Take the 2-minute tour ×  This question is in regards to the
standard list of timezones in the tzinfo aka Olson Timezone
Database.  example 1: I have noticed that America/New_York or
America/Detroit (known as "exemplar cities", see
http://www.w3.org/International/docs/timezones/#tzids) are used
instead of US/Eastern.  example 2: In Canada the Mountain
timezone is usually described as America/Edmonton instead of
Canada/Mountain. There are parts of British Columbia that are on
Mountain Time, yet their timezone is specified as
America/Edmonton (which is in Alberta).  In these cases, why
would the region/exemplar city option be used instead of the
country/zone version? There must have been a reason that the
country/zone version was created in the first place, but why is
it there if it isn't the preferred way?  This is mostly an issue
when a country has more than one timezone.  Is there a best
practices somewhere that says why one is preferred over the
other?  (P.S. this is a difficult issue to Google for, as you