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Post by Sir Alexandreu Davinescu on May 4, 2016 11:08:19 GMT -6
Deputy Minister of Interior, with special responsibility for the ID Cards Project _______________________________
We're getting ready to offer the first round of Talossan ID cards to the public, and we're looking at a redesign. But in keeping with our policy of seeking open input and offering everyone a chance to help out their country -- new citizen and old, coalition member or otherwise -- we'd like to open up the question of the redesign to the public! We're definitely going to be updating the language (including correcting one typo and fixing the Talossan) and changing it a bit, but if you have a flashy idea in mind -- pitch it to us! You can post it here, send me a link in PM, or email your idea to finance@talossa.com. The old ID cards looked like this: Any ideas you might have are welcome We'll be waiting for your submissions! Don't dawdle... the first issue of ID cards will be at the end of the month!
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Óïn Ursüm
Posts: 1,032
Talossan Since: 3-10-2009
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Post by Óïn Ursüm on May 4, 2016 14:05:23 GMT -6
Spelling correction: ertreir -> erteier (RTer)
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Post by Sir Alexandreu Davinescu on May 4, 2016 14:11:42 GMT -6
Yup, we know. Thanks though!
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Ián Tamorán S.H.
Chief Justice of the Uppermost Court
Proud Philosopher of Talossa
Posts: 1,401
Talossan Since: 9-27-2010
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Post by Ián Tamorán S.H. on May 4, 2016 14:30:48 GMT -6
Is there any way we can use the International (Standard) form of dates (ISO 8601), please? For everyone except the USA this card specifies the eleventh day of the twenty-eight month. The European (and more usual) way of representing dates is DD-MM-YY. But the International Standard is YYYY-MM-DD. Thus today (the fourth day of the fifth month) is 2016-05-04. My birthday is the 22nd of April, or 1945-04-22. Talossan live in many places - it would be, well, cruel to force the only-USA forms of dates on the non-USA Talossans.
...And are we going to include the Talossan dates as well?
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Post by Sir Alexandreu Davinescu on May 4, 2016 14:49:50 GMT -6
We'll probably use the formatting that's fairly standard (or supposed to be) across the wiki: "4 May 2016/XXXVII" or 3 Aug 2017/XXXVIII." That should avoid ambiguity and also include the Talossan dates.
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Post by Iason Bitxichë Taiwos on May 4, 2016 14:54:54 GMT -6
I'd go with the International Standard. Also, maybe designate the citizens province on the card. As for waiting for submissions, don't hold your breath, everybody is too busy working on TalossaWare designs...(sarcasm)
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Ián Tamorán S.H.
Chief Justice of the Uppermost Court
Proud Philosopher of Talossa
Posts: 1,401
Talossan Since: 9-27-2010
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Post by Ián Tamorán S.H. on May 4, 2016 15:05:01 GMT -6
We'll probably use the formatting that's fairly standard (or supposed to be) across the wiki: "4 May 2016/XXXVII" or 3 Aug 2017/XXXVIII." That should avoid ambiguity and also include the Talossan dates. <Ahem> Not so. The only standard way of representing dates - which is widely used outside of the USA is (as I have said) YYYY-MM-DD. Does your use of the word "standard" include Japan and China? I think not. Moreover giving the months their English names is ... I'm not sure what the word is that matches "sexist" or "speciesist" , let's try "tongue-ist" ... narrowing down the representations of dates to English speakers. And though English is widely (almost, but not quite, universally) used in Talossa, it is not our national language. If we avoid (and I strongly believe we should not) the international standard for dates, then (at the very least) let us use Talossan dates in the Talossan language. And only then will they be unambiguous - for Talossan-speakers.
Is there a definitive statement anywhere, from an internationally recognised standards body, that recommends a date format other than ISO 8601 on the internet?
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Ián Tamorán S.H.
Chief Justice of the Uppermost Court
Proud Philosopher of Talossa
Posts: 1,401
Talossan Since: 9-27-2010
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Post by Ián Tamorán S.H. on May 4, 2016 15:12:52 GMT -6
Moreover if you look at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country you will see that most of the world uses either DMY or YMD - and the number of users across the world (according to that page) is over four thousand nine hundred million people, as opposed to the three hundred and twenty million that use the USA format.
Please let's use the ISO 8601 form, and include the (about) five thousand million people who use DMY or YMD, but who can all understand the ISO format.
