Wikipedia:WikiProject Time Zones

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WikiProject Time Zones is a proposed plan to reorganize all the articles on time zones and UTC offsets.

The main concept is the distinction between "zone" and "offset".

A zone is a place, usually a contiguous region roughly shaped like a vertical stripe on the map. Zones frequently transcend national boundaries, e.g., the Mountain Time Zone in North America begins in Canada, travels through the "lower 48" of the United States and continues down into Mexico and Central America.

An offset is a number of hours (usually but not always a whole number) which is added or subtracted from Universal Coordinated Time (or UTC).

A time zone is a region where most places observe the same standard time some of the year and the same daylight time the rest of the year. There are, of course, sections of these zones which opt out, which makes the whole thing very interesting.

A time offset is the number of hours (or hours and minutes) between your local time and UTC. Most observances of Daylight Saving Time change the local time offset by a whole hour - in the Northern Hemisphere anyway. Australia is a very interesting exception.

[edit] What's the problem?

Most time zone articles (as of March 2006) conflate UTC time offset with time zone, and conflate standard time with "standard time zone". This is probably because authorities disagree over the terminology.

  • Does the name of the Eastern Time Zone change from the "Eastern Standard Time Zone" to the "Eastern Daylight Time Zone" and back, twice a year? Or,
  • Does the Eastern Time Zone observe Eastern Standard Time 3/7ths of the year and Eastern Daylight Time 4/7ths of year?

We propose to designate the time zones as regions with stable names. Time offsets will change twice a year.

[edit] Sign-up

  • Uncle Ed
  • User:Celcius (remove italics if you're really on board!)