Armageddon Standard Time

[Riya OniSenshi]

If people are too lazy to bother themselves with learning the timezones that are important to the things they do already, making/designating an arm specific timezone won't help.

[titansfan]

I strongly agree that this won't change much. People still won't think about it or try to understand it. It's a good idea in thoery, but like Riya said it's just another timezone conversion people will be too lazy to do.

[A Large Bag]

I don't see this as necessary. I'd still end up having to figure out what time this Armageddon Time Zone is in my own time zone.

[Barsook]

Couldn't the staff put a converter under the line that has the sever time for those who needs to convert?

[Marauder Moe]

Really, all we need is some sort of SMF BBC tag like [time="<timezone>"]HH:MM[/time] that converts to the reader's timezone setting.  However, I have no idea how hard that is to do and/or if someone else has already made a module for it.

[Maso]

Well it seems to work for game websites with players in the millions..It's about creating habits. It's easier to build a relationship with one timezone, so that eventually it becomes an easy and natural conversion.

[Maso]

I don't see this as necessary. I'd still end up having to figure out what time this Armageddon Time Zone is in my own time zone.

Well you would look at your clock...and then the clock on the Arm page...

[Riya OniSenshi]

Which is exactly what you have to do now...

So you can either see the time posted on the GDB and then go to something like http://www.timezoneconverter.com/cgi-bin/tzc.tzc or learn about the timezones you need and remember them.

There's no reason to have staff add all kinds of stuff to the armageddon homepage when it's just as easy to bookmark a converter and check that.

Though the forum code conversion does sound like an idea, though people would have to remember to use it - assuming it's possible to do that with the forum code.

[A Large Bag]

I don't see this as necessary. I'd still end up having to figure out what time this Armageddon Time Zone is in my own time zone.

Well you would look at your clock...and then the clock on the Arm page...

Which is exactly what you have to do now...

Yeah, which was my point. There would be nothing gained by this change.

[flurry]

I used to regularly play a MUD where this is in place, and my experience was that it was definitely helpful. That MUD is hosted in Sweden, so the local time is central Europe time. My guess is the player base there is roughly half North American players and half European players, so time conversion was often an issue if you wanted to coordinate meeting times. On that game, there is a command "date" that would give the local date and time. It made it really easy to agree to meet at "6 pm game time" or whatever.

If some players don't find something like this necessary, they don't need to use it, of course. Living in the Eastern time zone, I have it easy here because the player base is predominantly North American. So I probably wouldn't need it here as much as I did on that MUD. Still, I really liked having that resource and I think it would be a good change.

[Lizzie]

I can't ever remember which time zone I'm IN, let alone how to convert -your- time zone to mine. Is it EDT currently? or is it EST? Or is that supposed to be DST vs. EDT? or DST vs. EST? I've lived through several "official" incarnations of how time zones are supposed to be, and never really cared which was which, as long as I knew what time it is NOW, wherever I happen to be, and whatever time zone I happen to be IN. It's not a matter of being lazy, it's more a matter of being apathetic. I really don't give a damn if I'm in delta or standard or greenwich. I only care about whether or not it's time for my lunch break, or if I have to remind my husband that he has to leave for bowling in an hour, or if it's time to shut down the computer and get to bed. For me, that would be: 11AM, 5:30PM, and 10PM, respectively. Is that 11AM EDT? Who the fuck knows. It's 11AM *MY* time.

So - with all that said, having an Arm-to-MYtime converter would be very helpful, because then I could use it no matter what time zone I happen to be computing from, at any given moment.

[Maso]

Which is exactly what you have to do now...

So you can either see the time posted on the GDB and then go to something like http://www.timezoneconverter.com/cgi-bin/tzc.tzc or learn about the timezones you need and remember them.

There's no reason to have staff add all kinds of stuff to the armageddon homepage when it's just as easy to bookmark a converter and check that.

Though the forum code conversion does sound like an idea, though people would have to remember to use it - assuming it's possible to do that with the forum code.

Except you have to do it for multiple timezones all the time. Learning one is a hell of a lot easier.

For example...You are trying to organise an RPT.

As it stands...

You want the RPT to be at 8pm EST, the people who you want to invite have given you their availability. Jane is around 7pm-12am PST, Bob is around 9am to 1pm GMT, Jack is around 3pm to 6pm Australian DST, Mary is around 12am to 3am JST.

You are left to figure it all out.

OR everyone does their bit and translates their time into AST...

You want the RPT to be at 8pm AST, the people who you want to invite have given you their availability. Jane is around 4pm-8pm AST, Bob is around 9pm to 1am AST, Jack is around 8am to 12pm AST (he definitely can't come), Mary is around 4am to 10am AST (she probably won't make it either).


So much easier.

I don't really understand why this seems hard to get. It really does help.

