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Question: Articles 1530 BC xxxxBC etc. Hello! Would you please explain me why the wikipedia has nearly only christian reminiscents according to the article series 1530 BC. Why are there are no 1530 BCE - articles, respectively? I would like to mention, that BC means Before Christ - which is a christian confession of faith and never a neutral appointment. Whereas BCE can be rendered Before Common Era or Before Christian Era alike, which is was more strong neutral appointment. Would you please help me on this - or guide me where I may get help? Sincerely -- 87.160.202.82 ( talk) 14:48, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
I propose to add a note that it is generally acceptable to specify the nation for currencies. While some editors may consider an article to be entirely country-related (an example would be a group of disputes about currencies in US university articles), others will see the article as of substantial international interest.
Also, if the subject *IS* the money, for example, sections on endowments, I think that again specifying the unit should be acceptable but not required. These bits of information will have international interest simply for comparison among nations. It seems reasonable for a document intended for a global audience to be at least tolerant of specifying the currency unit. - Sinneed 19:21, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
I have always, by convention, written ordinals like this: 22nd. It was a surprise to me therefore to see that it is written in the MOS as "The ordinal suffix (e.g., th) is not superscripted". No room for discussion?
A search reveals the page here. So it seems that originally there was no "rule" against superscripting ordinals, but a consensus in May 2007 lead to one being introduced.
I would like to raise the discussion again. Had I been aware of it at the time, I most certainly would have objected to such a rule forbidding superscripting ordinals. Please note that the argument pur forward in the archive was to follow the "AP style guide". I did not know what this was, and had to look it up. It seems that the "Associated Press" guide is an American style guide, which takes no account of conventions in other countries.
I propose that if people do not wish to superscript their ordinals then they may continue not to do so - but it should be recognised that in non-USA varieties of English, ordinals can be correctly superscripted. So let's drop the absolute rule about it. EuroSong talk 15:48, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
From time to time there is a discussion here about US vs British vs rest of world units of measure or date format. Wikimedia released a study titled Wikipedia page views, a global perspective. Here is a breakdown on English Wikipedia page views by country. The top five are United States 52.9%, United Kingdom 10.4%, Canada 5.8%, Australia 4.0%, and India 2.5%. -- SWTPC6800 ( talk) 22:24, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
A few months ago, the Other date ranges section was changed significantly with little discussion. It was protected at the time, so the discussion was carried out on this obscure subpage, and it reversed part of the former guideline, which stated:
<!--as of 10 October 2007-->
. The form since 1996 should be used in favor of 1996–present in article text and infoboxes.The current version reads:
<!--as of 10 October 2007-->
. The form since 1996 should be used in favor of 1996–present in article text.So this is what was changed:
My proposal is to change the sentence "In the main text of articles, the form 1996–present should not be used, though it is preferred in infoboxes and other crowded templates or lists" to "The form 1996–present should be avoided in the main text of articles, though it may be used in infoboxes, crowded templates or lists". This way we would let users decide which form to use in infoboxes and templates, as needed, while still mandating since 1996 for article prose. Mushroom ( Talk) 08:04, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
So does anyone oppose my proposal to allow (but not mandate) the use of "since 1996" in infoboxes, templates, and lists? Mushroom ( Talk) 20:20, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
From out of nowhere, dates have been unlinked over the past few months. A date is as relevant as a place or a name. It answers one of the fundamental questions: "when?". Especially for biographies, this fact is relevant. Why then, was a vote not put to the entire Wikipedia community concerning this question? Why was it decided by a small group of usurpers? I will continue to link dates in biographies as the information is as relevant as a place. If a date isn't linked, then neither should a place. However, this all seems trivial to me as deciding whether or not to link or not link is a waste of time. Stereorock ( talk) 02:19, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
There was also the Requests for arbitration/Date delinking case that authorized a full-date unlinking bot to clean up the excessive date linking on Wikipedia. -- SWTPC6800 ( talk) 05:58, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
On the substance, as opposed to procedure, there are really two questions: one was about date auto-formatting, which allowed registered users who'd expressed a preference to see dates in their own preferred style, e.g. 9 May 1873 or May 9, 1873. The second question was whether the dates themselves should be linked for the reasons we enter other wikilinks: because the date itself is significant. Subsidiary parts of the second question were what element of a date is significant enough to link: the specific day in a millennium, like May 9, 1873, or the year ( 1873) or the day of the year ( May 9), or all of them, or none of them. A complicating factor is that some days in time are now linked not to everything that happened on them, but to an overwhelming event such as Kennedy's assassination ( November 22, 1963) or the terrorist acts of September 11, 2001. Because of the agglomerative way that Wikipedia's constructed, many day articles are rather incoherent, and many year articles can gradually change from being useful, informative chronologies or timelines into similar random lists. But no consensus was ever reached against linking dates for purposes of information, although it would be rare that for such purposes one would use the old autoformatting form of May 9, 1873. —— Shakescene ( talk) 05:59, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
Could we please remove, "For example, with respect to British date formats as opposed to American it would be acceptable to change from American format to British if the article concerned a British subject." It contradicts the next three sentences, "Edit warring over optional styles (such as 14 February and February 14) is unacceptable. If an article has been stable in a given style, it should not be converted without a style-independent reason. Where in doubt, defer to the style used by the first major contributor."
