It would be nice if in our User Preferences we could set a time zone and then RPoL would display the dates by threads according to whatever time it is in our time zone.  Maybe there could even be a button that would get now() from our computers and upload that to the server, let it do some quick subtraction and figure out what time zone we happen to be in (to more easily match up with daylight savings).

RPoL gets its timezone from your computer's timezone settings.  If your computer is correctly set up in your time zone, then RPoL is showing you times in your local time.

I don't know what would be involved in letting users override that, but I'm curious why it would be needed.

It would be needed for those people that travel.  Most computers will adjust according to the internet, but if you set one or two sites to say what you want you are more likely to know what time it is back home, when most people are jet lagged they do not consider the time differences well.

I support the idea not on those grounds, I have a multi time zone clock for that already.  But for the sake of places like Arizona in the US that has its own time zone that is not yet (to my knowledge) incorporated into computer clocks.

My clock, in Windows 7, has a time zone specifically labelled "Arizona".

oh, cool, I have not looked if mine does, I have not been to Arizona since they got their own time zone.  Good to know.  Then I remove that particular reason, just not the vote as for the travelling reason.

When I lived in Germany I was constantly waking people up with phone calls because I kept getting the time conversion wrong.  Just an example.

If you're on RPoL, though, you're on the Internet.  And if you're on the Internet, you can just search for, "What time is it in ____", and it will tell you.  That's probably easier than logging onto RPoL, going into your User Preferences, and changing your time zone just to find out what time it is in another city.

I am saying, same as in Windows, you set your home time zone.

Say that is in California, and then you travel to the UK but only for a weekend.  When you get to England you are so jet lagged and tired you are on autopilot, you sit in your hotel room and open your laptop, which connects to the internet and the clock so adjusts.  But then you open rpol thinking to just check in before bed, as you log in you pick up the phone to dial, but your eye catches on the rpol clock, where you see that back home it is something like midnight.

Also there is the fact posts log with your clock time, again if you travel around the country but are planning to return home soon, this poses a problem.  Any posts made, both yours and by others, will log under the timezone you were in at the time, this will mean as you are re-reading posts you see time jumps between twelve to twenty four hours, and those skips should not be there, this can hinder your personal logs (assuming you take personal logs), sometimes the skips can be multiple days just because you slept and then crossed the international date line.

Windows can be set to not synchronise with the local time zone when you travel.  If you do that, then your time zone will always remain at California, even when you're in the UK.

Wait, I can adjust my post time on RPoL just by adjusting the time zone on my computer?  And posts won't go in order of how I "really" posted?  I thought the times displayed were all server times from when the server logged my post, adjusted for whatever time zone I happen to be in, based on my computer's clock.  If that is the case, then I don't see what the problem is.

Mine is set to adjust as I move.

After I returned from Germany it reset accordingly, but then I moved from the Eastern Time zone to the Central time zone my computer stayed set in the eastern time zone.  I know this is my own problem, but just saying, sometimes people do not travel often and might still take that weekend trip to the EU, or like me they may not want to be bothered to reset their comp clock though they know it matters.  I am weird in that I reset the clocks in individual programs, but not in Windows.

Definitely not, and they'll always stay in chronological order.


You thought right, with the minor correction that it's based on GMT modified by your time zone.

So, there's no time jump between displayed posts, there's just an offset between all displayed posts together based upon whatever your computer clock is set to, and a person's actual time zone?

gillisle02, doesn't it bug you that the clock in Windows in the bottom right corner (or wherever you have yours) doesn't display the time that it currently is?  When I was driving across the US and stopping at McDonalds for the internet (and a salad bowl and fruit parfait, of course), I didn't bother adjusting for Mountain or Central time, just back and forth from Pacific to Eastern, but still it would sort of bug me when I knew my computer wasn't displaying the "real" time.  That and my car stereo time, I adjusted that to match each time zone that I was going through, since it constantly displays where I can see it.