Last modified: 2011-06-06 21:56:52 UTC
It would be nice if there is a way to specify times on a wiki page in such a way that users see it in their own timezones. That is, I'm suggesting a new markup syntax, so that users will see a time as either "December 26, 2005 01:47 GMT" or "December 25, 2005 19:47 EST" (or something like that) depending on the timezone in their preferences. I was told on IRC that this would not be a desirable feature for something like Wikipedia (having user preferences prevents caching), but it should be a simple matter to implement, and other low-traffic sites using MediaWiki will benefit from it, IMHO.
Having user preferences does not prevent caching.
Timezone-based preferences would multiply space requirements for caching (or reduce the number of pages which can be held in cache), so I would still be pretty leery of it. This can be done with a tag extension and doesn't require core code changes.
Adding bug 19992 (JS client-side date formatting) as a dependency, as this is the most likely way to actually handle flexible date formatting (doesn't break parser cache, doesn't break HTTP cache, and allows even anonymous users with no login information to use their computer's timezone settings with no manual intervention).