It's also not correct that January 30, 2010 is wrong in the UK. It isn't. It is used, and in fact used to be more common that 30 January 2010. See, for example, The Times. [1]
The problem with having articles changed is that the writers of the article have to stop and think whenever they write a date from that point on, and if they don't notice the change, and carry on editing as before, we end up with inconsistencies. I think we need to remove any language that encourages editors to arrive at what they see as a "British article" (which in itself is an odd idea) and change the date formats to the format they believe (wrongly!) is the only correct one. SlimVirgin TALK contribs 01:23, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
I don't believe that the rule about not changing a stable article should apply to YYYY-MM-DD dates in footnotes. It used to be that you had do use YYYY-MM-DD format in the citation templates because of the way they where linked. It has thus become common to see this format in footnotes. I can't see any reason to keep things that way though. JIMp talk· cont 09:27, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
This wouldn't go so far as to encourage the change, but it would indicate that it's permissible. (Personally, I'd love it if someone would program a bot to go through all those footnotes and change the YYYY-MM-DD dates to whatever's used in the rest of the article, but that would probably annoy some people.) — Josiah Rowe ( talk • contribs) 09:50, 1 February 2010 (UTC)YYYY-MM-DD style dates used to be common in footnotes due to template requirements, but are no longer encouraged; it is acceptable to change these dates to whatever date format is used in the rest of the article.
Slimvirgin, ArbCom has clearly stated that region-related ties are a valid reason for converting an article. That would a "style-independent reason" (as mentioned in the guideline) that would trump the "first contributor" provision. Beyond that, changing the guideline in the manner you've suggested would require far more than just a casual discussion here, given that it would be a fairly major alteration of the way we handle the matter. -- Ckatz chat spy 11:40, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
Eubulides ( talk · contribs) slightly changed the language regarding conversions, and this edit was reverted because it was an "undiscussed policy change". Editors who disagreed with the change may wish to comment at Wikipedia talk:Featured article criteria#Unit conversions, where the issue was first raised. Dabomb87 ( talk) 00:19, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
In certain instances, numbers might exist in logical progression, as associations with a progressing number are described. For example, in counting by twos, you might say, "The 1st number in the sequence is 2, or 1*2. The 2nd is 4, or 2*2. The 3rd is 6, or 3*2," or, "The first number in the sequence is two, or 1*2. The second is four, or 2*2. The third is six, or 3*2." This particular example is elementary, and easy to process. But in situations where the numbers are associated with a more complex relationship, it may be harder to follow the progression without the visual cue points that numerals provide. They are easily visually filtered from the surrounding Latin lettering. Being able to immediately jump to the beginning of the associated description by using those cue points allows the reader to recall the associated information quicker, reading only enough to recognize each train of thought, and piece together a logical progression out of the conclusions with less rereading. Further, if you're expecting this, for example by being able to see an upcoming "2nd" and "3rd" as you read a "1st," you can prepare the logical segmentation of the trains of thought before actually reading them, much in the same way as punctuation marks and ordered tables of values. So, I believe and propose that the first sentence's form should be preferred in these types of numerical-logical progressions. LokiClock ( talk) 23:51, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
User:Ryoung122 has requested comment at Wikipedia_talk:Linking#Request_for_Comment:_Year-linking_exceptions_for_persons_noted_as_.22links.22_to_the_past. HWV258 . 03:21, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
As a result of a recent discussion on the FA page I installed the following edit:
My edit was reverted with the edit summary "Undo undiscussed policy change. Conversions normally should be given, unless they create excessive clutter."
Now, as can be found in FA thread, that's not what's actually happening in featured articles: reviewers and delegates are saying that for naval articles it's OK to convert just the first instance of "knots" (or whatever), and leave the rest alone, which is all that the proposed change is trying to say. In such articles (which is the topic of the above text), converting each instance of the units is invariably clutter. The current wording is quite confusing (I mostly just trimmed noise phrases like "it could be best to note that" from it), and I was trying to distill away the confusion and reflect what's actually happening. If the proposed wording isn't quite right, let's have better wording; but the current wording is quite bad and needs improvement. Eubulides ( talk) 09:19, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
When units are part of the subject of a topic—nautical miles in articles about the history of nautical law, SI units in scientific articles, yards in articles about American football—only the first use of a unit needs conversion and linking, possibly giving the conversion factor to another familiar unit in a parenthetical note or a footnote.
When an article contains many measurements, only the first use of a unit needs conversion and linking, possibly giving the conversion factor to another familiar unit in a parenthetical note or a footnote. When conversions are omitted, the unit used should be the one given first in the first instance: The goal lines in American football are 100 yards (91 m) apart...the ball must be advanced 10 yards to achieve a first down.
