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[PASSED] Times Act
#1

Times Act
 
An Act to establish a common timezone for all official deadlines

Table of contents
  1. Scope
  2. Official Timezone

1. Scope

(1) This Act applies to all legal deadlines used by government entities in the South Pacific.

2. Official Timezone

(1) All legal deadlines that establish a specific hour and minute must use Eastern Standard Time or Eastern Daylight Time, depending on if Daylight Savings Time is currently in place in the Eastern Time timezone. 12-hour or 24-hour format is left to the discretion of the government entity.

(2) As much as is practicable, all notices of such deadlines should include a link to a live clock providing the current date and time.

(3) All such deadlines shall be accompanied by a conversion to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

(4) When publishing non-legal deadlines, conformance to this Act is strongly encouraged.
#2

If this passes I will personally ensure that Britain conquers the entire World again just like we did last time. I'm not living on some Commie foreign time standard.
Did some LC, MoRA, CRS stuff in the past. Do a lot of World Census stuff now.
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#3

I am open to negotiation here because I am a reasonable American. But the point I want to stress here is that when we set deadlines for things, the majority of our community shouldn't be inconvenienced.

Taking the current election deadlines, for example. The 3:00 (am) UTC Oct 7 deadline is highly susceptible to mistakes. If we say the deadline is at a certain time on Oct 7, the timezone we use should not, when converted, lead to a day in the past. 3:00 UTC Oct 7 is a 11PM UTC Oct 6. So if someone is on the fence about running for office, but decides on the last day to do so, they may be looking at "Oct 7" and reasonably assume the deadline falls on, well, Oct 7. But if they live in the US (where the vast majority of our community lives), they will find themselves knee-capped by the UTC timezone because the deadline was the day before.
#4

If we are to specify an official time zone then it should be Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Using EST is as inappropriate as using GMT, and I say that as one of our many European players.
Minister of Media, Subversion and Sandwich Making
Associate Justice of the High Court and Senior Moderator

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#5

Official deadlines should be in UTC. It is the easiest timezone for a worldwide group of players to convert. Hence, Section 1 should reference UTC. If you want to require that additional conversions be added after that for large player bases, then I would not oppose that. Those time zones should be in Section 3.

Also, if you are going to have Eastern Daylight/Standard Time could you please consider requiring it to be written as "(North American) Eastern Daylight/Standard Time" or something similar? Other places have their own Eastern Daylight/Standard Times, though all with the country or region included in the name. While players from those regions should think it odd that there is no placename in the timezone, it could be prone to people not thinking and making mistakes (which is exactly what your proposal seeks to prevent).
Former Associate Justice of the High Court of the South Pacific (4 December 2019 to 5 February 2021)
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#6

I mean, it did say that a conversion to UTC is required. It will have two timezones.

This law is entirely reasonable. A majority of our community lives in North America, and it accommodates Britain, as well as the rest of the world, by requiring a UTC conversion.
Midwesterner. Political nerd. Chipotle enthusiast. 
Minister of Culture of the South Pacific // Former Prime Minister
#7

If EST's gonna be used, you might as well use PST too. I'm fine with solely using UTC as the official time.
4× Cabinet minister /// 1× OWL director /// CRS member /// SPSF

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#8

I'm withdrawing this bill, since the collective mindset during the Discord discussion was that it's A-OK for deadlines to be the dead middle of the night, and it's your own personal responsibility to make sure you deal with that. No need to improve things here, we will just manage.  Relief

It's baffling to me that the Discord debate went that way, when clearly it is better that deadlines fall during times most convenient for the most people. But this is an uphill battle that I have the wisdom to not fight. Tounge If someone else wants to take the mantle, be my guest though!

I simply implore government officials to be far more conscientious and reasonable about the deadlines they set.
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#9

(10-07-2020, 05:28 PM)sandaoguo Wrote: (2) As much as is practicable, all notices of such deadlines should include a link to a live clock providing the current date and time.

I know this bill is withdrawn but can we at least look at something along the lines of this part?

I think which official time zone we should adopt, if any, or whether we should require that elections begin at certain times, are separate debates. Can we at least agree that having some form of countdown timer/link to automatic time zone conversion would be beneficial regardless of how we set our deadlines?
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#10

So, I don't think this proposal is completely pointless, just antagonistically American. I've made some revisions;
 

Times Act
 
An Act to establish a common timezone for all official deadlines

Table of contents
  1. Scope
  2. Official Timezone

1. Scope

(1) This Act applies to all legal deadlines used by government entities in the South Pacific.

2. Official Timezone

(1) All legal deadlines that establish a specific hour and minute must use Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) in either a 12-hour or 24-hour format.

(2) The deadline must contain a link to a countdown timer established using the Time and Date Live Countdown Timer.

(3) All such deadlines shall be accompanied by a reference to the equivalent time in London, New York and Sydney provided by the  Time and Date Time Zone Converter.

(4) When publishing non-legal deadlines, conformance to this Act is strongly encouraged.


Part of me is concerned this is just additional bureaucracy, but this version of the bill is viable.
Minister of Media, Subversion and Sandwich Making
Associate Justice of the High Court and Senior Moderator

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