Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Current Local City Time

Ville de Montréal (City of Montréal)
Ville de Montréal (City of Montréal)
	Flag Coat of arms of Ville de Montréal (City of Montréal) Coat of arms
	Motto: Concordia Salus
	City of Montreal and enclave municipalities
	Coordinates: 45°30′N 73°40′W / 45.500°N 73.667°W
Country	Canada
Province	Québec
Founded	1642
Established	1832
Government
• Mayor	Gérald Tremblay
Area **
• City	366.02 km2 (141.3 sq mi)
• Metro	4,047 km2 (1,563 sq mi)
Population (2001)**
• City	1,583,590
• Density	4,326.5/km2 (11,205.6/sq mi)
• Urban	3,015,665
• Metro	3,707,842
	Metro population est. 2005
Time zone	UTC-5 (Eastern (EST))
• Summer (DST)	UTC-4 (EDT)
Postal code span	H
Area code(s)	(514) and (438)
Website	Ville de Montréal
	Area and city population figures reflect the new 2006 demerged city territory; ;

This is the talk page for discussing WikiProject Current Local City Time and anything related to its purposes and tasks.

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Welcome to Wikipedia's Current Local City Time (CLCT) or Current City Time (CCT) Project

Template

I've made a template to do this, {{currenttime}} where you can put {{currenttime|place=Ottawa|offset=-5|dst=Europe}} to get this:

The current date and time in Ottawa is Tuesday 3 December, 13:51.^[1]

I've also fixed it to update the date correctly depending on the timezone. Unfortunately, <ref> tags don't work through templates so I've taken them out. Tra (Talk) 02:42, 14 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm just learning a lot about this programming. I spent the last several hours on making this time stamp: Tuesday 3 December, 13:51 (EDT). Thank you for your work. I'll read into it after my rest! Goodnight. --CyclePat 06:14, 14 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Review of Programs

Well there is definatelly some good work that we have done here. Thank you Tra! For those of you interested in learning about date and time this is how I started. I used these basic codes:

Example 1

{{currentdayname}}, {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTDAY}}, {{CURRENTYEAR}}, {{CURRENTTIME}}

The problem was that it wasn't the correct time for my region. So, I then moved on to fidling around with parser codes such as {{#time: l j F, h:i}}. I got to the point where I ended up using large parser functions. Example 2 shows these function being used with calculations and sub-templates such as template:Current daylight saving offset in North America. Example 2 also shows the yesterdays date and time in Ottawa either 24 hours ago EST or 29 hours ago according to UTC.

Example 2

{{#ifexpr: {{#expr:({{#time: G }} - 29) >= 0}} | {{#time: l}} | {{User:Ed Poor/yesterday}} }} {{#ifexpr: {{#expr:({{#time: G }} - 29) >= 0}} | {{#time: j }} | {{#expr:{{#time: j }} - 1 }} }} {{#time: F","}} {{utc|{{#expr:-29 {{Current daylight saving offset in North America}}}}}} ([[EDT]])

Example 3 - Output of code from Example 2

Monday 2 December, 13:51 (EDT)

You may notice that the above time is calculated through several other templates we use from User:Ed Poor/yesterday and template:Current daylight saving offset in North America. You will also notice that this programming is not as efficient as the {{currenttime}} because it is missing a easy way to imput the time zone delay. Furthermore, though our planet only has an offset zone of 12 or 12-, this equation is limited to going back only one day (23 hours)! (ex.: Day --> Sunday to Saturday, Date --> 15 to 14, ONLY). This formula or possible future template will work but needs improvements. It can obviously be use by manually imputing the offset time in each section, however, this template, code example 2, by me CyclePat should be improved before we decide to use it within the CCT project. But why improve it when we have the fine work by Tra.