I was just considering this clause from a different perspective with a view to making changes. There is a difficulty with things like '12 pounder gun' which may not translate well because the designation is the name of the model rather than an accurate projectile weight, which might be 11.5 or 12.5 or even variable depending on ammunition. I think this probably comes under this section as something which should not normally be converted but just be noted somewhere what the equivalent would be. Anyway, my conclusion was that somewhere the guide should make it more clear that where something which appears to be a measurement is actually a name, it should not simply be converted but needs to be explained with an appropriate equivalent. Discussion elsewhere pointed out the similar example of a motor car engine described as 1200cc, which might be a marketing device rather than a measurement of its 1175cc actual capacity. Where the article explained it was 1175cc then this could perfectly well be converted, but converting the 1200 would be misleading. Sandpiper ( talk) 12:05, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Frank Lebby Stanton uses the style of 1857 February 22 thoughout the article. Since this is a very odd style, I changed it to February 22, 1857, but I was revert with the reason that articles should use the format chosen by the first major contributor. This is a nonstandard style for any national variety, and this page does not even mention it. It says not to use YYYY-MM-DD, but this is the spelled-out version. Should it be changed? Reywas92 Talk 04:33, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
It's easy to edit the text to include {{ xt}}, but I'm having a bit of trouble working out where, and would appreciate some confirmation before I start:
I cannot see any other quoted text that needs conversion, although there are probably some more phrases in italics or just plain text that I'll notice later. Johnuniq ( talk) 11:58, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
There is no such ambiguity with recurring events, such as January 1 is New Year's Day.
Thanks for info. I made quite a lot of changes and will wait at least 24 hours before doing more (I'm up to "Scientific notation, engineering notation, and uncertainty"). In the line starting "The ordinal suffix", I used xt, but (owing to the font), it is not entirely successful in appearance. I tried xt for the italics at "Non-base-10 notations" but it looks bad with xt, so I did not use it. Johnuniq ( talk) 04:32, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
I am really impressed with your conservative, stepped approach to improving MOSNUM. Your style should be widely emulated. Greg L ( talk) 18:09, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
P.S. I just realized that if you edited numeric examples so their digits, when they are used in significands, superscripts, and subscripts, are segregated into—and chosen from pallets of—three families: 012, and 34579, and 68, then that ought to fix the appearance problem you are wrestling with. For instance: The chance that 68 editors on Wikipedia will have 100% agreement on any one issue on WT:MOSNUM is 9.7435×10−21. Greg L ( talk) 18:51, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
I see you coded the good-looking one as follows:
{{xt|1=<span style="font-family: sans">''x''<sup>1</sup>''x''²''x''³''x''<sup>4</sup></span>}} vs. {{xt|1=<span style="font-family: sans">''x''<sup>1</sup>''x''<sup>2</sup>''x''<sup>3</sup>''x''<sup>4</sup></span>}}
.
Indeed, the example text appears small on my Mac because it uses Times, but it still looks nice, and—indeed—that is quite the kluge to code.
So let me try the {{ xt}} treatment: x1x²x³x4 vs. x1x2x3x4. I see. A big, stupid superscripted “3” and “4” because one must do a progression, where choosing from a segregated pallet isn’t possible.
However, this is an situation where the example text is sufficiently clear from context since it is numerics surrounded by words. Greg L ( talk) 19:35, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
My finished converting all "quoted examples" and italic examples to use {{ xt}}. It turned out that there were very few changes in that last edit; I included changing "US" to "US gallon" at one point where it looked like an oversight.
In the line beginning "Use nautical mile or statute mile" (and some other places) I used xt for the examples which included links, so they are blue and look a tiny bit strange (but I think ok). I did not touch the examples in the "Quantities of bytes and bits" section because 10003 renders unsatisfactorily as 10003 and the 3 can't really be changed to follow Greg's above suggestion. The idea of an xtc template sounds useful for rendering the numeric examples mentioned above, and it looks very simple to do for a trial. Johnuniq ( talk) 09:26, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
<font color="#002BB8">
fake link</font color>
.<font color="#006F00">
example formula without the accompanying Georgia font</font color>
.<font color="#006F00">
with {{xtc|
. You know the drill; same on the back end.My sense is that using <font color="#002BB8">
to fix the last few stragglers will be the perfect demonstration for a “trial,” as you say. It’s also been my observation in the past that having code like that in MOSNUM, if the practice sticks, is just the very sort of thing that prompts someone to make a template so they can get rid of the code. By dipping our toes into this with a color-call, we can all look at the result and see if it serves a good and valuable end.
