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Not been following this much, and am on vacation, but in my experience these
disagreements often result from unclear use case and requirements
understandings.  Is that possible here?
On Dec 23, 2010 2:07 PM, "Ray Denenberg" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Simon - I am preplexed, and indeed somewhat confused by your response.
>
>
>
> Why prioritize a decade?
>
> One, because we can. We can do it by masking a single character. Two,
since most of the world uses a decimal system, the decade, as a reference
point, just as the century (though less well-defined), have become popularly
used reference points. If nine had been the chosen radix for our number
system rather than ten (which probably would have been a beter choice) then
we would be distinguishing nine year and 90 year intervals instead.
>
> If you have no requirment to represent a decade that's fine, nor do I, but
if Ed does - and he is a stakeholder in this process - we should find a way
to support this requirement.
>
>
>
> I am trying to understand your position on the meaningfullness (or lack)
of a date, and take it that you don't think that the representation of days,
years, etc. are meaningful (and thus not worth standardizing) unless they
are "aligned to common chronological divisions". I confess that I may not
fully understand what you mean but I take it to mean that a year, say, 1984,
is not sufficiently defined without a precise start and end point including
a time zone and a calendar designator. Please forgive me if I am
misrepresenting your position.
>
>
>
> What we are trying to do here is build a specification that meets needs
which range from simple to complex, with solutions whose complexities are
proportional to the complexities of the needs. Well that goes without
saying, that's what standards are supposed to do, but my point is, this work
started off as an effort on behalf of data entry people who want to do
things like enter a year of publication into a form, a year like 1986, and
"1986" has quite enough specificity for their needs. Those users represent a
large part of the constituency of this effort. We also want to satisfy more
complex scientific requirments if possible but not by sacrificing the simple
solutions for simple requirments.
>
>
>
> --Ray
>
>
>
>
>
> From: Discussion of the Developing Date/Time Standards [mailto:
[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Simon Grant
> Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2010 4:30 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [DATETIME] precision and decade
>
>
>
> This discussion seems rather shaky to me, because it seems to build too
much on weak foundations.
>
>
>
> I maintain that, at the level at which it is of interest to us, there is
no coherent concept of a particular day/week/year/decade/century as an
entity in its own right, and that therefore there is no point (and that's on
the generous side) to elaborating this.
>
>
>
> What does make common sense (and is therefore worth elaborating if
possible) is
>
> (a) that an event happened within a given time interval, and for ease of
reference (only) the boundaries of that time interval may be aligned to
common chronological divisions
>
> (b) that there is a set of events (constrained in some other way, as it is
impossible to catalogue all events in any time interval) that happened
within a certain time interval -- as (a), for convenience common boundaries
are often used. This may be what people have in mind when they refer to a
day, week, month, year, decade, century or whatever. I maintain it is the
only sense in which those time concepts can be meaningfully reified. Note,
however, that those with different calendars will be grouping together
different sets of things when they say, for instance, "that was a hard
month".
>
>
>
> There is nothing universal about any particular time interval. Why
prioritise a decade in a decimal calendar over some other interval of years
in some other calendar? The closer I consider things, the more arbitrary a
decade or a century appears. Hence my preference (and willingness to argue)
for a primary, general system of points and intervals, and only secondary
and less important (and only if trouble-free) some notations for selecting
ranges of years etc. etc.
>
>
>
> The precisions mentioned here are fully dependent on the time system and
calendar, and therefore only "scientific" inasmuch as our current science
uses these units and this numbering system. I do *not* believe they are
worthy of standardization.
>
>
>
> Simon
>
> On 21 December 2010 19:37, Denenberg, Ray <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Rereading the recent (and not so recent) discussion I'm trying find a way
to move this along, particularly the issue of precision. Ed seems to be the
one most interested and he said:
>
>> At the heart of things I also don't want us to confuse dates with
>> intervals.
>> If I say something occurred in the 1960s I don't want to have to use
>> intervals
>> just as I don't have to use intervals to talk about 12 Sept 1933 (which
>> is
>> again saying something different from 1933-09-12T00:00Z/1933-09-
>> 12T23:59Z).
>>
>> I suggest we in generally have the following precisions:
>> - second
>> - minute
>> - hour
>> - day
>> - week
>> - month
>> - year
>> - decade
>> - century
>
> We have the precision Ed seeks for: second, minute, hour, day, week,
month, and year.
>
> Which leaves decade and century. Century is a separate discussion unto
itself. I will treat that in a separate thread.
>
> So let's just talk about decade for the moment.
>
> Ed supports the 'x' approach: where we let 196x mean the decade, 1960s.
>
> There are reasonable arguments against this, but I'm willing to go along
with it if it will move us forward. We're only talking about this for decade
(and possibly century).
>
> Comments, please.
>
> --Ray
>
>
>
>
> --
> Simon Grant
> +44 7710031657
> http://www.simongrant.org/home.html
>