Team events removed from list according to UTC

[Michael Hall]

Team events are supposed to list start/end time in local time, but they are removed from the list by interpreting their times as UTC. Either the times should be translated to UTC instead of local time (though this doesn't make sense for strictly local events), or they should not be removed from the list until end_time + 24 hours.

[Michael Hall (mhall119)]

There is also a google webservice to get timezone information based on location, so this could possible be applied to an event's venue to determine local time.

[Michael Hall (mhall119)]

http://www.earthtools.org/webservices.htm#timezone

[Laura Czajkowski (czajkowski)]

ideally the LD should be using UTC, but that may confuse new people so perhaps select from a drop down the time and zone they are creating the event in

or

have a link to the world clock so folks can work out the times when entering it in?

[Jan Claeys (janc)]

IMO the LD should show events in the local time of the event location, and if we export this info to other sites, it should include proper timezone info.

[Michael Hall (mhall119)]

Ultimately, events should be stored in UTC time, and displayed in local time. But that will require some extra effort to determine timezone offset of an event.

[Dmitry Agafonov (dmitry-agafonov)]

I think computer must do all calculations.
Just ask TZ information on input (store in cookie to reuse in UI).
Store in UTC is ok.

[Dan Trevino (dantrevino)]

+1 JanC's comment (#4). Our target audience for viewing events is not global developers, but rather a mix of technical & non-technical users, 90% of which are expecting to see local times.

[Chuck Frain (chuckfrain-deactivatedaccount)]

Locos are LOCAL community teams. Therefore the times on the events must be displayed in the local time zone.

For some the UTC setting will not pose an inconvenience but I would guess most people viewing local events assume the time and date to be in local time.

[Fabián Rodríguez (magicfab)]

Don't ask the TZ. Ask "what time is it" ? Most people have no idea what a time zone is or they're in. However I predict more may know what time it is for them, locally ;)

And PLEASE don't make this depend on any Google stuff.

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

Asking for the local time sounds nice, but it might be problematic with DST changes.

I'd very much be in favour in a solution without any magic or crazy assumptions as it's incredibly arduous to get it right.

Maybe for global events we should just use dates and for local events just use local time. Then nobody gets confused.

[Nikoleta Verbeck (nerdynick)]

Whats the potential of just letting the event organizer enter the time
with timezone, then store that value in the DB as UTC along with the
timezone that it was entered against. Then when a user visits the page
use Javascript and Ajax to store against that users session there
timezone, and just change out all the times to display as there
timezone. And just as a safety for when you don't know a users
timezone. ie the initial request to the site. Just display the time in
the timezone that it was entered against. Just make sure to include
the TZ info when displaying the time.

This does add a bit of work on a developer side but does benefit event
organizers and anyone browsing the site.

* Reposting this as asked from the current Ubuntu-Contacts email thread.

[Dan Trevino (dantrevino)]

pasted from my email to the loco contacts list:
======================
Just thinking out loud here, each of the LoCo teams should already be
associated with one-to-many timezone(s). Why not just ask the event
creator to specify it?

For my case, when I create a new event for Florida, I should see a
drop down with two timezones, Eastern and Central. California or
France or India may not see the drop down because they only have one.

If nobody wants to go through the small data entry task of entering
teams and their associated TZ, then just allow the team admin(s) to
select default timezone(s) available for their team.

[Dmitry Agafonov (dmitry-agafonov)]

One get TZ automatically: http://www.google.ru/search?q=timezone+info+javascript

[Fabián Rodríguez (magicfab)]

A team may span many timezones, yet their main events may be tied to only one. I' d say let a team owner choose several timezones that will then be available for events for the events organizers.

[Efrain Valles (effie-jayx)]

after a little research on python and timezones there are a few things to consider.

*OFFSET: Websites around the globe tend to determine via javascript the timezone offset between GMT and the respective local time, that's how they determine local time. However, this does not necesarily provide the timezone the client is in as there might be different timezones with the same offset at any given point.

*IP: Other websites tend to use the user's ip address and trace it to find the location of the user and then calculating time.

*Choose the timezone: sites like timeanddate.com let you choose the timezone you are in.

*Django timezones: there is an application that is able to determine the timezone of a user and save it in a profile to make use of it on the site. http://github.com/brosner/django-timezones. It involves changes in the user profile of the application. changes that would need migration from the database.

the solution to this particular bug has been commited and merged (24 hour extra time in the list). and if we want to implement more robust methods of determining the local timezone for the event, we must think about the limitations with regards web apps and timezones and come up with a unified way of keeping this simple.

I think this bug has been fixed for the time being, events are not being removed as of UTC timezone calculations. a new bug should be filed requesting for local times in team events.