time zone.)

I don't think the language will add any more than two sentences or so in the Legal Code, but it will make it possible to have some standard time reference and reduce the confusion.
 
Honestly, if everyone just used the (time=) code, everything will be fine. Putting a unix timestamp after the = in that code converts it to the time zone of each user's board settings.
 
I like this idea, it's more efficient for passing acts and will definitely speed things up. If we become faster and more efficient at doing things it will relive a bit of pressure from the guys at the top, so they don't have to be worrying about, or chasing up on things for days.

Overall it's a good idea.
 
Why do we have to have Greenwich Mean Time? Very few North Pacificans have ties to Greenwich.

Wouldn't it make more sense to be on Alaska Time or Hawaii-Aleutian Time?

What if we refuse to submit to GMT? If I didn't know better I'd say we are seeing the politicization of time, and very shaky ground.

Furthermore, GMT confuses people, because it differs from UK time for 7 months of the year. GMT is 12 hours behind NZST... but in summer the UK is on GMT+1. UK has daylight savings but the Royal Observatory doesn't.
 
I agree with COE. I think the issue is that a lot of people aren't aware of the time code or they forget about it. I might see if we could add a button to the full reply screen to make it easier to use.
 
Chasmanthe:
Blue Wolf II:
I demand we use the timezone in which the update start is at 00:00 and 12:00 respectively. I'm talking EST. :P
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That's EDT.
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Only for now. It'll be EST sometime this fall (though since we now spend more of the year in EDT than in EST, really, we ought to be calling the DST part "Standard" and the formerly standard part "Daylight Losings Time"). Wheee, time! :D

Time is.... well, according to the people I know who work with code and time zones, every petty dictator and tyrant apparently likes to prove their awesome power by messing with the timezones in their country - be it playing with daylight savings time, changing what timezone they're considered part of, or whatever. Timezone information is constantly having to be updated.

Grosse... what exactly is wrong with a window of a day? Where has it actually caused any problems in the past? Would we seriously be better off by mandating that all elections must begin at exactly 6:43:19 PM UTC, and toss any commissioners who can't be online until 6:47:52 UTC on trial? How would removing 24 or 25 hours of flexibility - one day - help anything at all?
 
The reason I'm suggesting the formal use of GMT/UTC is that the real world uses it given that the meridian for that time is 0 degrees longitude and refers to other time zones as + or - number of hours in relation to GMT/UTC; in fact if you look at the time zone setting for your individual user account at these forums, each time zone is described by that relationship, and that is the case with every forum I am a member of whether related to NS or not.
One other issue is that many of us who use windows as an operating system can set our computer to automatically adjust for the DST period of the year We need to avoid using a time zone location that may adjust for DST because even in places that use it, the parts of the year when it is used varies; and of course, there's mostly obverse calendar periods between the northern and southern hemispheres.

I think there is an issue as things are now if the result is a eight or nine day period of time when it's supposed to be seven days. That may have a Bill of Rights issues as to voting per the guaranty of equal protection and treatment of the right to vote.

This proposal would encourage simplicity and avoid confusion and opportunity for abuse if the time period shifts to a POV approach. The very idea of that gives me a headache, thank you very much.
 
Grosseschnauzer:
This proposal would encourage simplicity and avoid confusion and opportunity for abuse if the time period shifts to a POV approach. The very idea of that gives me a headache, thank you very much.
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How?

time=unixtimestamp is a wonderful thing. Go look at any of the voting threads if you want to see it in action - every user will see the time adjusted for their own selected timezone, and all the times will be for an identical moment. I will see, "Voting ends at 6:00 PM in your timezone", while Eras will see, "Voting ends at 3:00 PM in your timezone", and both of us know exactly when the vote ends without having to figure out how far we happen to fall at any particular time of the year from UTC/GMT/whatever.

time= makes life so much easier. Forcing everyone to use one timezone would be vastly more confusing.
 
The problem is that some people may forget to tick the daylight savings in their account settings, or, if the poster makes a mistake in setting the correct unixtime that they meant, it can be ambiguous. Some users may not be totally sure what time zone they are actually in when using the conversion tool to unixtime.

If we legally adopt a regional time zone, then it does not rely on a user's calculations, you can say "six o'clock" and then look at the North Pacifican clock and see what time it is in The North Pacific and see how long it is left until six o'clock.

Unixtime will display the correct time for everybody as long as each user sets their account setting correctly and the poster calculates their unixtime correctly, and these numbers cannot be checked by anyone other than the person making them. If we adopt Hawaii-Aleutian time, then we objectively know what the time is at any given time. Thank you for taking the time to read all the way to the end of this post.
 
Chasmanthe:
If we legally adopt a regional time zone, then it does not rely on a user's calculations, you can say "six o'clock" and then look at the North Pacifican clock and see what time it is in The North Pacific and see how long it is left until six o'clock.
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That clearly relies on user calculations.

Chasmanthe:
Unixtime will display the correct time for everybody as long as each user sets their account setting correctly and the poster calculates their unixtime correctly, and these numbers cannot be checked by anyone other than the person making them. If we adopt Hawaii-Aleutian time, then we objectively know what the time is at any given time. Thank you for taking the time to read all the way to the end of this post.
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I always include a disclaimer regarding DST whenever I post a (time=). That ought to clear that up, and honestly, if a user has the board set to the wrong time zone, that's their problem, not the government's.
 
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