I know that my use of CSS spans when making really nice-looking scientific notation (like 9.743534579(35)×10−21 kg) precipitated the effort to make templates to accomplish the same end and that resulted in the {{
xt}} template. People just couldn’t stand looking at my hand-written code for scientific notation, which looked like 6.022<span style="margin-left:0.25em">141<span style="margin-left:0.2em">79(30)</span></span><span style="margin-left:0.25em">×</span><span style="margin-left:0.15em">10</span><sup>–21</sup> kg
. ;-)
Greg L (
talk)
19:29, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
I used Greg's font color="#006F00" in Quantities of bytes and bits. It looks good to me (although I now think I should have added a greeen period to each of the three "Acceptable examples include"). Following is what Template:xtc should be (needs documentation):
{{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACE}}|{{ns:0}}|{{FormattingError|Template:xtc is only for examples of style and formatting. Do not use it in actual articles.}}|<span class="example"style= "color: #006F00;">{{{1|}}}</span>}}<noinclude> {{Documentation}} <!-- If/when the <samp> element is included in WikiText, replace span with samp, which would be more appropriate. --> </noinclude>
Hmmm, interesting off-topic: Why does {{ xt}} fail when used like this abc{{xt|font color="#006F00"}}def which renders as abcExample textdef? Johnuniq ( talk) 04:53, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
font color
whose value is "#006F00"
. You have to use 1=
to specify the value of the first unnamed parameter when it itself contains equals signs (font color="#006F00"). --
___A. di M.
14:37, 16 September 2009 (UTC){{xt|1=''M''<span style="margin-left:0.15em"><sup>2</sup></span>}}
→ M2 (one must use the “1=” technique because the = sign is functional in a CSS span… the span here is just an example that came to mind.){{xt|2 × 3 {{=}} 6}}
→ 2 × 3 = 6 ( {{
=}} (template replacement of the = as it is only display){{xt|2 × 3 = 6}}
→ 2 × 3 = 6 (character reference to replace the = as it is only display)I mentioned this in the section above, but I think it got a bit lost in the larger discussion of date formats. I'd like to add a sentence to the section about YYYY-MM-DD dates:
I've just seen a user who's been changing date formats in footnotes to YYYY-MM-DD, because he thought it was standard Wikipedia style. YYYY-MM-DD dates are ugly, not widely used, and (as SlimVirgin points out above) potentially unclear to readers. I don't think it's time to actively discourage the use of this date format (because it's in millions of articles, and changing them all without more discussion would be disruptive), but I think it would be appropriate to note that they're not encouraged either. What do other people think? I'm open to discussion on the wording, of course. — Josiah Rowe ( talk • contribs) 22:09, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
I didn't realize the proposal was so recent; for some reason, I thought the discussion was longer ago. Well, from reviewing that discussion I see that there is no consensus about the use of YYYY-MM-DD dates in footnotes. That said, can we agree that changing normal, region-appropriate, human-format dates (that is, February 4, 2010 or 4 February 2010) to YYYY-MM-DD dates is not desirable? If so, is that covered by the existing warnings about not changing optional styles, or should the MoS say more? — Josiah Rowe ( talk • contribs) 23:26, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
I support the proposal above. It's not creep, it's getting the word out that YYYY-MM-DD is not WP format for footnotes. JIMp talk· cont 09:07, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
Would it then be appropriate for the MoS to say something like:
Does that reflect the current consensus better? — Josiah Rowe ( talk • contribs) 17:07, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
I realize that Wikipedia tends to be dominated by American editors, but I support ISO 8601 (YYYY-MM-DD) as the rapidly developing international and web (see W3C at http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/iso-date) consensus is that the ISO 8601 format is internationally unambiguous and elegant (and already the cultural standard of half the world's people). Only some Americans seem to find it fundamentally offensive, for reasons which escape me. Also note that the typical reference style in Wikipedia most closely follows the APA standard, which currently recommends a hybrid style (e.g., "2010, February 20"). The strong trend by a wide range of editors toward using the "YYYY-MM-DD" format (e.g., "2010-02-20") actually post-dates the general decision to stop using the date format templates. The real reason for its increasing popularity is that it represents a fundamental shift toward using ISO 8601, which was finalized only a few years ago. As awareness of the benefits of the new date format standard increases, so does general adoption. Even Canada has started to use YYYY-MM-DD extensively on many documents, especially those generated electronically. This is one discussion which will probably keep popping up again and again, meeting violent resistance from some, until ultimately accepted as common sense by most. Yeng-Wang-Yeh ( talk) 00:18, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
I just created {{
Currency}} in order to do currency formatting values inline with the MOS guidelines here. The template is currently functional for a decent selection of the largest currencies, but it's nowhere near 100% complete yet. Value ranges need to be added as well, along with conversions from one currency to another (which I think that I'll use {{
Currency value}} to provide). Feel free ot jump in and change things though, if you'd like, as I generally dislike working alone anyway. Regards,
—
V = I * R (
Talk •
Contribs)
03:40, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Would appreciate some input here guys. A few weeks ago I queried the use of the short scale million on Wikipedia: Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view/Noticeboard/Archive_10#Short_scale_billion. While I don't have a fundamental objection to the short scale I was not aware of the protocol and often wondered which scale was in use, especially in regards to British articles which may reference the billion in the long scale sense. Many people in Britain from the older generation and people especially from non-English speaking countries where the long scale is still in use may be unaware of MOS directive to use short scale and write using the long scale billion. In many other cases the readers may be confused about which scale is in use.
