• Code Slave (unregistered)

    When anonymizing dead tree mail:

    1. BLACK out (not blur) critical info
    2. Remember to do the Zip code too.

    Arroyo Lindo Ave

  • Rick (unregistered)

    -1 is not a mistake for a floor. In Paris, France, all the underground floors are numbered with negative numbers and the ground floor is floor 0.

    Different from the US, but not really a mistake.

  • kivi (unregistered) in reply to rd

    please never ever press -9!!!

  • Anon (unregistered)

    I knew a hotel building that started on the sixth floor. It had two buildings, the first was numbered up to 1 to 5 and the second was numbered from 6 onwards. You could take a flat corridor from floor 2 to floor 7 for added oddness. In general the layout of that place confused the hell out of people at first. The tale was that the hotel was supposed to originally be one building but they couldn't get permission for it so they just cut it in two without changing the naming scheme.

  • kivi (unregistered) in reply to Ground Floor

    ...

  • värttinä (unregistered)

    At the place I work there are two lifts; the first goes down to floor 1 and the bigger one goes to floor -1. There's no button for "floor 0" anywhere; I can't recall seeing one in Finland.

    It's another thing the floor I work at is floor 3, and that's at the ground level on that point of the slope... And some parts of the floor 2 is also at the ground level. And, at the other end of the building complex, floor 4 is at the ground level, and also half floor below floor 1.

    I'm really floored now.

  • Not Wtf (unregistered) in reply to Code Slave
    Code Slave:
    When anonymizing dead tree mail: 1) BLACK out (not blur) critical info 2) Remember to do the Zip code too.

    Arroyo Lindo Ave

    Exactly. Whoever blurred out the address must be a walking WTF.

  • (cs) in reply to Pedro
    Pedro:
    BradC:
    I think y'all are missing the point of the first one: The WTF is that it is a largely non-obvious way to design elevator controls, that requires a taped page of instructions (as opposed to the very simple one-button-per-floor method).

    So its not that the ground floor is 0, its that that the user has to think about what the ground floor is, and type it in instead of having a dedicated button labeled "G" or "0" or whatever. Double WTF for the user having to know that the basement is -1.

    Having to know that the basement is -1 is not really that big a deal. It's pretty standard in several places, even. Having one button per floor can easily become a mess in big buildings, and it's not as though people aren't used to phones, computers, calculators and several other devices that use the exact same keypad layout to introduce numbers with multiple digits.

    Agreed. Although those devices don't have "the exact same keypad layout." In the US, at least, phones have 1 in the upper left (like this elevator), computers, calculators and what-not have 1 in the lower left.

  • (cs) in reply to Rick
    Rick:
    -1 is not a mistake for a floor. In Paris, France, all the underground floors are numbered with negative numbers and the ground floor is floor 0.

    Different from the US, but not really a mistake.

    That's what you think. Over here we know that "different from the US" is the definition of a mistake.

  • Sofa King (unregistered) in reply to Subsoil
    Subsoil:
    Wizard Stan:
    Smash King:
    In South America we use the smart system too. Above the ground floor there's the first floor. I believe Africa must be the same.

    Hey America what's up with the 1-based floor numbering? Do you base your numbering system on roman numerals? Not the smartest system today eh?

    It's actually quite intuitive. Building X has 3 floors. We count them: 1 floor, 2 floor, 3 floors! AH AH AH! With the floor on the ground, the one we point to and count "1", that's the first floor. The one above that, we point to and say "2"; that's the second floor. We then point one higher, and say "3", the third floor. I'm sure someone can equally justify the "ground zero" system: it's just two ways of thinking. But please stop referring to it as the American system. The point I'm trying to make is that significantly more countries than just the US use it, and it's quite insulting to be casually lumped in with them.
    It's not so intuitive when you're in a building with several floors below the ground floor. Ground floor = Floor 1 // no problem Floor below ground floor = Floor 0 // seems logical then Floor below that = Floor -1 // weird

    In common parlance, floors located below ground level are called "basements." Thus, the first floor below ground level is called "basement" (or "B") on the elevator controls, not "0." Further basements are indicated ordinally with integers, e.g. B2, B3, B4 going down just as above-ground floors are going up.