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Post by Sir Alexandreu Davinescu on May 4, 2016 15:56:24 GMT -6
The whole sentence, absent parentheses, was "fairly standard across the wiki." And indeed, that's the data format most used there. I was not saying it was the international standard. But since, as you point out, the most commonly used formats are very similar in appearance yet different in actual content between most of the world and the Americas, and when taking into account that our population hails from both areas, I think it would be confusing for a whole different other set of people to do yyyy-mm-dd, just like mm-dd-yyyy would be confusing to a whole lot of people, too. I will say, too, that any format seems necessarily to need to end with the year, so that the Talossan year can be appended (which would also be a bit more awkward to my eye if we did it with ISO 8601)
The choice of dd-mmm-yyyy/t (apparently also called RFC 5322, if you want a name from a standards body) has the benefit of confusing no one at all, whereas if we choose ISO 8601 then we will confuse our large American-Talossan population... just as much as we'd confuse everyone else with mm-dd-yyyy! After all, what could possibly be ambiguous about 3 May 2016/XXXVII? Can someone mistake "May" or "Aug" for anything other than the month? And they're in escalating order of size, as well.
To illustrate, here are some of our options: 04-03-2016/XXXVII 2016/XXXVII-03-03 03-04-2016/XXXVII 3 Apr 2016/XXXVII
As you can see, the suggested format has the benefit of being clear to our whole diverse population, while others may confuse some (orindeed, may confuse everyone, since it's not even apparent which format is being used at first blush on some of them).
The Talossan names for Talossan months is an interesting thing. Talossan English is overwhelmingly our common tongue, though. I'm not sure a date that's meant to be informative is the best place to try to force people to start learning the names of the months in Talossan. Maybe it could be added in a Talossan-language parallel right above, so people know what month "Lis" or "Zec" might be?
This might need to be kicked up the chain of command, though.
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Post by Danihel Txechescu on May 5, 2016 9:42:08 GMT -6
[...]I think it would be confusing for a whole different other set of people to do yyyy-mm-dd, just like mm-dd-yyyy would be confusing to a whole lot of people, too. What? How could that be confusing? In that you discount the year and then are left with two numbers out of which it'd be difficult to deduct which is what? This very same thing applies to the US way of dating, so in that regard the US version is equally "not as good", if you'd want to say so. But, really, the ISO standard leaves little room to confusion there. The format to YYYY-NUM-NUM has *never*, to my recollection, been used as YYYY-DD-MM. [...]The choice of dd-mmm-yyyy/t (apparently also called RFC 5322, if you want a name from a standards body) has the benefit of confusing no one at all, whereas if we choose ISO 8601 then we will confuse our large American-Talossan population... Really? I would think that YEAR-NUM-NUM is way less confusing than the Talossan year, anyway, and since said American-Talossan population would be the ID holders, they sure would know what to make out of that "weird" date. As for DD-MMM-YYYY, I'd be totally on-board except for the fact that, as Ián has mentioned, it's too tongue'ist. [...]Maybe it could be added in a Talossan-language parallel right above, so people know what month "Lis" or "Zec" might be? I have seen that and would be OK with that, IF and only IF the ID card will be in both English and Talossan. Please let's use the ISO 8601 form, and include the (about) five thousand million people who use DMY or YMD, but who can all understand the ISO format. I subscribe Ián's words. FWIW, My passport uses the format "DD MM YYYY" and it's never been ambiguous.
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Post by Sir Alexandreu Davinescu on May 5, 2016 10:13:31 GMT -6
If I put "08-01-2016/XXXVII" on the ID cards, and you didn't already know, then to what date would you assume it refers? Presumably, you'd say January 8th, 2016. But many Americans and some portion of Canadians -- who form a substantial part of our population -- would say that they'd assume this meant August 1st, 2016. And so either mm-dd-yyyy or dd-mm-yyyy is going to be misleading to one large segment of our population or another. Indeed, the fact that many Talossans will be aware of the fact that our country contains people who use both formats means that they're even more confusing than usual, since someone from Italy might not know if an American-Talossan created the design, or vice-versa.
Rather than choosing which group to mislead, it seems obvious to me that the best choice is instead to use a format that is ambiguous to neither at the cost of only a single additional character. The point of the date, after all, is to easily inform all Talossans about when they were issued.
When a redesign is done, I'll definitely look into trying to include the Talossan month name, if possible.
