I think before going further, some thought should be put into how date/time values are actually displayed. For instance, the timeline is only one of many places a date is shown. To solve this problem correctly, we should store the timezone offset for each user, then let the user decide if *all* date and time values should be displayed in UTC or in their local timezone. As it stands now it's either UTC or the server's timezone, which is only of value if you happen to be in the same timezone as the server you are accessing.

This change, however, is not a 5 minute change.