There has historically been a lot of confusion around this network and time zones. This post will hopefully explain a few things that may be often misunderstood. Yes this is actually a serious post.
Eastern Time
Most of the public facets of the network operate in Eastern Time (America/New_York). There are several reasons why this is the case.
- Firstly, the network was founded in Eastern Time, so most of the first events were scheduled in this time zone.
- Most importantly, a majority of our users are from the United States and Canada. Since Eastern Time is the latest of all the major North American timezones, having this timezone as the primary timezone prevents us from sending announcements late at night.
Therefore, we ask all users on our discord servers to refrain from pinging people past midnight Eastern Time unless they know the person they are pinging lives outside this timezone.
Pacific Time
While historically Eastern Time has been the major timezone of the network, Pacific Time (America/Los_Angeles) has recently become the network's second major timezone. This is because @Reeb has recently moved there (and I run a lot of stuff).
- Many of the behind-the-scenes facets of the network operate in Pacific Time. This includes certain logging, debugging, and other networking operations that run critical aspects of the network.
- Many of the discord bots that run network systems including Reebot SG and Reebot II operate primarily in Pacific Time.
- Forums updates and Rust wipes also operate in Pacific Time.
This is why some of our event announcements are written in Pacific Time, however, Eastern Time is often included in these announcements. This is why we require the timezone to be specified in critical network announcements.
Why does this matter?
Well, outside of the fun time zone wars that often occur on this network (Pacific Time is the best by the way), this post primarily serves as a means of being transparent about how the network operates and schedules events. Please keep the above in mind when interacting with the network.