> Our zero is for optimism. The notion that the externalized thoughts we write today may survive myriad years to a time when that fifth digit becomes significant.

Similarly when I say "the Kingdom of England became a single state in the year 927", I am not asserting that I'm using three digit years. However, if I said that this event happened in 0927, then it does look like I'm doing four digit years.

It's the leading zeros that are associated with problematic ways of writing years. Two digit years have the leading zero for the first 9 years of the century (and the last year of the previous), like 00 for 2000 and 03 for 2003.

Without the leading zero, 3 refers to Year 3 of our Common Era. The leading zero in 03 turns it into a partial, context-sensitive year understood as 2003.

The 0 in 02023 does the same thing; it perpetrates some Y-something problem, in this case Y100K. In the year 102023, if people are around, some of them might use 02023 to mean 102023. When they mean the 2023 A.D. they will use 2023, and when they mean 12023, 22023, 32023, ... they will use exactly those forms.

The silly zero people ain't thunk this through real well.