  • teddy-tedderson (unregistered) in reply to ContraCorners
    ContraCorners:
    Rick:
    -1 is not a mistake for a floor. In Paris, France, all the underground floors are numbered with negative numbers and the ground floor is floor 0.

    Different from the US, but not really a mistake.

    That's what you think. Over here we know that "different from the US" is the definition of a mistake.

    Actually, quite the contrary...

  • (cs)

    I once helped out at a wedding reception where the groom, a programmer, had assigned numbers to all (eleven) tables. He didn't assign the head table a number, thinking of it as Table #0. The people setting up the venue looked at the list, saw that the highest number was 10, and only brought 10 tables.

    Zero-based indexing: complicating hackers' weddings since 2006 (at least).

  • (cs) in reply to K&T
    K&T:
    Actually, first floor is above ground floor pretty much everywhere except USA :-P

    Now who's the weirdo?

    When you say this, do you not include Canada, some Eastern Europe countries, Russia, Scandinavia, China, Japan and Taiwan on purpose or do you have no idea what you're talking about?

    Well at least most of our floors do not number 1,2,3,...,12,14,15,...

    And we don't have two names for 1 floor (ground=first,second,third)

    And at least we use SI so we don't have to put constants in the major physic formulas.

  • Sofa King (unregistered)

    It occurs to me that the two different floor-numbering schemes might be related to whether people consider the numbers to be ordinal (which will not include 0) or cardinal (which will include zero). E.g., the difference between "Floor -2" and "Second basement."

  • g0ats3 (unregistered)

    my bowels are getting that full feeling again

  • Jon (unregistered)

    Wow... I can't believe how long everyone is talking about -1, 0, 1 on an elevator keypad. That's TRWTF...

    Captcha: tristique (Didn't look up a definition, but it sounds enticing...)

  • SmartAlex (unregistered)

    Go ahead and try to leave a comment, dumbass.

  • Mario (unregistered)

    Do not go to floor -1! The whole floor is flooded and no matter what you punch into the elevator it keeps dropping you back off at floor -1.

    That's the real WTF.

  • SmartAlex (unregistered) in reply to campkev
    campkev:
    Pedro:
    IT Girl:
    I just want to know where pressing "1", "3" would take you. Since in the North America vs the rest of the world debate, we tend to avoid the 13th floor here in North America due to a significant amount of Triskadekaphobia.

    Screw you and your silly superstitions then :). Our elevators takes us to the 13th floor, which lies between the 12th and the 14th, just like the well-ordered element of N it is. (Incidentally, if that's true, no citizen of the united states has the moral authority to complain about our floor numbering system :P)

    Japan can't say anything either then, as they frequently skip the 4th floor for the same reason.

    They skip the 4th floor due to triskadekaphobia?

  • (cs) in reply to Sofa King
    Sofa King:
    Subsoil:
    Wizard Stan:
    Smash King:
    In South America we use the smart system too. Above the ground floor there's the first floor. I believe Africa must be the same.

    Hey America what's up with the 1-based floor numbering? Do you base your numbering system on roman numerals? Not the smartest system today eh?

    It's actually quite intuitive. Building X has 3 floors. We count them: 1 floor, 2 floor, 3 floors! AH AH AH! With the floor on the ground, the one we point to and count "1", that's the first floor. The one above that, we point to and say "2"; that's the second floor. We then point one higher, and say "3", the third floor. I'm sure someone can equally justify the "ground zero" system: it's just two ways of thinking. But please stop referring to it as the American system. The point I'm trying to make is that significantly more countries than just the US use it, and it's quite insulting to be casually lumped in with them.
    It's not so intuitive when you're in a building with several floors below the ground floor. Ground floor = Floor 1 // no problem Floor below ground floor = Floor 0 // seems logical then Floor below that = Floor -1 // weird

    In common parlance, floors located below ground level are called "basements." Thus, the first floor below ground level is called "basement" (or "B") on the elevator controls, not "0." Further basements are indicated ordinally with integers, e.g. B2, B3, B4 going down just as above-ground floors are going up.

