Reference date when creating Context

[hfinck]

Is it necessary to include a reference date when creating a Context?
@tgallice I assume you had reasons to put it there, but I feel this might not be useful for everyone.
I also reached out to wit.ai if fields like this, which in my case are not used, can confuse the bot model, but I did not receive any answer yet.
I would be glad if you can explain why it's there and if we generally need it.

    public function __construct($data = [])
    {
        // Ensure the refenre_date field
        if (empty($data['reference_date'])) {
            $data['reference_date'] = new \DateTime();
        }

        if ($data['reference_date'] instanceof \DateTime) {
            $data['reference_date'] = $data['reference_date']->format(DATE_ISO8601);
        }

        $this->data = $data;
    }

[tgallice]

If my memory is good, the reference_date help to define time entities. e.g tomorow, today etc... It's there to ensure that.

Maybe today it's not needed anymore, the Context is deprecated but nothing is defined to replace it... If you have some news, let me know :)

[hfinck]

Ah ok. I think they dropped this in favor of configuring a default timezone on the app.
This is convenient, but complicates things if you deal with users who are in different timezones :-(