The template by Tra is ideal to move on to the next steps. Here is an example of the template:currenttime offset for Ottawa:

Example 4 - Output of Tra's Currenttime template

The current date and time in Ottawa is Tuesday 3 December, 13:51.^[2]

Further testing of the time with an offset of -59 hours and a location called "Nowhere on earth" gives good results:

Example 5 - Output Test -59 hours, place=Nowhere on earth

The current date and time in Nowhere on earth is Sunday 1 December, 07:51.^[3]

.

Wow! Nice! Now if only I knew what Tra meant by <ref> tags? Thank you Tra. --CyclePat 20:45, 14 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

By <ref> tags, I mean that the example you used in the Ottawa article contained a footnote at the bottom of the page with a link to purge the article. The problem is that footnotes don't work properly through templates so I had to take them out. The main problem now is that there needs to be some way of purging the page with the time on it regularly, because if it is left for more than a few minutes, the time generated would become useless. Tra (Talk) 21:16, 14 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Template reference and purging

Okay, I figured out the reference tag problem by looking at your first programming. I noticed that we attempted to add the <references/> at the bottom of the article. I don't think that would work either. I was thinking though that perhaps, we could just place the ref tag and since most articles arleady have a references sections we leave it at that (or place a hidden text :

But you bring on another valid point. Does the page need to be constantly purged? I noticed for example the time says 14:32 (for this discussion page). I tried to refresh my browser with ctrl-f5, but it still is the same. Is the time going to be correct for anyone that accesses the page for the first time? What I mean is will it stay like that for only people that have accessed the page? clearly this would require a warning in the reference for purging the page. Generally when someone comes to an article it is "the first time" that they acces the page, no? And again, does this matter?

Asside, I'm debating if we should have something that says: to find out the time in Ottawa click here. (and reference to the time in the bottom or another sub-page)(ie.:click here to find out the time in Ottawa subpage--> Ottawa/currenttime?) or being part of a category?

Is the issue of purging, concidering we have a warning in the reference that would be significant that important? If someone really wants to know they just need to click the reference.

Anyway for the reference perhaps we should have a reference to the source UTC: ex.: UTC 10 or whatever the user imputs. The way we have a reference, links going, to that page. and maybe this project... I'll think of something. --CyclePat 21:56, 14 January 2007 (UTC) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by CyclePat (talk • contribs) 21:55, 14 January 2007 (UTC).[reply]

The problem isn't the presence, or absence of a <references/> tag, but a bug in the MediaWiki software where the code that generates footnotes from wikicode to HTML doesn't handle templates properly.

As for purging the page, what might work would be to have one page which lists the current time for each of the locations around the world, then link to that page from each of the location articles, perhaps through a link in an infobox used in them. This link would not be a normal link, but would contain &action=purge so that whenever a user clicks the link, the page is purged, the times are updated and the page is shown to the user. Tra (Talk) 22:15, 14 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Should we place every possible number as per {{timezones}} adding the time beside it like 6:30={{currenttime}}. -12 | -11 | -10 | -9:30 | -9 | -8 | -7 | -6 | -5 | -4 | -3:30 | -3 | -2:30 | -2 | -1 | -0:25 | UTC (0) | 0:20 | 0:30 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 3:30 | 4 | 4:30 | 4:51 | 5 | 5:30 | 5:40 | 5:45 | 6 | 6:30 | 7 | 7:20 | 7:30 | 8 | 8:30 | 8:45 | 9 | 9:30 | 10 | 10:30 | 11 | 11:30 | 12 | 12:45 | 13 | 13:45 | 14 (and then place the equation beside each one?) --CyclePat 03:32, 15 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Note:-3:30 if daylight savings time is on becomes -2:30... and i'm checking for other if exceptions. --CyclePat 03:51, 15 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I tested the subst:currenttime on conneticut. There is obviously a little problem with the purge and we shouldn't leave a wrong date and time. So I think we will need to have a link somewhere. How? what? We'll have to think about that. But using the already existing timezone in some of these tables will need to be option that we should provide as a solution. Sounds like an interesting thing. --CyclePat 04:23, 15 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Test references with substitute

References

The current date and time in Ottawa is Tuesday 3 December, 13:51.^[4]

^ Calculated using parser functions. For more information see WP:CCT. To update time purge page cache.
^ Calculated using parser functions. For more information see WP:CCT. To update time purge page cache.
^ Calculated using parser functions. For more information see WP:CCT. To update time purge page cache.
^ Calculated using Wikimedia Foundation Inc. and UTC-5. For more information see WP:CCT. To update time purge page cache.