    It is a single story building. What do you do now?

  • tauu (unregistered)

    The mathematics faculty of my university actually decided to have all room number in the basement of the mathematics building starting with -1. That's really just the logical expansion if 0 is the gound floor.

  • SmartAlex (unregistered) in reply to shinobu

    An elevator in a 1-story building is called a closet.

  • captain obvious (unregistered) in reply to K&T

    erm...

    so you think 'pretty much everywhere' is the same as 'everywhere'

    I don't think you have a clue what you're talking about

  • Wizard Stan (unregistered) in reply to Osno
    Osno:
    Yo don't get it, do you? The building you're describing has 2 floors. I think the real difference is that in the countries where 0 is 0 (as it should be), there's generally no housing in that floor. A hall, maybe, or a patio.
    No, I don't get it. Not that some other countries would consider the ground floor to be 0, and count up from there. I totally get that. There's logic in that numbering system as well. What I don't get is the insistence that anyone thinking differently is wrong, despite a perfectly logical example explaining how it could be considered right.
  • JAD (unregistered) in reply to shinobu
    shinobu:
    It is a single story building. What do you do now?

    Put any kind of keypad on the outside of an empty broom cupboard. Issue invoice.

  • JD (unregistered)

    It's interesting to see how much attention the floor numbering issue has generated. Maybe the folks on this site think a lot about floor numbering. Or maybe the folks on this site just can't resist an international argument over which country does it "right".

    As for my opinion, I see no WTF here. This is just a side effect of using a generic keypad to control an elevator. Ordinarily one might use a "G" button for "ground" which is a great deal more intuitive than a "0" button. But a "G" button has no place on a generic numeric keypad, so 0 is the only logical option.

    As for floor -1, that makes perfect sense to me. How else would you label underground level 1? It is one below ground, hence -1.

  • (cs) in reply to värttinä
    värttinä:
    At the place I work there are two lifts; the first goes down to floor 1 and the bigger one goes to floor -1. There's no button for "floor 0" anywhere; I can't recall seeing one in Finland.
    I don't recall seeing any elevator buttons with "0" in Finland either, but "P" is quite common for the ground floor. When that button exists, the floor above it is labeled "1". When it doesn't, the ground floor is labeled "1". In apartment buildings, this is connected to whether or not there are any apartments on the ground floor - the first floor with apartments is always "1".

    Regarding buildings with multiple basement levels... There's a certain shopping centre near where I work that has floors down to "-5K" (K standing for "kellari" which is Finnish for "basement"). There's an about equal number of floors above the ground if I'm not mistaken.

    I recall from some English lesson from school that in some (English-speaking) parts of the world floors are indicated as "1st floor up", "2nd floor up", etc (from the ground floor). So it stands to reason that the ground floor is "zero".

    Another thing which applies to both floors in a building and years on the timeline - what do you get when you subtract 5 from 3? Now where do you end up if you go 5 floors down from 3rd floor? Or what year was 5 years before 3AD?

  • (cs)

    Last place I worked had:

    ... 3 ( three ... ) 2 ( two ... ) 1 ( one; four floors up street level.. ) I ( intermediate floor, I can only guess? ) SL ( "sobreloja", or "the floor above the ground floor" ) 0 ( ground floor ) P ( basement. With no parking. Also street level, because the building was on a slant and you exited towards the back, in this floor)

  • Ken (unregistered) in reply to ParkinT

    first of all... I actually like the "-1 floor" being the basement. It actually makes sense. Now, in a five floor (-1, 0, 1, 2, 3) building, if I push -2 does it send me to the 3rd floor, error out, or ram me into the top of the elevator shaft while trying to head for floor 127? THAT is the real question.