One of the suggestions at the NPOV discussion was to overlink the first billion in an article to make it explicit i.e. billion. I personally though this was a clever idea since readers can ascertain without any doubt which scale is being used, so I thought that was issue closed. I overlinked a few billions but have now been accused of violating the "over-linking" protocol and some of the billions have been un-linked.
I would appreciate your thoughts on this. Do you think it is acceptable to link a billion once at the start of an article (or maybe once a section in a large article) to achieve clarity for the reader, given the alternative that the reader could be left confused otherwise? Obviously I don't want to get into edit wars over linking, so if this is a no-go then I'll just cut my losses, but I would welcome your opinions on this. Betty Logan ( talk) 01:39, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
Accordingly to, I think, ALL British news media, the recent financial crisis has involved bailouts of sums typically stated to be in the tens of billions (e.g., £50 billion bank rescue). And it is said that the population of earth may peak at about 10 billion. It beggars belief what older Britons must be thinking if any of the uncertainties mentioned above exist. "Billion" in current English-language usage ALWAYS means a thousand million. Everywhere. My commiserations to anyone who may have emigrated pre-1974 and not heard the news. Pol098 ( talk) 11:37, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
In the project page "Time of day" section we find: "24:00 [refers] to midnight at the end of a date". In the best of cases this is not always used; Wednesday certainly becomes Thursday at 0:00 on Thursday. I don't even know if it is correct, or common, to speak of 24:00 on Wednesday. The text should be altered either to mandate 0:00, or to allow both usages (in my opinion incorrect, the clock rolls over from 23:59 to 00:00, never 24:00, that time doesn't exist).
While I'm on the subject, in the 12-hour clock section we could clarify that it is equally acceptable to say either "12 noon" or simply "noon", and the same for midnight (I think both usages are common). Pol098 ( talk) 11:46, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Actually 24:00 refers to midnight of the following day. Each day has only one midnight. 167.107.191.217 ( talk) 19:14, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
The wording of the introductory sentence of the section on rendering numbers as figures or words is vague, contradictory and confusing. "As a general rule, in the body of an article, single-digit whole numbers from zero to nine are spelled out in words; numbers greater than nine are commonly rendered in numerals, or may be rendered in words if they are expressed in one or two words". This is not style, this is vague provision of choice. If it is accepted that the demarcation point for rendering numbers as figures or words is two-digit numbers (i.e., eight, nine, 10, 11) then say so. I am tired of editors changing 15 to fifteen, 11 to eleven and so on when the style guide seems to allow either, without any logical reason. The Times Style Guide (UK) directs: "Numbers write from one to ten in full, 11 upwards as numerals except when they are approximations, eg, “about thirty people turned up”. News Ltd's Style Guide in Australia directs that only single-digit numbers be rendered as words, thus 10 and above are figures. For the sake of consistency, Wiki's style guide needs to be as clear and unambiguous. LTSally ( talk) 21:19, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
At the moment the policy says:
I feel there are a few potential problems with the wording:
Perhaps the reality of the situation would be more adequately represented if we replaced the word usually with "increasingly". Then the wording would read:
What do others think of this proposal? Michael Glass ( talk) 12:04, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
I don't agree that the change in usage has no effect on Wikipedia, if only because the sources for Wikipedia articles are increasingly being expressed in metric units. However, this might answer your objection to the wording:
Any further comments or suggestions? Michael Glass ( talk) 11:31, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
Let's wait and see if any others express their opinions here. Michael Glass ( talk) 00:32, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
Not all of these 60% are like the people you say that can't realize common units like km or kg; that's an statistic of access origins, not unit uses of readers. There are non-US/UK/Can natives who access from there, or use proxies like me sometimes. I support metrics as I understand wikipedia as a encyclopedia who gathers contributed knowledge for anyone to access. Whatever aids the understanding of the readers is positive, and standards are great for that purpose. For the same reason, offering imperial and US units are good too, since a big portion of readers are yet not familiarized with metrics. As an encyclopedia, objectivity and NPOV is fundamental, and standards also contribute for that. Using imperials first which are only used on UK, gives the impression that the article is on a British POV. The actual MOS reflects perfectly what I think. Metrics and most widespread first, with exceptions I also agree (I'm an aviator and use feets everytime, but that's formalities and a generalized protocol, if I used my preferred unit I will end dead on my first landing; your previous comment about sailing is the same, these are specific context which has particular protocols, and are excepted already MOS). Which one should be first is also clear on the MOS, correct me if I'm wrong: if is not an exception case, and editors can't agree, then source unit got first. if the choice is arbitrary, SI first. pmt7ar ( t| c) 08:41, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
This has been a very interesting discussion but it has veered right away from considering the actual wording of the policy. Should we have a policy which says:
The question at issue is which one is a more accurate description of the UK use of units. The point is descriptive not prescriptive. Are their any comments on the words, and which one is the most accurate summation of the use of units in the UK? Michael Glass ( talk) 12:53, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
I am asking about how to write out number, as # or "number". For example, in an album article, the album "charted at 'number'/# one on the Billboard 200". Dan56 ( talk) 00:26, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
What is consensus here in the wikipedia year BC or year BCE? IMHO BCE would be more neutral for all cultures. Just want to know. -- Sukarnobhumibol ( talk) 23:59, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
Please could somebody clarify the meaning of the following statement?
