For those of us who might wish to keep our “Region” private, could there be a couple of Doctor Who-related options for funsies? I’m just thinking Gallifrey and Skaro. Just for a bit of cuteness?
I keep it hidden by leaving it on default. But that would be cool! Planets, dimensions, or locations in Doctor Who.
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The Matrix and The Land of Fiction would be good regions to have listed…
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I only suggested 2 so the list wouldn’t get silly and overwhelming, but hey. (Plus Shauny might say no anyway 
)
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Well, Shauny’s already got a locations list for stories he could just reuse, so he could just have an option to show a real location or a location you choose from that list, making the number of options not a terribly big deal…
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Idk if it matters but even if you hide your location it shows your current time (I’m guessing with your location) so idk if the time matters when it comes to whatever behind the scenes so using places that don’t have a UTC time zone could cause problems… But idk anything about coding or whatnot
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Interesting! I didn’t realize it even had the time there. I guess mine is set to UTC/Zulu (I usually do):
Good find.
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Moved this to a new topic - it’s so much easier for me to manage requests like these when they have their own topic and are not all bundled in the ‘diary’ topic (which is meant to show what’s new).
As for your request - not really possible on the forum as it needs to be real locations (as you’ve found out, it powers timezones and other things). But it could be something I do on main site profiles!
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Is there a possibility of you assigning a fake location to a real timezone, like saying that Skaro is at EST, etc.? Or is that handled directly by the forum backend?
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Is that not the same as manually having what you want as a location and setting your time zone how you want? Like on mine and Shauny’s? I mean the end result would be similar, I think. But I agree, the region thing would be cool. Now that I think about it, I genuinely don’t know how it differs.
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My real question here is what is up with the different German regions. Like the states make sense even if these are very odd and unusual abbreviations (I assume US-Americans asked for states and someone was actually smart enough to add that that’s not the only federal country in the world) but why is there a specific region for Augsburg. Or for what I’m assuming is catholics in Thuringia and Bavaria. Especially Bavaria because they are overwhelmingly catholic?? I guess Sorbian would make some sense but then why not any other national minorities?
I am deeply puzzled
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That is oddly confusing. I just checked, for Discourse it’s based on holiday calendar selector (based on the holiday calendar plugin) not really on actual region.
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Wild. I did not actually know there were differences in which days are holidays within any german states, only in between ones [1]. Fascinating
always a bit jelaous haha i live in one with rather few ↩︎
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Last year when I went on my trip to Southeast Asia, I got a real thrill out of setting it to Bangkok time. I’m not sure if anyone noticed it, though. When I first joined, I was in Eastern [U.S.], and now I am in Central, which is a bit rarer on the forum. I enjoy seeing other people’s time zones.
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Now you remind me. I’m actually in Bangkok now
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Oh, that is cool. I feel the only cool place I’ve been to in the last few months is New Jersey. I wonder if they have special time zone for that! It’s bound to impress someone somewhere![1] /lh
I need to travel more, you all go to cool places!
I’m kidding, I travel but never anywhere as cool as Thailand! Sounds exciting. ↩︎
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We do have this little thread:
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They do. It’s called Eastern Time. 
If you can visit Arizona between March and November, it has a special time zone because it is the only continental U.S. state to not observe Daylight Savings Time.[1]
If it makes you feel better, for the past year I have lived a boring life of penance as I try to recover from the thrill of my travels and degree completion that I did in the first half of 2025. I tend not to brag as much about doing nothing.
Part of the reason I saved up the money to go to Southeast Asia is to make me seem more interesting in conversations, so thank you for helping me pay off my investment.
And then there’s the Navajo reservation in Arizona that’s the exception to this rule, and the Hopi reservation that is an enclave within the Navajo reservation that’s the exception to that rule. ↩︎
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Now that I’ve looked into this a bit more, the actual “Region” you choose only seems to affect how certain things are formatted:
It affects things like how dates and times are displayed: for example, whether a date appears in a US-style format or UK-style format, and whether times tend toward 12-hour or 24-hour conventions. Timezone is separate because timezone controls the actual offset/conversion of times, while Region controls presentation conventions.
Also this “Region” setting is not public and is never displayed to other users.
You can of course add custom Location fields which do actually show, so you can type anything here for fun, see mine:
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Damn. I feel like an idiot for not even noticing the custom “Location” field. Never mind. Great thread everyone. As you were!
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