I think Wikipedia has it wrong actually after reading more closely. It’s not a way to solve the year 10,000 problem, as in a date formatting issue akin to Y2K, as Wikipedia suggests.
Instead it’s to get you thinking of the long term future.
The Wikipedia article does say that is the goal of the Long Now Foundation, but not how the leading 0 is related.
That's also idiotic because we don't put a leading zero in front of 1, 2 or 3 digit years, and neither will future historians put one in front of 4-digit ones - it's just gratuitously annoying.
Charlemagne was crowned in 800 AD, not in 0800 or 00800.
Pompeii was destroyed by the Vesuvius in 79 AD, not 079 or 0079 or 00079.
The battle of the Teutoburg Forest was in 9 AD, not 09, 009, 0009 or 00009.
Also why stop at 5 digits while you're being ridiculous?
I'm happy to expand for others; regardless of my feelings on the matter the Long Now use of a leading zero creates questions and engagement, thus spreading their message under the mantra of "there's no such thing as bad press" | "get the public talking".
It's an Advertising 101 strategy and not at all idiotic save perhaps at the surface of first exposure.
I've been reminded before that comparing hn commentary to reddit or other communities is itself a violation of hn guidelines. You can just upvote/downvote or "tap the sign" by posting the hn guidelines. No need for insinuating the redditization nor twitterization of hn commentary.
what distracts from my technical content is vacuous, aggressive replies to it by people who ask me to take responsibility for their behavior. no, thank you
to you too i ask: which of these two kinds of discourse are you engaging in right now?
if you're capable of the other one, i suggest you demonstrate that
your comment purports to be concerned with the objective qualities of mine: 'pointless', 'distracting', 'provocative'. but actually all of these terms are attempts to recast your subjective preferences as objective realities; all you're really writing about is how you feel when you read my comments. the implicit premise here is that other people ought to be writing their comments in order to satisfy your preferences
why? what makes you so admirable? what reason does anyone in the world have to value your opinion or consider your preferences important? if you want comments written to satisfy your preferences, write them yourself
as far as i can tell, like 38, gruturo, and spencerflem, you're just a person who harasses strangers on internet fora if you think they talk funny, then blames your own behavior on them
you want to know what i feel?
because it sure isn't admiration and eagerness to satisfy you
Dude, they've got a point, your style is annoying and not even right in a "technically correct" sorta way. You don't write things that happened 5 AD as 00005 AD.
Personally, I can take the 0abcd style of years without going crazy, but it definitely derails my reading flow a bit. I would compare it to writing personal names without capitals, like donald trump.
But I also know that it is kragen commenting without looking at the header :)
