Mailing List Archive: Wikipedia: Wikitech

Time zone discrepancy

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phma at webjockey

Sep 6, 2002, 6:25 PM

Post #1 of 11 (212 views)
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Time zone discrepancy

I just created an account on the German Wikipedia and am setting my
preferences. I see the following notice:

Geben Sie die Anzahl der Stunden ein, die zwischen Ihrer Zeitzone und
U.S.-Westküstenzeit liegen. Für Deutschland "9" eintragen.

But on the English Wikipedia it says:

Enter number of hours your local time differs from server time (UTC).

Why is the German Wiki on Pacific, when the English one is on UTC? How is
someone in Brazil or Australia supposed to answer the question, since
southern DST is out of phase with northern?

phma

brion at pobox

Sep 6, 2002, 7:31 PM

Post #2 of 11 (212 views)
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Re: Time zone discrepancy [In reply to]

Pierre Abbat wrote:
> Why is the German Wiki on Pacific, when the English one is on UTC? How is
> someone in Brazil or Australia supposed to answer the question, since
> southern DST is out of phase with northern?

Because Lee forgot to change the German message file to say UTC. :) I'll
fix it.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

lcrocker at nupedia

Sep 6, 2002, 8:02 PM

Post #3 of 11 (211 views)
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Re: Time zone discrepancy [In reply to]

> Why is the German Wiki on Pacific, when the English one is on UTC?
> How is someone in Brazil or Australia supposed to answer the
> question, since southern DST is out of phase with northern?

There's only one server, and it's now on UTC. The /text/ of the
German wiki is incorrect, and just hasn't been updated (I think it's
correct in CVS, but since I'm not a German speaker I'll have to
rely on Magnus to confirm that).

brion at pobox

Sep 6, 2002, 9:15 PM

Post #4 of 11 (211 views)
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Re: Time zone discrepancy [In reply to]

lcrocker [at] nupedia wrote:
>>Why is the German Wiki on Pacific, when the English one is on UTC?
>>How is someone in Brazil or Australia supposed to answer the
>>question, since southern DST is out of phase with northern?
>
> There's only one server, and it's now on UTC. The /text/ of the
> German wiki is incorrect, and just hasn't been updated (I think it's
> correct in CVS, but since I'm not a German speaker I'll have to
> rely on Magnus to confirm that).

I updated the live server to the CVS version on the assumption that it's
more correct than it was previously. Also, I changed the server's time
zone config from UCT to UTC, so it spits out the more usual acronym in
the time for signatures, etc.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

jansson at gmx

Sep 7, 2002, 6:22 AM

Post #5 of 11 (210 views)
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Re: Time zone discrepancy [In reply to]

Whould it be too Germany-centristic to have the time field set to +2
(and +1 in Winter) by default (only in the de.wikipedia of course)? And
also for not logged-in users?

I guess more than 90% of the German language Wikipedia contributors are
from Germany, Austria or Swiss.

Kurt

taw at users

Sep 7, 2002, 5:29 PM

Post #6 of 11 (213 views)
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Re: Time zone discrepancy [In reply to]

On Sat, Sep 07, 2002 at 03:22:56PM +0200, Kurt Jansson wrote:
> Whould it be too Germany-centristic to have the time field set to +2
> (and +1 in Winter) by default (only in the de.wikipedia of course)? And
> also for not logged-in users?
>
> I guess more than 90% of the German language Wikipedia contributors are
> from Germany, Austria or Swiss.

Could you also do it for Polish Wikipedia ? (the same timezone)

brion at pobox

Sep 11, 2002, 12:10 AM

Post #7 of 11 (211 views)
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Re: Time zone discrepancy [In reply to]

Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 07, 2002 at 03:22:56PM +0200, Kurt Jansson wrote:
>>Whould it be too Germany-centristic to have the time field set to +2
>>(and +1 in Winter) by default (only in the de.wikipedia of course)? And
>>also for not logged-in users?
>>
>>I guess more than 90% of the German language Wikipedia contributors are
>>from Germany, Austria or Swiss.
>
> Could you also do it for Polish Wikipedia ? (the same timezone)

I don't see why not... is there summer time/daylight savings to deal
with, or is it just a straight UTC+1?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

taw at users

Sep 11, 2002, 6:43 AM

Post #8 of 11 (213 views)
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Re: Time zone discrepancy [In reply to]

On Tue, Sep 10, 2002 at 11:10:53PM -0800, Brion VIBBER wrote:
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> >On Sat, Sep 07, 2002 at 03:22:56PM +0200, Kurt Jansson wrote:
> >>Whould it be too Germany-centristic to have the time field set to +2
> >>(and +1 in Winter) by default (only in the de.wikipedia of course)? And
> >>also for not logged-in users?
> >>
> >>I guess more than 90% of the German language Wikipedia contributors are
> >>from Germany, Austria or Swiss.
> >
> >Could you also do it for Polish Wikipedia ? (the same timezone)
>
> I don't see why not... is there summer time/daylight savings to deal
> with, or is it just a straight UTC+1?

There is summer and winter time, and that's why server must deal with
it, as you can1't expect everyone to fix their preferences every few
months.

Most of Europe is +1/+2, even parts where this doesn't make much
sense (but compatibility is more important).

Afair only Portugal, UK, Ireland (+0/+1) on the West and Finland and former
USSR republics (+2/+3) on the East use different time than that.

brion at pobox

Sep 11, 2002, 11:30 AM

Post #9 of 11 (215 views)
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Re: Time zone discrepancy [In reply to]

Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> There is summer and winter time, and that's why server must deal with
> it, as you can1't expect everyone to fix their preferences every few
> months.

And they start and end when?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

giskart at linux

Sep 11, 2002, 4:39 PM

Post #10 of 11 (211 views)
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Re: Time zone discrepancy [In reply to]

Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>There is summer and winter time, and that's why server must deal with
>it, as you can1't expect everyone to fix their preferences every few
>months.
>
>Most of Europe is +1/+2, even parts where this doesn't make much
>sense (but compatibility is more important).
>
>Afair only Portugal, UK, Ireland (+0/+1) on the West and Finland and former
>USSR republics (+2/+3) on the East use different time than that.
>

And there are also locations where the difference between UTC and local
time is not clean houres but also 30 minutes.
For French Polynesia <http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Polynesia>
it is UTC - 9:30 Does the software support - 30 minutes ? I have no succes.
Not that i am from "French Polynesia" but i like to know. -- giskart

brion at pobox

Sep 18, 2002, 12:46 AM

Post #11 of 11 (211 views)
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Re: Time zone discrepancy [In reply to]

I've set the German wiki to consider the default timezone as Central
European (Summer) Time. That is, if you _don't_ set a timezone offset
(leave it blank) you see times in CEST. If you do set an offset, it's
still measured against UTC, so there should be no nasty surprises.

The four-tilde signature-with-time also shows according to this
site-wide default local time. (This can be set via $wgLocaltimezone in
LocalSettings.php)

Note that this does not affect the places in recentchanges list where
the date change is shown; this is a known bug that affects anyone with
offset not set to server time.

Giskart wrote:
> And there are also locations where the difference between UTC and local
> time is not clean houres but also 30 minutes.
> For French Polynesia <http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Polynesia>
> it is UTC - 9:30 Does the software support - 30 minutes ? I have no
> succes.
> Not that i am from "French Polynesia" but i like to know. -- giskart

Not yet, but I'll be sure and bang that in.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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