Wikipedia talk:Date math

User:Tim Starling wrote:

Any variable or template with a resolution of smaller than one day should not placed in articles. These variables only indicate when the article was parsed and cached, they may be lagged by many hours or even days compared to the time the page is viewed. [1]

...and I'm eager to comply. After all, I'm the one who started this whole mess :P

I was only really interested in getting info about timezones and daylight savings time to be updated automatically. So a reader could find out at a glance if a given part of Australia or a country in Europe is on Daylight saving.

The idea of showing the "current time" in New York (Eastern Daylight Time since April 2nd) or in any other time zone, was merely a curiosity. If it slows down the server or misleads the reader, then let's not do it.

I respect Tim a lot, and I think that whatever he recommends, we all should go along with. --Uncle Ed 15:58, 20 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm trying to figure out what this means in practical terms. For instance, does {{DYK-Refresh}} need to be retired? It is being used on Template talk:Did you know as an automatic 'update clock'. That's about as complicated as it gets with date math calculations, but it seems to update on every page view... is my browser somehow forcing a cache purge every time I view the page? Do the 'tomorrow' type templates always return tomorrow's date? They seem to for me, but that's where I don't understand the bit about the values being "lagged". --CBDunkerson 16:10, 20 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]