[From Bruce Nevin (54523.2002)]
Since the only function of the datestamp convention in the CSG-L header is to provide a unique, searchable and sortable identifier, I suggest getting the Julian Day number from e.g. http://www.csgnetwork.com/julianmodifdateconv.html and using that plus a conventional 24-hour clock time. This is exemplified above. Any objection?
/BNRe: Julian Day for datestamp
[From Martin Taylor 2008.02.27.23.37]
[From Bruce Nevin
(54523.2002)]
Since the only
function of the datestamp convention in the CSG-L header is to provide
a unique, searchable and sortable identifier, I suggest getting
the Julian Day number from e.g. http://www.csgnetwork.com/julianmodifdateconv.html and using that plus a conventional
24-hour clock time. This is exemplified above. Any
objection?
Do it as you like, so long as there is a unique identifier on
your message that can be tracked back through local or centralized
archives.
I think it’s nice to have the conventional date, though, because
it gives some idea of sequence. Personally, I don’t feel like going to
the extra trouble of looking up a date in an unfamiliar format when I
have a perfectly familiar date and time always at hand. But if it
turns you on to go to the extra trouble of finding the Julian date and
using that, I have no objection, so long as you don’t do it in the
street and scare the horses.
Martin
[From Bill Powers (2008.02.27.2247 MST)]
Bruce Nevin
(54523.2002) –Since the
only function of the datestamp convention in the CSG-L header is to
provide a unique, searchable and sortable identifier, I suggest getting
the Julian Day number from e.g.
http://www.csgnetwork.com/julianmodifdateconv.html and using that
plus a conventional 24-1047hour clock time. This is exemplified above.
Any objection?
Well, yes – who says that’s the only purpose? Why deliberately make it
unreadable by the person receiving the post, and also require using an
auxiliary program to construct the datestamp when one can do it with no
effort in one’s head? Is there some rule saying the datestamp can serve
only one purpose? Looking at my reference to your post above, I have no
idea when you sent it, except that it was probably some time after 10:02
PM on some day in some year. If you hadn’t added your name, others would
have no idea who I was replying to, or what day the reply was sent. As it
is, I don’t know who you’re talking to.
If the conventional datestamp we use bugs you so much, why not just stop
using it and leave it to the recipients to deal with your posts as they
will? As I said before, I won’t refuse to answer your posts if you don’t
use it. You may have noticed that when people leave the datestamp off, I
usually add their names before the “At 08:00 PM
2/27/2008 -0500, you wrote:” which Eudora supplies at the top
of the reply-to text, editing out the zone and “you wrote”
which is useless for a discussion list. That’s a bit of a nuisance but
not much.
If you take my datestamp at the top of this post:
[From Bill Powers (2008.02.27.2247 MST)]
(which appears at the top of the text in the reply-to message),
all you have to do is delete the “[From” and the “]”,
and add “–” to convert it to an identifier for quoted text you
are replying to (purpose 1), for the sake of others reading your reply
(purpose 2), leaving the text of your post searchable for author, date,
and time in a way that distinguishes it from posts containing a
“From” field but no “[From” field (purpose
3).
You will notice that in this reply
[From Bruce Nevin (54523.2000)]
… Casting Nets and Testing Specimens by Philip Runkel …
The revised and updated paperback edition will be available
at Amazon within two weeks…
… you didn’t take advantage of the datestamp in the sender’s
post, so I can’t tell from reading your post who you’re quoting. I happen
to have read Dag’s post first so I can figure it out, but why rely on
that?
Best,
Bill P.
[From Fred Nickols (2008.02.28.0703 MST)]
FWIW, I like the time-date stamp we
currently use. On occasion I fail to include it. My main use for it
isn’t to search but, having searched on text and found the message I’m
looking for, I can tell when it was posted. I like being able to do that.
Regards,
Fred Nickols
[From Bruce Nevin (2008.02.28.1035 EST)]
Ah, the difficulties of testing for controlled variables. Obviously more than one variable is being controlled here, at a number of levels.
Note that the Julian Day proposal brings no practical gain: you have to go to the website for the calculator, you still have to type YYMMDD (in separate fields of a web form!), and you have to copy and paste the result. That’s actually more work.
You didn’t notice and seize on the ridiculousness of the proposal. This might indicate that your attention was occupied by resisting disturbance to important variables that I had already disturbed, but that suggestion is slender indeed.
I thought that Martin had pared the complexity down a bit:
Martin Taylor 2008.02.23.10.32–
I don’t know whether the header date and time stamp is the same for all mailers and all locations (do they all give GMT - 5 hours, for example), so I don’t know whether someone who wants to search for the message I am quoting will find it by using the string I extract. With the ID tag, I can always find the referenced message, and I know that anyone else will see the same string if they want to search.
Evidently “GMT -5” or “EST” doesn’t matter, what matters is that the stamp be unique. Consistent with this, there’s no timezone indication in Martin’s tag. Without the timezone information, the message tag does not enable you to reconstruct the temporal sequence of messages. Even the DD part of YYMMDD is unreliable for a good many time/timezone combinations. Further, I seldom see agreement between the HHMM part and the actual time sent according to the message header, and some people seem actually to put in the time that they started writing the message. Apparently the message sequence variable is adequately controlled by the sequence of stamps quoted in replies, and by sorting messages in your mailbox by time received. Consequently, I first experimented with an offset of greater than 24 hours in the tag
Bruce Nevin (2008.02.22. 4744 EST)
This was on a message that I sent on 2/23, equivalent to (2008.02.23.2344 EST). If it disturbed any CV, it was not a sufficient disturbance for anyone to resist it by remarking it in a reply. Not strong evidence, but some. So then I increased the disturbance by pointing out a non-canonical timestamp, this time using the Julian date. Now maybe I’d have got the same response by pointing out the “4744” time of day, but I thought we had already established that the time of day (and even the day) is not reliable, and all that is needed is something to distinguish any pair of messages sent by the same person.
