April Fool's Day changes should be based on the user's time zone

Question

No, this isn't a duplicate of all the normal "make badges and the rep cap day local" requests. It's very specific to April 1st.

Users should be required to specify their time zone next time they log in to Stack Overflow:

• Don't try to guess it from JavaScript. That will be ambiguous.
• Don't present a list; lazy users will just pick a random entry
• Insist on both the Windows system ID for the time zone and the Olsen database name. That way there's no room for ambiguity.
• If a user can't get a valid combination after 3 attempts, suspend them. They're clearly not trying hard enough.
• Allow a user to change their time zone only when the date of their current time zone is the same as the date within the new time zone.
• Periodically confirm their time zone by giving them pop quiz on when their DST will next change (if at all).

Then, and only then, can we make sure that any April Fool's Day specific features show up at the right time.

Answer 1

I disagree.
I'm Israeli, we set DST at random intervals according to local politics, and I will sure to fail that test.
The jokes belong on Purim, Adar 14 according to the Hebrew calendar, and Adar 15 on ancient cities surrounded by walls. On leap years, the Jewish calendar has another month - Adar A and Adar B, and Purim is held on Adar B. Of course, if that falls on a Sabbath, the holiday can be postponed by a day. Now, implement that.

Answer 2

To make it complete we should also make sure we collect the cultural preferences for the users, to properly present special features on the correct local fools' day, According to Wikipedia there are a number of other days to take into account:

• 1st or 2nd of April in Iran, depending on exactly when the Persian new year occurs.
• December 28th in many Spanish-speaking countries (should be the default for a Spanish version of SO).
• 1st of May in Denmark and southernmost Sweden.
• The Israeli rules according to @Kobi's post.

Answer 3

Why limit it to the current day? Users viewing historical questions might get confused when their time zone doesn’t match the time zones in effect when the question was asked. Using the historical tzdata information as a reference, require the user to correctly distinguish "summer time", "war time", "United States standard eastern time", and the like; and to correctly figure out what time it is on any given day in arbitrary cities of Indiana.

Answer 4

Seconded. Otherwise, the site could be in April Fool's mode for hours after it has already ended in the user's time zone. TIt would reflect poorly on Stack Overflow's professionalism.

The pop quiz would have to be really quick (like, ten seconds) to prevent cheating. Also, it needs some blinking lights and sound.

Also, thanks @jleedev, only one spelling of each time zone name can be allowed. Every deviation must result in a ban.

Answer 5

I decry all of this cultural relativism. If internet history teaches us anything, it is that April Fool's Day begins whenever it is April 1st anywhere and that the worst faux pas is to release an April Fool's Day joke early (releasing it late is just lame). Due to the spotty international connectivity of the early internet, there is a mistaken belief that it must be April Fool's Day on the east coast of the US. Due to this belief, it is sometimes considered safest, to avoid the cardinal sin of releasing the joke early, to wait until 12:00AM ET before unleashing the hounds. Informed netizens know, however, that as soon as it hit's April 1st on the International Date Line the jokes are acceptable.

On a related note, I understand that they've recently replaced kremvax with a quad-core PC running Ubuntu Server-Edition and are bringing up a StackOverflow clone on it.