[Wikimedia-l] Office hours for VisualEditor

[Maggie Dennis]

On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 12:43 PM, Isarra Yos <zhorishna at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 30/10/13 16:32, Bjoern Hoehrmann wrote:
>
>> * Risker wrote:
>>
>>> Just to clarify, since 0000 UTC is a confusing time for most of us...is
>>> that the minute after 2359 UTC on November 2 (i.e., 7 hours after the
>>> first
>>> session), or is it the minute after 2359 UTC on November 3?
>>>
>>> I've seen it used both ways so I just want to be clear.
>>>
>> Could you elaborate on this confusion and where you think it is common?
>> The 24 hour clock divides a day into 24 hours from 0 to 23 starting at
>> midnight. 23:59 is 23 hours and 59 minutes after 00:00 on the same day.
>>
>>    2013-11-03T00:00Z --+
>>    2013-11-03T00:01Z   |
>>    ...                 |
>>    2013-11-03T00:59Z   |-- November 3rd
>>    2013-11-03T01:00Z   |
>>    ...                 |
>>    2013-11-03T23:59Z --+
>>    2013-11-04T00:00Z
>>    ...
>>
>> The minute after 2013-11-03T23:59Z is on November 4th. I do understand
>> that when setting a deadline you are better off giving the end of a day
>> as deadline so the time is up when the day is over, otherwise people see
>> a contradiction and get confused, but beyond that I've not encountered
>> this particular confusion.
>>
> It's probably more common in places where people use 12-hour time for more
> things. Because many 12-hour conventions make absolutely no sense, folks
> can learn to expect time standards to make no sense and then don't know
> whether or not to expect 24-hour time to make sense because the precedent
> they're used to says it may not either.
>
> So while 24-hour time does follow fairly logical conventions, if we're
> less used to using it we won't necessarily know to expect that, which might
> explain some of the confusion.


I think you're probably onto something there, Isarra. :) (I hate the 12
a.m./p.m. confusion.)

The Combined Communications Electronics Board at least at one point
recommended avoiding 0000 because of its potential to confuse - see
http://jcs.dtic.mil/j6/cceb/acps/acp121/ACP121I.pdf, section 327 (page  25
of the pdf). (Thank you, Wikipedia. :D)

Maggie