We've discussed in Unicode about putting up a page with a similar warning. I would encourage an IANA web page on the topic. While the TZDB is unknown to many people, a page would provide a place for others to link to.
Note that for Unicode (CLDR) there are the additional constraints imposed by names. We have one 'generic' name for time zones that don't have daylight savings, and three for ones that do; and in ~100 different languages, plus acronyms (where they are widely recognized). And it is harder for implementations to update names x languages than it is for the TZDB data we're based on. It would be terminally confusing for speakers of English, for example, to have "13 October 2026 14:30 Pacific Time" mean two different UTC times in different countries. Mark On Sat, Oct 3, 2026 at 1:25 PM Tim Parenti via tz <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Sat, 3 Oct 2026 at 15:58, Brooks Harris via tz <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Why not put a notice on the main IANA TzDb page in BIG RED LETTERS >> > > Although we do have some basic guidance in tz-link.html, it is admittedly > a bit hidden: > https://data.iana.org/time-zones/data/tz-link.html#coordinating > (So hidden that I keep accidentally looking for it in theory.html instead.) > > We could probably stand to beef that up with some harder data and/or make > it more visible in the distribution. For that purpose, the timeline that > Christian Cruz posted about the America/Coyhaique zone's (not-so-recent) > creation may be illustrative: > > https://lists.iana.org/hyperkitty/list/[email protected]/message/5I4VYFK5QQHKELZIEDZIT3OGTQ57WWEL/ > > Chronicling aspects of the fuller data lifecycle on a site like my > https://tzdata-meta.timtimeonline.com/ could also be helpful. > > That said, putting it in red letters on the IANA page is not likely to > accomplish much. As others have pointed out, governments and the general > public aren't always aware of our project to begin with. > > -- > Tim Parenti >
