Talk:Civil time

Time of Day is completely different than this article

This article is about the legally established time in a place. Time of day is about the time in a specific day. These are two very different topics Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (please tag me) 19:29, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

I disagree, at least in part. Time of day is an established means of marking times within the day. In most civilized societies, law or custom establishes the scheme to be used for doing this. I think it's accurate to describe systems like the Roman or Babylonian ones as "civil time". Are there examples of systems for dividing up the day that can't be described as "civil time"?--Srleffler (talk) 06:32, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

@Srleffler I partially forgot the logic on my talk page earlier, but I consider a time of day to be something which occurs between days. i.e. Noon and Midnight are times of day. So the Time of Day article would be the main article for the category Category:Parts of a day.You have 3:30 pm every day, not just once, and you have dusk every day. This is distinct from the legally determined time that it is currently. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (talk to the cutest Wikipedian) 06:44, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

For reference the German version of the category de:Kategorie:Tageszeit has directly the same name as the German article for Time of Day de:Tageszeit. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (talk to the cutest Wikipedian) 06:50, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

In English "time of day" is a more common term for "civil time". "Civil time" is likely to be used when other time scales are being used in parallel with it, and there is a need to distinguish which is which. Other time scales that might be used are Universal Time or International Atomic Time. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:16, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Would you both agree that "time of day" is a broader concept than civil time? One option here might be to move this article to Time of day and broaden its scope so that it includes both legally defined times and solar event times like noon and midnight. I don't think we should have both Time of day and Civil time, but perhaps we need the former rather than the latter. (ping Immanuelle)--Srleffler (talk) 13:55, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

There are already two articles that might cover what Srleffler proposes as a "Time of day" article. One is Local time and another is Local mean time. Perhaps, rather than changing this article, it would suffice to add "Local time" and "Local mean time" to {{Time Topics}} or {{Time measurement and standards}} templates, or both. These templates are already in the "External links" section of the "Civil time" article. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:13, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

@Srleffler I agree with this I think we should move it to Time of day.

I really like how you’ve gone with the article and think time of day is a broader concept as I mentioned in the deleted talk page message Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (talk to the cutest Wikipedian) 14:17, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

I oppose moving this article to "Time of day". I believe "Local time" encompasses the broader idea of time of day, so rather than move this article, "Local time" should be improved. I would agree to changing the redirect "Time of day" so it goes to "Local time". Jc3s5h (talk) 14:23, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

I agree that Local time should be merged. It's not clear to me that that is the best title. WP:COMMONNAME would seem to favor Time of day. Why do you disagree?--Srleffler (talk) 14:51, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

[edit conflict] I concur with Jc3s5h's analysis and conclusion.

BTW, the historic antecedent in the UK for civil time was "Railway time", which was the local time in London but not elsewhere. Were you to have asked someone in Exteter for the time of day in the mid 19C, they would have given you the time according to the clock on Exeter Cathedral: 14 minutes behind GMT. Civil time in Great Britain was formally established in law by the Statutes (Definition of Time) Act 1880. So although Jc3s5h's earlier statement that "time of day" is a more common term for "civil time" is true today, historically it was arguably not true. ["Arguably" only if "civil" need not equal "statutory".] --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 14:54, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Which kind of leans me towards rather than away from my proposal: There is a need for an article on the broader concept of time of day, which encompasses ancient definitions, apparent solar time, local mean time, railway time, and various modern civil times. That article could cover the history of the various time systems, with links to the more specific articles. Given the existence of such an article as well as the more specific ones such as Coordinated Universal Time, it's not clear to me that we would need a separate article on "civil time" anymore.--Srleffler (talk) 16:19, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

In either case, we still need Civil time as a distinct topic, which is not the same as local time (especially for natives of far western China, for example).

"Time of day" and "Local time" are among those " 'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less' " expressions so yes a broad concept article would be useful. Whether we need two saying broadly the same thing is more dubious. All the other terms are quite well defined, so present much less of a problem but equally need their own articles. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 18:07, 10 April 2023 (UTC)