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"Question suspends in" clock is off by an hour
The suspend time for questions is always reported an hour off from what it actually is. This applies to market pages and the closing soon lists. The same problem exists for the time created reporting (this can be important when predicting on a question under the 12 hour cash-in ban which is closing soon).
I assume the problem is daylight savings time (particularly in the PST zone), but if that's not fixable we should move over the HubDub standard to GMT. Each user can figure out for themselves how their region compares to GMT (and adjust if required for daylight savings), but it's really confusing as it is right now.
Example: I'm in EST which is three hours before PST. If a question was created at 3am PST, I know to add twelve hours for the cash-in ban and then three hours for time difference. So I could start cashing out at 6pm EST. Wrong! I have to add an extra hour (because of the HD clock problem), and can only cash out after 7pm. Similarly, when the question approaches suspend time, I'll be warned 2 hours left, 1 hour left, and then, bam, it suspends. There is no longer an "x minutes left" warning, because of the clock.
Please can this be fixed? Or can we have GMT as the standard time zone?
(This was discussed here previously - when US and Canada changed over to d.s.t. - but I assumed it would have been fixed by now.)
I assume the problem is daylight savings time (particularly in the PST zone), but if that's not fixable we should move over the HubDub standard to GMT. Each user can figure out for themselves how their region compares to GMT (and adjust if required for daylight savings), but it's really confusing as it is right now.
Example: I'm in EST which is three hours before PST. If a question was created at 3am PST, I know to add twelve hours for the cash-in ban and then three hours for time difference. So I could start cashing out at 6pm EST. Wrong! I have to add an extra hour (because of the HD clock problem), and can only cash out after 7pm. Similarly, when the question approaches suspend time, I'll be warned 2 hours left, 1 hour left, and then, bam, it suspends. There is no longer an "x minutes left" warning, because of the clock.
Please can this be fixed? Or can we have GMT as the standard time zone?
(This was discussed here previously - when US and Canada changed over to d.s.t. - but I assumed it would have been fixed by now.)
I’m frustrated
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Inappropriate?Me too, I have raised the problem many times.
I'll repeat myself, but the most appropriate time zone should be the Universal coordinated time - UTC, known also as GMT or simply Greenwich.
No season changes, no complicated and misleading calculations forward and backward, no suspend time errors, everybody knows it and knows what is his time difference with GMT and for what season.
It's simply like that.
But?
No - why should things be simple when they can be complicated.
That's the impression of what is the attitude on that problem.
It appears that the Blue Dream (as russians says) called Silicon Valley is the cause for sticking to the most inconvinient time zone.
If there was a question "Will Hubdub change the base time zone to GMT?" with 0.1% for the No option, I would bet on this option and record a huge, garanteed win.
:)
I’m indifferent
1 person says
this solves the problem
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Inappropriate?I'm not overly keen on switching to GMT altogether because I do think its a little confusing -- especially for new question creators.
I do agree that it is really annoying though.
Besides the wonky daylight savings time issue, the clock appears to be off by a few minutes. Questions that should suspend at 1559 (like the indicies questions) typically suspend at about 1602 -- after the market has closed.
I have to believe that there is an easy fix that just has fallen to the bottom of the pile... Nigel, Tom? Can you tell us what the status is please? -
Inappropriate?GMT is not confusing; confusing is namely the mistaken, wrong Pacific standart time which in fact is Pacific daylight saving time, but this is not explicitely explained in the question creation page.
There is something broken in the question's clock, many users complain about errors with the time they didn't made, but nevertheless they appeared.
GMT is the fixed, nonmoveable, world time. Whoever don't know about it, will easily learn.
However.
I don't believe anymore in improvements here in Hubdub; for me, the trend is opposite - Hubdub was better in the beginning.
So, we will bear the real situation.
I’m frustrated
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Inappropriate?Orlin, being a bit of a pessimist, no?
Hubdub has many positive changes... I have seen many betas go south because of people with attitudes like yours... you have to understand, you aren't paying for this game, you are a beta tester, a tester! It's their game, you don't HAVE to play it, nor should you expect that they will do whatever you say, or in a timely manner! -
Inappropriate?I'm sorry, but because of my not sufficient knowledge of english I cannot answer properly.
If you (or anybody else) has felt offensed, my appologies for this - I simply didn't express myself enough well.
I’m unconcerned
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Inappropriate?Orlin, I accept your apology and would like to apologize myself for my post, which is pessimistic too.
No hard feelings :) -
Inappropriate?I think they need to move this problem higher on the priority list. We are a worldwide site, and our computers are able to show us the time anywhere in the world. So lets agree on a standard of time, update the hubdub system to show suspend time in minutes, and put this issue behind us. I think for the markets we should suspend 5-10 minutes early if there is issue of automated suspend system delaying it a few minutes.
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Inappropriate?There's actually two problems, because there seems to be two clocks Here's an example:
http://www.hubdub.com/m7823/DJIA__Wha...
Take a look at the action history in the Info tab. My suspend request was at the same time as the automatic suspension, but they display as 56 minutes apart. My request was actually at 1:03pm (PST) -- so that's the time zone problem at work. The question wasn't suspended when I flag/suspended it, but it was (automatically) by the time I had submitted my suspend. Notice how the automatic suspend is correct as far as time zone, but approximately 4 minutes slow.
This means there are two clocks being used, which can lead to a settlement appearing before the suspension. This has to be fixed.