Does this mean the use of an encoded non-breaking space character (such as U+00A0), or is it something else? Thank you.— RJH ( talk) 15:02, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
because some browsers for some reason would replace the character itself with a normal space when uploading. ―
A._di_M. (formerly Army1987)
20:36, 21 March 2010 (UTC)The present wording of the policy reads:
I believe the present wording would be better expressed as:
The law in the UK insists on Imperial measures for road distances. However, the evidence makes it clear that in other contexts, British usage is more mixed. Here are some examples of the use of kilometres for land measurements
[5] and [6]. The Sandstone Trail also has marker posts giving the distance in kilometres [7]
These are just a few examples of the use of kilometres for distances in the UK context. It therefore seems to me to be appropriate to leave it to the good sense of editors to put miles or kilometres first, which ever seems appropriate in the context. Michael Glass ( talk) 23:53, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
Is it appropriate to include a note that these countries and most other Commonwealth countries are fully metric? I believe that there are a few exceptions on some of the Carribean islands, but not in Africa, not I believe South Asia. Of course if we included such a note, Canada would needs its own note. Martinvl ( talk) 21:32, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
Not a really important question, but one that I'm curious about the answer to. On the Yosef Sholom Eliashiv article, there's is a disagreement as to what age to list him at as of today. By the Hebrew calendar he turned 100 on March 16, and is therefore eligible for Category:Israeli centenarians. By the Gregorian calendar, however, he won't turn 100 until April 10, and should not be in that category. I would have thought that the "Calendar" subsection would cover this so that all ages are listed by the standard of the Gregorian calendar (perhaps under "Current events are given in the Gregorian calendar"), but not everyone agrees, reasonably so. Obviously this hopefully won't really matter in a couple weeks and I doubt that this kind of situation will arise often, so it's hardly a pressing issue, but I would like to know for certain. Also, this kind of issue crops up with certain Asian countries that start their age count at "1" instead of "0". I don't really have a strong opinion on this, or much knowledge of the different calender systems, so I'm not really advocating for one way or another here, but I do think it should be clarified. Canadian Paul 02:52, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
Currently WP:SEASON says:
While this is all true, I believe that we should state explicitly that seasons are reversed in northern and southern hemisphere, and it is not always obvious which hemisphere's seasons are being referred to (or words to that effect).
Another consideration is that: not all English-speaking countries have a season named "fall", so use of that term may not be appropriate.
Comments anyone? Mitch Ames ( talk) 01:18, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
There used to be instruction in here, I'm almost certain, to avoid constructions like "1995–present" and "1995–current", or "June 2, 2001 – present", in favor of "1995–" or "June 2, 2001 –", respectively. This is especially needed because statements that something continues to the "present" or is "current" are actually almost always technically a form of original research, when they remain potentially accurate at all. For example, it isn't necessarily true to give a date range for Caprica (TV series) of "January 2010 – present", because the series could have been canceled this morning and no editors here yet know about it. Also "current", "present", etc., are moving targets. Many [mis]uses of these terms lead to false information remaining in articles that are not frequently edited. The trailing "–" suggests the present, but really only means "no end date specified". The guideline does (as of this writing) say to prefer "born 12 May 1980" over "12 May 1980 –", but the "born"/"founded", etc., wordy format is only any good for certain cases, and the "12 May 1980 –" format is common in infoboxes for all sorts of things, and should certainly be preferred over "12 May 1980 – present". That advice needs to get back in here, because some projects are actively spreading the worse-than-useless "– present" format. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 22:25, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
{{ Infobox television}} | |
---|---|
Original release | |
Release | November 29, 2008 present | –
Since it seems to have been missed/avoided completely, it should be noted that this discussion was prompted by SMcCandlish's opposition to the use of "present" in the "|last_aired=
" field of {{
Infobox television}}. At
The Penguins of Madagascar he reverted use of "present" in "|last_aired=
" three times,
[16]
[17]
[18] once claiming "Don't put "present" or "current" at the end of date ranges, per WP:MOSNUM, just leave them open." However,
Template:Infobox television's instructions, which were the result of consesnsus,
[19] for "|last_aired=
" says, "Use "present" if the show is ongoing or renewed and {{
end date}} if the show is ended." The real question therefore simply is, is use of "November 29, 2008 – present" acceptable in infoboxes, where information from the article is in summary form? --
AussieLegend (
talk)
09:09, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
{{ Infobox television}} | |
---|---|
Original release | |
Release | Beginning November 29, 2008 |
