That's an interesting - and falsifiable - observation.

Quick check: 1984 rates 15103 mentions, 01984 42. So about 0.3%.

For 2015 it is 69000 vs 89 for 02015.

But not all of those are years, there are some other cases in there as well.

That was a synthesized example of how they insert years seemingly for the sake of formatting it weirdly. Now that I’ve pointed it out to you, next time you see this come up, ask yourself if anyone else would have mentioned a date in that context.

If I were them, I might end this comment with “I haven’t seen it done like that since I first got online, in around 01993.”

It's a bit like vegetarians/vegans or people that don't have TV.

It usually gets dropped in the first five minutes of meeting and after that it gets repeated if it is initially ignored.

How many of those are actually (New England) zip codes? (and of the ones that are years, how many of them are "kragen is at it again" :-) Seriously, I've never noticed a thread on these and not found a kragen post as a trigger, but there's probably sampling bias in that - or maybe the intersection of "people who are into the Long Now Foundation" and HN posters is that small?)