A standard time zone for expressing times

[Medena]

I'd like to suggest we choose one time zone and then try to express play times on clan boards, event times, and so on using this time.  Even though I am in the PST zone, I'd suggest using either CST or EST.  CST because there are some times concerning the weekly down time expressed in CST on the web site. (Is this where ginka is?). EST because, let's face it, it probably has by far the greatest number of players of any one zone.

I personally don't have any problem converting times but I've seen quite a number of cases where apparently folks -do-.  For European players, just having ONE N. American zone to convert to might be nice. And, for anyone, even though it might be easy enough to convert just one time, it does get tricky when you are trying to juggle a bunch of player's availability times and they are expressed in 5 different time zones.

I've been loath to suggest this idea because pre-Arm I played on a mud where the tyrant-who-called-himself-imm threw a hissy fit if you ever mentioned any time but EST and often even meted out punishments besides the usual public humiliation.  But...even though I hated it for that reason, it did work well. It avoided confusion.

So, what do you all think? Anxious to hear.

[Marauder Moe]

Since the Arm community is spread all over the planet, I make sure to include a timezone when I post an RPT or whatever.  If you know which time zone a large majority of your clan lived in then it might be a nice gesture to post according to their timezone, but I don't think it needs to be made a requirement.

[jhunter]

I don't think it matters what timezone you post it in. Most people are capable of figuring it out for their own timezone.

[Anonymous]

GMT is the best standard since everyone knows or can easily find out what that means for their timezone.

[Adhira]

I like GMT

[Moofassa]

Don't care.

[Angela Christine]

It can be helpful to include more than one timezone.  I think I once specified both PST and EST for something, that gives everyone in the Americas an easy way to figure out their local time.  Giving GMT and one of the Americas times zones would make it easy for people in Europe, Africa and the Americas to figure out the time.

The other advantage to giving two timezones (perhaps GMT and your local time zone) is that someone will probably notice if you have mis-calculated the time conversion.  If you only include GMT (and you don't live in GMT) then you might accidentally go -6 instead of +6, or forget that daylight saving time doesn't affect GMT and do +6 when you should do +7.  Including your local time (the timezone you started your calcuation with) makes it much more likely that someone will tell you if your GMT calculation is off.


Angela Christine

[Maybe42or54]

If it isn't a really important thing, I may add timezones for five U.S. ones and a european time zone, just to make it easy.

Other then that, EST is a popular one, but I can convert it easily enough.

[Larrath]

EST is the easiest for me, personally, since I'm already used to it.
I don't mind switching to Israeli Standard Time though.  Could be fun!

RPT coming up tomorrow 5am!  Be there or be dead!

[ArmWindworn]

I'd like to suggest we choose one time zone and then try to express play times on clan boards, event times, and so on using this time.  Even though I am in the PST zone, I'd suggest using either CST or EST.  CST because there are some times concerning the weekly down time expressed in CST on the web site. (Is this where ginka is?). EST because, let's face it, it probably has by far the greatest number of players of any one zone.

I personally don't have any problem converting times but I've seen quite a number of cases where apparently folks -do-.  For European players, just having ONE N. American zone to convert to might be nice. And, for anyone, even though it might be easy enough to convert just one time, it does get tricky when you are trying to juggle a bunch of player's availability times and they are expressed in 5 different time zones.

I've been loath to suggest this idea because pre-Arm I played on a mud where the tyrant-who-called-himself-imm threw a hissy fit if you ever mentioned any time but EST and often even meted out punishments besides the usual public humiliation.  But...even though I hated it for that reason, it did work well. It avoided confusion.

So, what do you all think? Anxious to hear.

  USE GMT   its equally unfair to most everyone...  

[Morfeus]

I like GMT.  
But if I am planning a RPT I like to throw in all possible timezones, especially in cases I know other players in the clan live all across the world. The message then looks like: We are all going to die at X GMT (which means Y CST, Z EST, F PST and Q for me!).  :twisted:

[Zore]

Everyone should use UTC (Coordinated Universal Time), which has been the international reference time from 1972, when it replaced GMT.

But in any case, the current practise of randomly selecting one of the American time zones, with all the hassle that comes from Daylight Saving Time and whatnot, is probably the worst possible way of announcing times in an international game.

[flurry]

Another plus for GMT is that the times on the GDB are based on GMT plus or minus whatever you set in your profile.  On the lower right of any page on the GDB, for me it says "All times are GMT -5 Hours" (because that's what I set my profile to have).   I know that it's the right time zone for me, because at the top left it says "The time now is Sat Mar 11, 2006 2:07 PM".

So, yeah.  The GDB tells you what time zone you're in relative to GMT (once you set it).