I think SMcCandlish has already suggested the ideal solution for Infobox television: use "Beginning xxxx" to produce something like what's on the right. There's no ambiguity and no accessibility issue. I take PL290's point about there being a continuum of claims from those extremely unlikely to become out-of-date to those practically certain to become out-of-date, but it's still prudent to take reasonable steps to avoid making errors regarding those claims down the second end of the continuum. However, I realise the "Beginning..." format would be awkward in some infobox fields, such as for a current spouse. Adrian J. Hunter( talk• contribs) 13:06, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
{{ Infobox television}} | |
---|---|
Original release | |
Release | Began November 29, 2008 |
Thanks, of course you're right that beginning is incorrect and should be began. But we seem to have lost track of the original point of this thread. "November 29, 2008 – present" (should be an en dash) and "Since November 29, 2008" both imply that the series is still running today. For a little-watched page, this claim has a high risk of becoming untrue and remaining uncorrected. The fact that "Began November 29, 2008" does not specify whether a series is still running is its advantage. The question is whether informing readers that a series is still running is worth the risk that we'll someday be wrong. I guess the answer depends, in part, on how great that risk is, which is best evaluated by experienced Wikiproject Television members. Adrian J. Hunter( talk• contribs) 13:59, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
{{
As of}}
system demands that the phrase "as of" be the only way to word such a textual situation."2004–{{As of |EDIT-DATE |alt=present}}
" displays as "2004–present" just fine.A third method of indicating time in the 24 hour clock would be 0100 (for 1 a.m. or 1 am) At present the MOS requires that the time be written either 1 a.m. or 01:00. However, in some circles (for example, militaries), this time would be expressed as 0100, without the colons. I'm suggesting that 0100 is an appropriate expression of 01:00, 1:00, 1 a.m. or 1 am. Auntieruth55 ( talk) 01:19, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
I'm sorry, we've probably discussed this already and I missed it, but in my experience, no one writes out "one-hundred sixty-two" any more, or at least they wouldn't in an encyclopedia meant for a general audience; that really looks old-fashioned to me. But it seems to be required by our guideline to consistently write out the numbers in a list or consistently use numerals. I'm thinking of Japanese_battleship_Yamato#Armament, now at FAC, where I changed it to 162. I didn't want to also change "six" and "twenty-four" to numerals, because the whole paragraph makes good use of the distinction between numbers as numerals and numbers written out ... but "one-hundred sixty-two" just seems a little too much to me. Thoughts? - Dank ( push to talk) 22:45, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
Two sections of this guideline address non-breaking spaces. At WP:NBSP, the guideline states that such hard spaces are recommended between a numeral and an abbreviated unit, "to prevent the end-of-line displacement of elements that would be awkward at the beginning of a new line". At WP:ORDINAL, the guideline suggests that un-abbreviated units, fully spelled-out units, could benefit from the non-breaking space. It states:
128 million
or 128{{nbsp}}million
to prevent a line break from occurring between them.(This entry first appeared on 19 March 2009 with this edit by Ckatz, who apparently intended to swap a disputed section for a protected one. I guess the protected version was composed independently—I don't know.)
Back in 2006, this same subject came up at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/Archive_50#Non-breaking_space_before_non-abbreviated_unit with Centrx avowing that the non-breaking space was needed so that a numeral is not left hanging at the end of a line. Centrx described how, in the grouping '50 centimetres', the the numeral '50' would need a non-breaking space following it, but a written word 'fifty' would not. I disagree—I see no awkwardness in leaving the '50' or the 'fifty' hanging at the end of the line if the next word is a fully spelled-out unit such as 'centimetres'. There is no difference between the two in terms of reader comprehension. The reader reads fifty in each case, and waits the few milliseconds for the beginning of the next line to come into view before understanding what units are being discussed.
So, is the non-breaking space supposed to prevent awkward elements that would otherwise begin a new line, or to prevent awkward elements otherwise left hanging at the end of a line?
Back at WP:NBSP, the guideline helps us understand that the non-breaking space is used when a possible line break would make for awkward reading, such as beginning a line with an abbreviated unit. I gather that the point of the rule is to prevent this:
1. The large-bore frammis encloses a schmoo which is 50
cm in diameter.
Okay, fine, I can see that the beginning of a line is kind of ugly when it is just an abbreviation. The reader might be momentarily confused by in: is it a preposition or an abbreviation for inches? Here's what our WP:NBSP guideline would rather have:
2. The large-bore frammis encloses a schmoo which is 50 cm
in diameter.
The following two examples are both unambiguous to me. They yield the same level of reading comprehension, the same relative lack of ugliness, yet the last one is deprecated at WP:ORDINAL:
3. The large-bore frammis encloses a schmoo which is fifty
centimetres in diameter.
