should not have to pick a city to pick a timezone

Binary package hint: gnome-panel

The layout of the current location selector suggests that you should pick a location name before picking a timezone. As mentioned in the somewhat related bug #199597, I don't care about the weather functionality, so I shouldn't have to come up with a location name (or select one from the finder) to configure a timezone setting.

If you leave the location name blank and select a timezone, the location name is automatically configured for you, but there's no indication in the UI that this will happen. Likewise, if you use the location finder the timezone and lat/lon. will be populated for you, but a) only if your city is in the list, b) the finder window is so small by default that you have to scroll to see enough context to know you've picked the right city instead of another city of the same name, c) the location name populated by the finder is only the city name - whereas if you select the timezone first you get "<city>, <country>".

If bug #199597 were resolved to allow disabling weather handling altogether, then the "add location" dialogue when that option is set could be reduced to a simple timezone selector, with the location name, latitude, and longitude all implicit. I think that would be a major UI improvement here.