    ParkinT:
    I have always stated it as a Ponderable, why an elevator in a two-story building (like many American shopping malls) has two buttons inside the compartment (one for up and one for down). When you enter such an elevator you have NO CHOICE where you will go. I propose there be NO BUTTONS (maybe just one that says, "GO")

    If you insert the maintenance/fire department key and turn it to a certain position, it allows you to use the door open/door close buttons at any level, rather than just at actual floors, and the up and down buttons allow inter-floor control as well - push up to move up, push down to move down, even with the doors open. This is used for performing repairs, maintenance, and inspection on the elevator. It's easier to put up/down buttons than it is to make the maintenance crew and fire department carry some sort of remote control or head unit, and allows the panels to be standardized (and the buttons cost a trivial amount of money compared to the rest of the elevator).

  • Vollhorst (unregistered) in reply to Ken
    Ken:
    (and the buttons cost a trivial amount of money compared to the rest of the elevator).
    Not if you want the modern buttons with Windows Vista installed.
  • mathew (unregistered)

    It's perfectly simple and logical.

    To get to the Nth floor, you climb N flights of stairs.

    The American system, on the other hand, to get to the Nth floor you climb (N-1) flights of stairs.

  • Anon (unregistered)

    The obvious answer is to just enter 42 on the number pad. Now what was the question again?

  • Glow-in-the-dark (unregistered)

    OK, I have seen this approach too. "-1" for basement and so on.

    The problem was that this was installed in a building WITH ONLY 4 FLOORS. Yes, that's right. They had a 11 key keypad to serve 4 floors (OK, 5 incl ski boot basement), and it was not like they had any room for ambitious expansion plans..

    It made me laugh at the time, and it was a minor glitch in what was otherwise a very nice place, even though it was in Ischgl (no, really, that is a name, use Google :-).

  • (cs)

    well, the first one isn't really a WTF outside America- the first floor is above the ground floor

  • Sean (unregistered) in reply to BradC
    BradC:
    I think y'all are missing the point of the first one: The WTF is that it is a largely non-obvious way to design elevator controls, that requires a taped page of instructions (as opposed to the very simple one-button-per-floor method).

    So its not that the ground floor is 0, its that that the user has to think about what the ground floor is, and type it in instead of having a dedicated button labeled "G" or "0" or whatever. Double WTF for the user having to know that the basement is -1.

    That number pad also looked like it cost about 8 bucks and can be reused on any building with any number of floors. Seems like an approach a very cheap and lazy company would take. Perhaps TRWTF is someone ever wanting to ride in an elevator designed and presumably maintained by such a company.

  • (cs)

    So if "floor 0" is the ground floor, then "floor 1" is where you are when you go up one floor. I get that. It makes sense, even though it's not what we do here in the US. So, from the ground floor, you're use the keypad to enter the number of floors and the direction in which you want to move. QED

    TRWTF is that this isn't consistent throughout the building. When I call the elevator from the 5th floor (using the European numbering system) I should have to enter -2 to go to the 3rd or -5 to go to the ground.

  • mauve (unregistered)

    If I was asked in an interview to design an elevator system, a keypad would be very much the obvious choice.

    • it allow you to address an arbitrary number of floors
    • it allows for future expansion
    • it allows you to reallocate floor numbers

    One benefit from the latter would be that you could readily defragment your building: you could put the most frequently accessed floors nearer to the ground floor for faster access while arranging for contiguous unallocated floors towards the top.

  • dusoft (unregistered) in reply to Laurie Laptop

    Yup and also because you don't need to have 102 buttons for 102 floor building. But I guess, you are right, it is NOT STUPID to have 102 buttons, when you can have 10 and save space, not talking about cleanliness of the interface...

  • Sean (unregistered) in reply to ContraCorners
    ContraCorners:
    So if "floor 0" is the ground floor, then "floor 1" is where you are when you go up one floor. I get that. It makes sense, even though it's not what we do here in the US. So, from the ground floor, you're use the keypad to enter the number of floors and the direction in which you want to move. QED

    TRWTF is that this isn't consistent throughout the building. When I call the elevator from the 5th floor (using the European numbering system) I should have to enter -2 to go to the 3rd or -5 to go to the ground.

    And you honestly believe that the average person would be able to do simple math while standing in an elevator?