Placement

This is a good feature, but I disagree with its placement at the top of pages like Connecticut [1]. It's just weird to have the article open with a statement about the time in Connecticut, before the first paragraph has even had the chance to tell you what Connecticut is. Perhaps it would be better suited for the infobox? — brighterorange (talk) 06:10, 15 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it is appropriate to include the local time at all. It is unencyclopedic and it is also redundant to the time zone information that is currently standard in most geographic location articles. Further, for geographic locations (like countries) that span multiple time zones, what would you put? At best, this type of thing would be suitable for city-project's portals, but not for the articles themselves. --RealGrouchy 06:46, 16 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have added an example of a template... (no changes)... taken from Montreal. I have pondered the idea for a while now and I agree that the information is somewhat redundant to a time zone information which can be found on most geographical zones (cities, states, even some countries). This project is hence going out of the way if we work on a state, province, country. However... Some countries only have one time zone! (Perhaps we should leave that up to another project called... damm that won't work country starts with a "C" hence we would have the CCT project.) You are right... let's take this one step at a time and concentrate on cities. Anyways, we have not really discussed placing this information in this side bar template. At least there appears to be a concencus that we should build several types of templates. I think we should talk about them first.

Template within the existing city templates: Do we want to just place the time with it's own little category directly in the template?

1 - The first set of questions deals with the formating of date and time if we place it in the article:

i - Do we want to remove the current time zone reference (ex.: UTC-5), put the time in it's place (ex.: It is currently 18 January 2007, 18:00 in Ottawa) and have it redirect to the time zone?

ii - Do we want to do the oposite by keeping the time zone information (ex.: UTC-5), have that linked of course to it's own article (as it is right now) and place the time in that article?

2 - This set of questions deals with how we should format the time if we place it in an external link to the article.

i - If we place the time in the UTC articles, should it just be there... (will the problem of purging still exist?)

ii - Is it better to make a template that is seperate from not only the location (geographical) but the UTC times articles, which in turn could then have a link to this information? These are mostly open questions to help us think about what direction we should take. Feel free to leave your comment, and thank you for your feedback. p.s.: What I would like to know is how they get the coordinates at the top right corner? --CyclePat 23:19, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The coordinates in the top right corner are added using some css positioning through the {{coor title dm}} template. As for putting in times, what I think might work is to give each infobox a link to a single page, say Wikipedia:WikiProject Current Local City Time/Times (or some other page name) and on this page put in the code to give the local time for several locations. To solve the problem of purging, we could make sure that each of the links in the infoboxes are links to purge Wikipedia:WikiProject Current Local City Time/Times so that every time a user clicks to view the current time, they automatically purge the page as they view it, so the time will appear correct for them.

As for the positioning of the link, it could probably say something like 'view current time' next to where the timezone is mentioned. Tra (Talk) 00:23, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Statistics Canada 2001 Census - Quebec urban population
^ Statistics Canada 2001 Census - Montreal population

Agreement

Hello Tra, I guess it's about time I get back to here! (pun intended). I think I'll start working on your suggestion. It seems like one of the best ways and least intrusive.... hummm... If worse comes to worse we just don't use it. So as they say, "we talk the talk".... I think I'll start up the walk. --CyclePat 01:46, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Categories...

Category:UTC

As per WP:CCT, I am currently creating an automization process to place cities in their respective time zone category. Currently they are placed in the categories