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Post by Danihel Txechescu on May 5, 2016 10:47:08 GMT -6
Alex, you just stated your previous points again, and seem not to have talked about anything I said. Was I redundant with what Ián said? If I put "08-01-2016/XXXVII" on the ID cards, and you didn't already know, then to what date would you assume it refers? Why would you even do that? I thought we agreed that the formulae that begin with month or day are ambiguous. [...]Rather than choosing which group to mislead, it seems obvious to me that the best choice is instead to use a format that is ambiguous to neither at the cost of only a single additional character. Are those characters expensive? If so, we might forget about the English month and the Talossan year altogether. If they are not expensive, then YYYY-MM-DD is ambiguous to " neither" group. The point of the date, after all, is to easily inform all Talossans about when they were issued. [...] Yes, and ISO 8601 is the vehicle to do just that. This easy to understand format also happens to be an official standard. I don't think using a standard format for a date is too much to ask of a modern Talossan -- they have endured grasping more difficult things, really. Again, DD-MMM-YYYY in Talossan (and optionally English, if and only if other data fields will be provided in English) also has my vote, but ISO 8601 is preferable.
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Post by Sir Alexandreu Davinescu on May 5, 2016 11:03:30 GMT -6
Perhaps I'm not expressing myself well. Certainly, I must not be.
Re: the Talossan month: No, the characters aren't expensive -- just another fraction of a cent worth of ink -- but the space on the design is the "expense."
ISO 8601 specifies the year first. As I initially said, I think that's unwieldy in appearance, since to most people the most meaningful information is the Arabic numerals for the date, rather than the Roman numerals for the Talossan year. Again, just as with the Talossan months, we're not quite there yet -- I know I certainly don't think in terms of the Talossan date, practically speaking. This interruption in the parsing of information is probably the source of the awkwardness of that format when the Talossan year is included, although that's very subjective.
I will make every effort to include Talossan month-abbreviations.
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Ián Tamorán S.H.
Chief Justice of the Uppermost Court
Proud Philosopher of Talossa
Posts: 1,401
Talossan Since: 9-27-2010
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Post by Ián Tamorán S.H. on May 5, 2016 16:34:48 GMT -6
Whether ISO 8601 is unwieldy or not is just a matter of personal opinion. Whether you, or I, or anyone else, likes it or not, it is the standard. No-one (and I mean no-one) will be confused by its use.
You ask "If I put "08-01-2016/XXXVII" on the ID cards, and you didn't already know, then to what date would you assume it refers?" - and that precisely states the base problem: that sequence of characters conveys nothing, because it is ambiguous. That's part of what ISO 8601 gets over and solves. To most people (not Americans - as they are less that 5% of the world's population) YYYY-MM-DD is (a) unambiguous, (b) standard, and ( c) for many of them, is already the date format that they use day by day - that's more than one thousand six hundred million people. The bulk of the rest use DMY as the ordering, and that' well over three thousand two hundred million. I am talking about 95% percent of the world's population. And, let's be honest, YYYY-MM-DD is instantly comprehensible to USA readers too.
If Talossa is to be truly universal, then it must avoid mere Americanisms. The USA is a perfectly good country - but it is a very small minority in the world - just three hundred and twenty million. Let's go for the International standard - to which we can add a solidus followed by the Talossan year number, without causing any confusion. Two more characters for the century? If they are too expensive, then the design is wrong. Not poor, wrong.
I am digging my heels in here. You asked for help in graphic design? Well, here is some of that help.
(BTW - there is lots of space on the obverse - does the date have to be on the reverse?)
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Post by Sir Alexandreu Davinescu on May 5, 2016 16:48:42 GMT -6
Ian, I'm not going to use the American standard for many of the reasons you say, since it would be confusing to people in much of the world but I also don't think it's a good idea to use ISO 8601 for other reasons to which you allude -- namely that it stands a good chance of confusing Americans, who may only be 5% of the world's population but are at least 50% of the population of Talossa.* To them, it's not unambiguous or standard or the date format that they use day to day. I know that you wish it was and I might even agree with you. But ideally this information will be accessible to all -- so I don't intend to do it the American way or the ISO 8601 way, but rather a way that isn't ambiguous to either population. I don't think I would be doing my job very well if I deliberately chose to communicate information in a way that was confusing to half the the citizenry!
All of that said, I do really appreciate your perspective and that of others here, and I hope you in your own turn can recognize that I really am trying to serve the whole country. After all, what's natural and "obvious" to me is the American way... and I'm not using that, either! I just want every Talossan, no matter where in the world they live, to be able to easily see and understand at a glance what is meant by the date. That means trying to ensure it can be easily parsed (c.f. what I said before about the potential problems with the year at the start) and immediately obvious to people, no matter where they live.
As to where the date has to be, it doesn't have to be anywhere. I designed these cards years and years ago, and I'm not particularly married to the way it looks. I just did my best, and thought I'd open it up here to anyone who can do better.
*I don't have exact numbers on hand, but data from three years ago shows that a significant majority of Talossans are American-Talossans.
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