So because the Julian number meets the essential requirement of uniqueness, and because determining sequence of responses has to rely upon other means (primarily sequence of quotes, but also sorting messages by time received, though that is not entirely reliable either, given delivery lags), it is evident that there are other variables being controlled. I’m guessing these are of the “this is the way things are done around here” sort. I think I have been testing for that, but I don’t see any obvious way to verify other than pulling the cover off what I’m doing, as I have now done. This bears on larger questions of methodology for investigation of “social” variables, especially those that are controlled without awareness. (There are reasons that certain variables must be controlled without awareness, in order to ensure their authenticity. This is shown, for example, by the unease and mistrust that people feel when they realize that a person, e.g. an actor or politician, is adept at manipulating body language and other signals of sincerity, empathy, etc.
Investigation of such CVs can itself invoke such feelings because the investigator is seen to be manipulating variables by which group members make themselves reliable to one another. This is a serious problem with social psychological research. I have risked it here with what I hope is a relatively unimportant variable, for which I may be forgiven, but I do risk being wrong in that. I hope you will forgive my transgression.
/BN
From: Control Systems Group Network (CSGnet) [mailto:CSGNET@LISTSERV.UIUC.EDU] On Behalf Of Bill Powers
Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2008 1:24 AM
To:
CSGNET@LISTSERV.UIUC.EDU
Subject: Re: Julian Day for datestamp
[From Bill Powers (2008.02.27.2247 MST)]
Bruce Nevin (54523.2002) –
Since the only function of the datestamp convention in the CSG-L header is to provide a unique, searchable and sortable identifier, I suggest getting the Julian Day number from e.g. [http://www.csgnetwork.com/julianmodifdateconv.html](http://www.csgnetwork.com/julianmodifdateconv.html) and using that plus a conventional 24-1047hour clock time. This is exemplified above. Any objection?Well, yes – who says that’s the only purpose? Why deliberately make it unreadable by the person receiving the post, and also require using an auxiliary program to construct the datestamp when one can do it with no effort in one’s head? Is there some rule saying the datestamp can serve only one purpose? Looking at my reference to your post above, I have no idea when you sent it, except that it was probably some time after 10:02 PM on some day in some year. If you hadn’t added your name, others would have no idea who I was replying to, or what day the reply was sent. As it is, I don’t know who you’re talking to.
If the conventional datestamp we use bugs you so much, why not just stop using it and leave it to the recipients to deal with your posts as they will? As I said before, I won’t refuse to answer your posts if you don’t use it. You may have noticed that when people leave the datestamp off, I usually add their names before the "At 08:00 PM 2/27/2008 -0500, you wrote: " which Eudora supplies at the top of the reply-to text, editing out the zone and “you wrote” which is useless for a discussion list. That’s a bit of a nuisance but not much.
If you take my datestamp at the top of this post:
[From Bill Powers (2008.02.27.2247 MST)]
(which appears at the top of the text in the reply-to message), all you have to do is delete the “[From” and the “]”, and add “–” to convert it to an identifier for quoted text you are replying to (purpose 1), for the sake of others reading your reply (purpose 2), leaving the text of your post searchable for author, date, and time in a way that distinguishes it from posts containing a “From” field but no “[From” field (purpose 3).
You will notice that in this reply
[From Bruce Nevin (54523.2000)]
… Casting Nets and Testing Specimens by Philip Runkel …
The revised and updated paperback edition will be available
at Amazon within two weeks…… you didn’t take advantage of the datestamp in the sender’s post, so I can’t tell from reading your post who you’re quoting. I happen to have read Dag’s post first so I can figure it out, but why rely on that?
Best,
Bill P.
[From Bill Powers (2008.02.28.1334 MST)]
Bruce Nevin
(2008.02.28.1035 EST) –
You didn’t notice
and seize on the ridiculousness of the proposal. This might indicate that
your attention was occupied by resisting disturbance to important
variables that I had already disturbed, but that suggestion is slender
indeed.
Being too subtle never works for me, either.
It seems pretty clear that you wrote the above today, at 10:35 EST
(which, without the AM or PM, is on the 24-hour clock). To find that out,
I didn’t have to look for the header, or scroll to the bottom of the
post, or go back and look at the original message. Neither did anyone
else who wants to know to what and whom I’m replying. And when you reply
to me, there’s similar information in the first line of this post, two
inches above. If that makes life easier for you, great. If not, you can
ignore it.
However. I think it’s time that the number of lines in the posts in this
thread started to get smaller instead of larger. I’m going to keep
putting that date-time stamp at the start of my posts, and if I find one
in a post I’m replying to, I’ll use it as a convenient way to show who
I’m replying to and when it was written. If there isn’t any such
information, or it’s in a different format, I’ll still figure out how to
provide the information when I reply. If someone comes up with an even
quicker and easier way to provide the information in readily-usable form,
I’ll adopt it. And I predict that all the people on CSGnet will follow
whatever convention achieves their own goals.
Best,
Bill P.