Hi Tim,
>> That said, putting it in red letters on the IANA page is not likely to
>> accomplish much.
But is wouldn't hurt, would it?
The main TzDb page is the entry point to all of the TzDb complexity.
I'm sure most people don't care. But we'd like the lawmakers to at least
have a chance of being informed.
We could promote the TzDb page reference more effectively, couldn't we?
I looked around (again) for references to TzDb.
Searching Google for "time zone" one of the results is the Wikipedia
article:
Time zone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_zone
There's no mention of TzDb! We could add a paragraph and an external
link. That might help, for example.
There a Wikipedia article
tz database
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tz_database
We could add the warning there.
There are many sites showing time zones and tools, such as
timeanddate.com. If we had a warning like this on the main page we could
ask them to also reference it, I bet they probably would. Little by
little that warning would find more exposure. ( I'm not expecting it to
go viral. )
We just need a reasonably well written title and page and give it a try.
Thanks,
-Brooks
On 2026-10-03 04:24 PM, Tim Parenti wrote:
On Sat, 3 Oct 2026 at 15:58, Brooks Harris via tz<[email protected]> wrote:
Why not put a notice on the main IANA TzDb page in BIG RED LETTERS
Although we do have some basic guidance in tz-link.html, it is admittedly a
bit hidden:
https://data.iana.org/time-zones/data/tz-link.html#coordinating
(So hidden that I keep accidentally looking for it in theory.html instead.)
We could probably stand to beef that up with some harder data and/or make
it more visible in the distribution. For that purpose, the timeline that
Christian Cruz posted about the America/Coyhaique zone's (not-so-recent)
creation may be illustrative:
https://lists.iana.org/hyperkitty/list/[email protected]/message/5I4VYFK5QQHKELZIEDZIT3OGTQ57WWEL/
Chronicling aspects of the fuller data lifecycle on a site like my
https://tzdata-meta.timtimeonline.com/ could also be helpful.
That said, putting it in red letters on the IANA page is not likely to
accomplish much. As others have pointed out, governments and the general
public aren't always aware of our project to begin with.
--
Tim Parenti
