Smalyshev added a comment.

> Before the implementation of time zones, this is the longitude of the place 
> of the event, expressed in the range −180° to 180° (positive is east of 
> Greenwich), multiplied by 4 to convert to minutes.


I think representing two semantics in one value is not a good idea. One data 
value should have only one semantics - either this is always minutes, or this 
is a longitude, but not both. Otherwise, handling such fields becomes very 
complex, and more complex code breeds errors and inconsistencies.

> The "precision" field identifies which characters in the "time" field must be 
> valid date or time representations


I would rather keep all characters valid, even for year-only dates. The reason 
is that otherwise it is very hard to compare "year 1200" to "12 April 1976" - 
since the former can not be converted to any point in time. Admittedly, "year 
1200" describes not one point in time but a set of them, but for most 
applications (like "give me all painters born in 13th century in Europe") it is 
good enough. Not being able to use standard time handling tools to process such 
data is worse.

> The "time" value may be truncated at any point right of the rightmost day 
> digit


The more options the format has, harder it is to parse it correctly and more 
opportunities there is for bugs in various code and tools. I'd rather keep it 
simple and have full time always.


TASK DETAIL
  https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T99674

EMAIL PREFERENCES
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To: Smalyshev
Cc: JanZerebecki, Smalyshev, Jc3s5h, daniel, Aklapper, Tobi_WMDE_SW, 
Wikidata-bugs, JulesWinnfield-hu, Addshore, Liuxinyu970226, Rical, Conny, aude



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