[OSM-talk] Timezones (was: Deleting data)

[Colin Smale]

Nick, this can be done for admin boundaries as well. Would you advocate
removing them from OSM as well? The change to the size of the planet
file if timezones are included is absolutely microscopic in the big
scheme of things. There are clearly many shades of grey. It's a question
of where to draw the line (as it were). Can this be expressed
objectively? 

It feels rather weird that some people are now advocating keeping
certain things out of OSM. The traditional consensus is that anyone can
put anything in OSM and that any attempt to limit people's creativity is
met with much scepticism. In the continuum between the puritans and the
pragmatists there's plenty of room for everyone. 

I for one think that data in OSM should be above all usable. Whether to
have timezones in OSM is analogous to database normalisation. If taken
to extremes, you can win a theoretical point while at the same time
causing significant performance problems and extra complexity for the
users of the data. 

Colin 

On 2013-10-21 10:55, Nick Whitelegg wrote: 

> I'd go the other way and abolish Winter Time. ;-)
> No DST = dark summer evenings. Not nice!
> 
> Going on topic, not sure if something like time zones belongs in OSM. Would it not be better to use a more specialised web service to look up time zones for a given lat/lon? I'd prefer to minimise overloading OSM with things which are not "on the ground" data. For one thing, it means bigger planet files and more demands on software to extract the data you want.
> 
> Nick
> 
> -----moltonel 3x Combo <moltonel at gmail.com> wrote: ----- 
> 
> Actually, I always wondered why timezones were kept out of OSM. I know DST complicates tagging (it'll be the first thing I abolish when I become World Dictator), ... 
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