That's in interesting statement, because I have been an avid reader of these Forums for over a year and this is the first and only discussion of "Standard Orientation" that I have seen. Unless you just mean it dominates this discussion. But then, it is the thread topic, so...
I have definitely read threads using the phrasing "North/South/East/West" and descriptions of building a city "wide" for certain reasons or "long" for other reasons (ex: It is optimal to expand your city North/South first if looping alchemists since their shorter side is in that direction so you use less roads when stacking in that direction). When reading those posts, I was always confused with what they meant by north/south or tall/wide since there was no reference anywhere to which direction we've defined as "North" or "up". My example is an exception to the ambiguity since I made it clear I that the direction I referred to is the same as the short side of an Alchemists, but most post authors aren't nearly so clear.The concept of "Standard Orientation" isn't brought up consistently by name, but the need for one is clear in many threads where there is ambiguity due to the lack of a standard.
Here's a better example. I like to chat on global from time to time. It is not irregular for a newbie to post on global asking for tips. Often, the single most important tip a newbie can receive in this game is related to city layout, because a good layout can majorly increase their efficiency regardless of the playstyle they eventually choose. I have tried to describe in chat what they should try to do with setting up columns with straight roads, sometimes I point out specific regions of their cities that need cleanup with suggestions on how to do so. The entire experience of explaining this is made much more difficult by the fact that I can say North and mean one thing and the listener thinks it means a different thing. I can say top left and it can mean literal top left of screen, top left of the city when considering North to be "up", etc depending on perspective. It forces me to be stupidly verbose just to avoid confusion. Humanity has standardized language to combat this very problem, so you can say something and I can consistently determine the meaning. You may not run into situations where you miss the existence of a standard, but others definitely do (see: me).