The question of UTC/GMT versus PST, in terms of how the time is displayed, is not as important as the need for the time to be displayed correctly (in whatever format). I live in Toronto, Canada, which is EST (I guess in winter it's actually EDT, the "D" being "daylight" vs the "S" being "standard"), which is identical to the US EST. So using PST means I ALWAYS subtract 3 hours from my local time. With GMT I have to add 5 hours in the winter and only 4 in the summer (this is also precisely what my computer's time display does). I suppose it is slightly easier for me if we stick with PST, but imagine the difficulties for someone from Europe or Asia (who wouldn't normally make reference to PST) who has to keep track of the time difference based on number of time zones apart from California, when PST switches to PDT, as well as any local time changes, and all in reference to the HD clock which is off. GMT is great for this problem. No daylight time shift. One standard time from which all local times can be calculated. -
Inappropriate?Any chance of an official response please?
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Inappropriate?How about having the time zone being user configurable? I live in the CST/CDT zone, so I could set it for that. Others living elsewhere, could set it to display for their local zone. And by doing so, it (Hubdub) would automatically and accurately I hope, convert the time to what it needed to be for a given user.
I’m happy
1 Comment Add a comment
This solves the problem
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That should be possible right away. Remember having configured your country on the profile page? -
Inappropriate?Hmmm ... I first asked about this on March 9th ... the beginning of Daylight Savings Time in the US.
The question, and the response from Chris is here:
<http://getsatisfaction.com/hubdub/top...>
Back then, I said, "Ideally, the board would be configured for user-preference localization (user settings) such that any user (world-wide) could set their own time-offset from GMT (or UTC). I dunno how much of a hurdle that would be for HD to implement."
Much to my pleasure, I noted, soon thereafter, in the "create question function" that there was a user-configurable option to select the time zone for "Suspend Times".
Unfortunately, it didn't work, and trying to create an accurate Suspend Time was worse than ever. I sent a "Contact Us" message or two about it, but never heard anything.
Notwithstanding that all of the US isn't on Daylight Time (in some states, EST and EDT is done county-by-county -- Canada also has different and individual area observances), I agree that the absence of correct, accurate time is highly annoying, and I would cheer lead for this major glitch to be addressed quickly.
I’m thinking there's no present like the time.
1 Comment Add a comment
This solves the problem
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I note that Get Satisfaction's time is off as well ... Get Satisfaction says my initial question from March 9th was created "3 months ago". [sigh]
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Inappropriate?Guys
It's just been brought to my attention that this thread has gone unanswered. Please accept my apologies.
I will go and get my baseball bat and clobber a few people...
You'll get an official response soon, you have my word!
Lesley
I’m embarassed
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Inappropriate?The server runs on Pacific Time and does not change for daylight savings. To the best of my knowledge this means it runs year-round PST (PDT being the daylight-savings time which is currently in force on the west coast). Please correct me if I'm wrong about this.
Ideally the server would not be set to PST, rather it would be on UTC (GMT), since this is the only standard which doesn't ever change for daylight savings or other such shenanighans. It isn't however due to a piece of unfortunate planning when we developed the site.
Definately the appropriate fix for the problem is to make dates change to suit users timezones. This will happen eventually. It's an absolute pain to implement however, and we simply haven't had the time / people haven't complained loudly enough about the problems.
In terms of being out by a few minutes, the server is set to automatically update on a regular basis against internet time servers (this is fairly normal practice), and I've never noticed it to be out at all since this was implemented in february.
Sorry I haven't replied to this thread - it must have slipped through the net somehow1 Comment Add a comment
This solves the problem
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*COMPLAINLOUDLY*
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Inappropriate?It would help if all "transactions" were using the same clock. At the moment, a settlement request is timestamped correctly in PST and the automatic suspension is recorded as 4 minutes slow in PDT (56 minutes later than it should be). I'm not sure about the PDT part, that may be a mistake in the conversion to PST by the question creator. The problem shows up regularly in the Dow questions. Questions regularly suspend 3-4 minutes later than advertised (but settlement requests are "correct".)
Couldn't we have two extra boxes in user settings? First would be whether we want all times displayed in PST (or UTC) or in our local time. Second would be a drop box like for setting the suspend time in questions, which would allow us to select the time zone offset in hours and minutes. A clock on the dashboard would allow the user to figure out if they have chosen the correct offset.
As things stand, it would be really useful to add an explicit announcement about the PST (not PDT) for the clock, so that question creators get the right time for their time-critical suspensions. I know I've been subtracting 3 hours from my local time, when it should have been 4. I'm not alone in this error.3 Comments Add a comment
This solves the problem
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you have a country setting in your account details
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That would work for many countries, but not the larger ones like US and Canada. My idea is to let us adjust the time to our needs (time zone, standard/daylight-savings) and have all PST times display as our "local" time instead, if we wish). This would be independent from the suspend time setting pull-down menu when creating questions.
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oh, you can't state you state - I see it's meaningless than.
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Inappropriate?I have foxclocks on the bottom of my browser so i can know what time it is in my time zone, in the gmt/utc time zone, and also in edinburgh. I think we should simply go to GMT/UTC so there is a constant. People will learn it quickly enough.2 Comments Add a comment
This solves the problem
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FoxClocks is a great Firefox plugin. I even have Mumbai on mine for the sadly departed BSE markets. Actually, Chris's post means that we are running at GMT-8 (8 hours earlier than GMT) all year round, so we are running at a constant as is, This half of the problem thus boils down to a lack of clear information being given to users (eg. if you subtracted 3 hours from your local time to get PST in the winter (ie February), you should be subtracting 4 hours in the summer - assuming your region has daylight savings). This needs to be made very clear for all our users, especially those creating questions.
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infernalmachine, thanks for the hint: it's a cool plugin, very usefull
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Inappropriate?For a great article about the insanity of time zones, check out:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwor...
I’m amused
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