  • Darren (unregistered)

    I don't get the Alumni one. It's from the SDSU Alumni, not to them. Lots of alumni organizations have open-to-the-public events that they think are fun (sometimes they are), but also raise funds for their alma mater.

    Why is that funny?

  • Sean (unregistered) in reply to dusoft
    dusoft:
    Yup and also because you don't need to have 102 buttons for 102 floor building. But I guess, you are right, it is NOT STUPID to have 102 buttons, when you can have 10 and save space, not talking about cleanliness of the interface...

    Because there's so many buildings in the world with 100+ floors, right? Honestly running out of room for buttons isn't ever an issue.

  • Aleph78 (unregistered) in reply to Darren
    Darren:
    I don't get the Alumni one. It's from the SDSU Alumni, not *to* them. Lots of alumni organizations have open-to-the-public events that they think are fun (sometimes they are), but also raise funds for their alma mater.

    Why is that funny?

    Hmm... Maybe because the letter was addressed to Mr. (or Mrs.?) Null Null? Who can tell these days...

  • Sofa King (unregistered) in reply to Sean
    Sean:
    dusoft:
    Yup and also because you don't need to have 102 buttons for 102 floor building. But I guess, you are right, it is NOT STUPID to have 102 buttons, when you can have 10 and save space, not talking about cleanliness of the interface...

    Because there's so many buildings in the world with 100+ floors, right? Honestly running out of room for buttons isn't ever an issue.

    Not to mention, in probably all of those buildings, no single (public) elevator services all 100+ floors.

  • Jeremy Sheeley (from SourceGear) (unregistered)

    To download SourceGear's free diff tool, go to http://www.sourcegear.com/diffmerge/

    You won't be able to get the "dumbass" tooltip, since the WTF submission was a forgery, but you will get a really awesome free file diff tool (that can copy and paste, I promise).

  • Qvasi (unregistered) in reply to mathew
    mathew:
    It's perfectly simple and logical.

    To get to the Nth floor, you climb N flights of stairs.

    The American system, on the other hand, to get to the Nth floor you climb (N-1) flights of stairs.

    I'm from Norway where we usually use the ground floor = 1st floor system, but I really prefer the 0 floor system. Firstly it's logical (unless it's really roofs you are calling floors), it is clean and structured for more than one basements. Using 1 for ground floor is also very misleading: if someone falls out from 2nd floor don't you automatically think they fell two storeys?

    Programmers should not have any problems with zero indexing, seriously!

  • Harrow (unregistered) in reply to ThisIsMe
    ThisIsMe:
    Uh, so if the building only has 5 floors, what happens if I enter 9?

    Do I finally get to meet God? :o

    Depends on what kind of life you've led...

    -Harrow.

  • (cs) in reply to Rick
    Rick:
    -1 is not a mistake for a floor. In Paris, France, all the underground floors are numbered with negative numbers and the ground floor is floor 0.

    Different from the US, but not really a mistake.

    All you needed to say was "France."

    I mean come on: Elevator guy: "Floor Ma'am?" Smelly French Lady: "Yes, take me to the negative 3rd floor please."

    Cause that makes A LOT of sense...

  • Harrow (unregistered) in reply to Wizard Stan
    Wizard Stan:
    ...The point I'm trying to make is that significantly more countries than just the US use it, and it's quite insulting to be casually lumped in with them.
    Well, okay, but I'm not sure just who was being insulted here...

    -Harrow.

  • JeffG (unregistered) in reply to An Onymous
    An Onymous:
    Two cheers for the redemption request!

    "Hip, hip, Array!" "Hip, hip, Array!"

    ROTFLMAO!!!!!

    I never comment here, always been a lurker, but I just had to say that's the funniest thing I've seen on the Internet in a couple of years.

  • (cs) in reply to Not Wtf
    Not Wtf:
    Note from Alex: Impossible... rememer that (null) is not nothing, not something, and not anything. (null) cannot be seen and (null) cannot not be seen. So, therefore, you all must have immagined a (null) article.

    Um, is that supposed to be funny? Lame.

    Um, is that supposed to be intelligent? Fail.

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