[catchall]

If people are going to nitpick the finer points of efficiency, I really have to speak up, because this is one of my specialties:

Currently, one performs zero mathematical operations on their own availability times, but must perform one different mathematical operation on every additional time zone represented among the group of players in their clan in order to understand their playtimes.  (Total unique operations: 0 + NUMBER OF OTHER TIME ZONES IN CLAN )

Using a standardized time zone, a player must perform one mathematical operation on their own availability time (to convert it to a standard time zone), and then applies the reverse of that operation to the times reported by other players to convert it to their own time.  No additional operations are necessary. (Total unique operations: 2---really more like 1.5 since one is necessarily the inverse of the other.)

Thus, if all players share your time zone, obviously, this idea costs effort.  If only one player is in a different time zone, this idea costs effort.  If two players are in different time zones from you and from each other, the idea saves a little bit of effort (two unique operations are performed in each case, but in the AST case, the operations are in a predictable, fixed relationship).  For cases where there are three or more players with time zones different from you and from each other, this idea saves more and more effort with each player/time zone added.

In fact, the above actually understates the efficiency gain of this idea in many scenarios.  If a player from your clan is replaced with someone from a different time zone, under the AST idea, no unique operations are added to the system.  Furthermore, if the relationship of your time zone to other time zones changes (either because of Daylight Saving Time on your end or theirs, moving, or whatever), under the AST idea you simply note your new relationship to AST and continue using that single operation to calculate all playtimes.  Without a standard time zone, you must redetermine every unique operation in the system in light of the new timezone relationship and reapply them to all playtimes.


Therefore, it is wildly, demonstrably incorrect that "nothing would be gained from this idea" in terms of efficiency and effort expended.  Of course, none of this would be necessary if we all stopped logging out of Arm entirely. Then we could just use IC time like the Highlord intended.

[Maso]

Clever stuff.

<3 you.

[A Large Bag]

Then just put up the server time zone and have people conform to that. Which is pretty much what I've always tried to do anyway. Which is why I say it would make no change for me personally. I pretty much always post times in Eastern time zone, it used to be that most people did. I'm not sure when people started getting lazy and only posting in their own time zone instead of figuring it out and posting what it is in Eastern. There are only zero operations if what you've been doing is the lazy way to begin with. In my case, this is not so.

[Samoa]

I give a different time zone with every new character so as to confuse people as to who I am playing.

Having a standard time zone would be useful, but frankly if it's that much different from PST, I am going to fuck it up. Making AST = EST would be ok.

[Nyr]

Clever stuff.

<3 you.

It is clever, but it also assumes that players are dickish enough and bad enough at math/timezone conversion to only post replies in their own time zone in response to an RPT post on the GDB.

[A Large Bag]

Clever stuff.

<3 you.

It is clever, but it also assumes that players are dickish enough and bad enough at math/timezone conversion to only post replies in their own time zone in response to an RPT post on the GDB.

Exactly.

[Nyr]

Of the last 20 public RPT posts (spanning a period of 7 months):

1 was really vague and listed no time at all and it changed a lot.  I don't think anyone really has a clue what is going on there in terms of what to check or when to be available.  Bad thread!
The rest were specific in start time and provided a time zone.  However, daylight saving time specifications were occasionally problematic (listed as an issue twice, maybe?).

Based on that review, I would suggest that people be consistent in providing an exact date and start time and time zone in the original post subject (or in their polls about when to schedule things).  If you live someplace that celebrates having one more hour of sunlight for part of the year (because aliens), please make an effort to be consistent in detailing the exact time zone so that people don't screw it up.

[solera]

Yes please, because of everything Maso said.
Or every one use Eastern.  Though there is still the daylight saving... does Ginka do that?
When I am in a clan I do have a chart of their converted playtimes and use the timezone link all the time.
I still never trust GMT players to give me the right time in their summer.

[Intrepid]

Mountain time has no daylight savings, aka Arizona Colorado etc....if that helps.

As a current resident of Colorado, I attest to this statement being false--most of the state if not all of it, utilizes daylight savings time.

[Iiyola]

Mountain time has no daylight savings, aka Arizona Colorado etc....if that helps.

As a current resident of Colorado, I attest to this statement being false--most of the state if not all of it, utilizes daylight savings time.

Same in Canada.

[A Large Bag]

I think, I could be wrong but I think that Arizona is the only one in the mountain time zone that doesn't have daylight savings.

[Lizzie]

Indiana didn't used to recognize daylight savings, all the way up until 2006. Now, it merely has 2 different time zones: most of it is Eastern, and the upper northwest corner (the Gary area) is Central.

[Twilight]

I'd prefer that we get a better IG to OOC time converter built into the website, and post RPT in IG time if its a real issue for you to convert from one time zone to another.