Talk:Pacific Time Zone

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Pacific Time Zone article.
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User:Kate: What was wrong with the info on Pitcairn Island? It does appear to be within this time zone. I didn't see any discussion about the removal and your edit summary didn't explain it. - KeithTyler 22:48, Sep 16, 2004 (UTC)

  • The Pacific Time zone isn't an international designation. It's a name assigned by the U.S. government to a region that happens to be at the same longitude as Pitcairn Island. I don't know the official designation for the time in Pitcairn island, but since it's a British possession, the British government gets to name the local time zone. ---Isaac R 04:06, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Wrong name

The article says

The Pacific Standard Time Zone (PST) is a geographic region that keeps time by subtracting eight hours from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

If that's true, where's Pacific Daylight Time Zone (PDT)?

Silly question. Of course there's no such thing. You often hear west-coast people refer to local time as "Pacific Standard Time" even when daylight time is in effect. I guess that usage crept into the title of this article. But the official name of the zone is "Pacific Time Zone". So the article should say,

The Pacific Time zone is a region that is roughly aligned with the international UTC-8 zone. During winter months, official time in the zone is Pacific Standard Time (PST) which is the same as UTC-8; during summer months official time is Pacific Daylight Time (PDT), which is the same as UTC-7.

---Isaac R 04:34, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You know, since all of the articles dealing with North American time zones have the word "Standard" in their titles, let's just leave them the way they are. Don't fix what ain't broke. Besides, I'll simply acknowledge their Daylight Saving Time equivalents in the body of each article. Denelson83 08:11, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

Actually, at NASA's Mobile Aeronautics Education Laboratory the time zones are labeled as Pacific Time Zone. Then depending on whether it is Standard or Savings, then it is PST or PDT. But otherwise it is PTZ. And at timeanddate.com. Furthermore, I hear most people refer it to Pacific Time, never Pacific Standard Time when the Daylight savings is unspecified. Furthermore, it is Daylight Savings Time (plural).

However, by Federal Law: TITLE 15 - CHAPTER 6 - SUBCHAPTER IX - § 263 of the US CODE, the law only defines the name of standard time and says nothing about the name of daylight time. Therefore the change I think should happen is that the title should remain as "Pacific Standard Time zone" and that notes be added that PST used in conjunction in PDT will define daylight or standard specifics OR that the date given should be the ultimate determining factor AND include a warning that depending on the date, the time given may or may not include daylight savings as it was only implemented after 1918. This page might prove insightful Webexhibits' About Daylight Savings Time page. Akosygin 30 June 2005 20:31 (UTC)

As Akosygin points out, 15 USC Sec. 263 clearly defines "Pacific standard time" as the name to use. Similarly, this here wikipedia thing is a vehicle to look up useful information. Common usage dictates Pacific Standard Time is a known entity. So Pacific Standard Time should be something I can find here.

That said, I don't think it would be entirely a bad thing to perform a page move for every page using the format "x Standard Time Zone" to "x Time Zone" so that people will still find the entry if they put in the common useage name. Similarly, if this were to be done, a redirection should be made from "x Daylight Time Zone" which, as it happens, is quite regularly referenced (most notably by the official United States Timekeeper, the Time Service Department of the USNO in their document: DAYLIGHT-SAVING TIME ZONE CONVERSIONS).

Finally, my inner pendant requires me to address the claim that Daylight Saving is to be pluralized. This is not the case and as supporting evidence I respectfully submit the USNO Time Service link above which also uses the singluar form and, in addition, the following links to US Code referencing the singluar form:

--Jer v 20:57, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Please review the Daylight saving time article. --132.198.104.164 16:42, 11 August 2005 (UTC)


  • Also, "Baja California" is not a state of Mexico. The Baja peninsula is split into two states: Baja California Norte & Baja California Sur. "Norte" is on Pacafic time; "Sur" is on Mountain time.
    • The official name of Baja California Norte is just Baja California.

[edit] Dispute?

What exactly is the factual dispute on this article?

It looks really crappy for such a simple everyday concept to be emblazoned with a dispute tag for so long.

- Keith D. Tyler 18:02, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

  • I am assuming it was the issue being discussed in the "Wrong name" section above. But it has been several months since then, so I am removing the tag. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 04:43, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
    • No I was wrong, it was first placed in April [1]. In any case, the tag should still be moved. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 04:46, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] PST Clock

Do you think it would be a good idea to link to a website with the current time in the PST zone?--Stiverton 16:35, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I've created templates to calculate the current daylight saving time offset and time for PST (in US and Canada, not Mexico). It may be useful to add their results to the page as in: "The current PST offset is UTC-7 and the local time is 12:29, 11 June 2008 (PST).". However, we may need to adjust {{Time}} to add an argument that allows you to specify the format, so you can get the time without the "(PST)", as this is obvious.
    — SkyLined {talkcontribs 20:04, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] uncited material cut

"although certain small towns near the Idaho border, such as Jackpot, observe Mountain Standard Time unofficially." anything in violation of offical standards needs cited. Jon 22:43, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GMT vs. UTC

>Coordinated Universal Time is also called Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

This should read: Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) otherwise known as Coordinated Universal Time.

It may be a bit pedantic but GMT has been in use for far longer than CUT and should take presidence in a factual article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.3.203.58 (talk • contribs) 2008-01-17T23:02:30 UTC

See the article Coordinated Universal Time for a full explanation, but the summary is that GMT is no longer used for timezones. —EncMstr 17:01, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] fall forward or fall back

shouldn't this be somewhere on the page...i would add it, but i never get it right —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.164.197.242 (talk) 02:33, 7 March 2008 (UTC)