4. The large-bore frammis encloses a schmoo which is 50
centimetres in diameter.
I see no need for preventing a line break if the units are unabbreviated full words; there is no ambiguity. Can we remove that nbsp-conflicting entry from WP:ORDINAL, and let the WP:NBSP section describe every case of non-breaking spaces? Binksternet ( talk) 21:31, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
Comment Thanks to Binksternet for letting me know that this was under discussion. However, I have to ask if this is actually the edit you intended to highlight. I don't recall the non-breaking space issue being a part of that edit, nor does it appear to be mentioned anywhere in the text. The sole purpose of the change was to stop a festering edit war over the "Dates" section of the MoS. The existing text was copied as-is into a sub-page which was then fully protected from editing, allowing us to keep editing open on the rest of the MoS page. -- Ckatz chat spy 22:16, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
128 million
, the version you established had this bit, and it stayed in the guideline until now.
Binksternet (
talk)
22:42, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
More specifically, "128 million
" is quite different from "$128 million
"; the presence or absence of the preceding sign indicating unit of currency is crucial to the question of how confused the reader may get if the line breaks. Some of our editors would give it a non-breaking space in both cases—I would only do so when the currency sign was there. Personally, I think this first type of line break is okay:
Very different reading flow between those two. Binksternet ( talk) 00:46, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
I don't have my style references with me, so I'm not sure if I was describing some established English editorial practice, or summarizing the previous forty-nine Talk-page archives and years of WPMOS, or describing a sensible and logical practice ipse dixit, but what springs compelling to mind at the moment is: if standard style prescribes that even the longest year numbers must begin a sentence spelled out in words, even in bare two thousand and ten, why should a numeral hang out alone amongst a sea of words, away from the unit it depends on for meaning? If the number is so troublesome it can't be spelled out in common words, why not also trouble for elegance and clarity? If the number's scientific context demands a numeral, why not follow the same principle that binds a number to its unit in the dimensional analysis and conversion factors of Chapter 1 Chemistry? — Centrx→ talk • 06:00, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
Should the following line be removed from the guideline or moved up from the WP:ORDINAL section to the WP:NBSP section?
128 million
or 128{{nbsp}}million
to prevent a line break from occurring between them.The question is whether non-breaking spaces are used between a numeral and a unit of any sort, or just between a numeral and an abbreviation of a unit. In all cases non-breaking spaces would continue to be used as otherwise prescribed to address problems of ambiguity. Binksternet ( talk) 14:34, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
WP:NBSP says:
Does that mean that nbsp's should be added to MOS:DOB before BC and BCE where it says:
and
? Art LaPella ( talk) 17:56, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
I have started a WP:WQA concerning Michael Glass' comments on units on various forums. The relevant discussion is here. Justin the Evil Scotsman talk 14:07, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
There is currently an ongoing discussion about the future of this and others MoS naming style. Please consider the issues raised in the discussion and vote if you wish GnevinAWB ( talk) 20:54, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
The present policy reads:
In fact, articles about all other countries than the United States and Britain (plus dependencies) generally put metric units first. This includes Liberia and Myanmar. Therefore the policy should read:
Any objections or suggestions? Michael Glass ( talk) 01:21, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
One way to get round the possible exceptions for Liberia and Myanmar is by this wording:
The problem is not an ambiguity with the word "country" which is clear enough, but with the rest of the advice which mentions the UK and the US without specifying which of their territories use what weights and measures. Leaving out all may be enough to do the trick.
(As an aside, Liberia appears to be switching over to the metric system. See [21], [22], [23]. Michael Glass ( talk) 06:00, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
Let's just get back to the wording. The present wording says:
This offers guidance about what to do in Sierra Leone (Commonwealth) but not Mali, Malaysia (Commonwealth) but not Indonesia, India (Commonwealth) but not Nepal. And yet we know that all of these countries are metric. I am trying to deal with this anomalous situation.
So whatever difficulties there might be with any suggested revisions, the wording as it stands is manifestly inconsistent.
Here is my suggestion, designed to deal with Pfainuk's concern about US and UK territories, and Martinvl's point about usage.
I think that this answers the specific questions about the wording. Of course, it does not go into whether Myanmar or Liberia do or do not use metric measures or whether Government usage is the same as or different from popular usage. These exceptions are covered by the word, generally. Note also that in the case of the UK and the US the wording states that some of these territories use the same units, not all. Well known exceptions are Gibraltar (compared with the UK) and Puerto Rico (compared with the US).
Are there any other suggestions or criticisms? Michael Glass ( talk) 08:52, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
On doing a quick check on which territories were covered, I'll accept most.
For the other clause, I'm puzzled by your objection. Can you suggest a wording that you would find more acceptable? Michael Glass ( talk) 23:11, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
Most countries is too wide, as this only applies to Liberia and Myanmar, and in both these countries usage is mixed. Almost all would be closer to the mark. Perhaps this would be closer to what you meant:
Any comments or suggestions? Michael Glass ( talk) 23:55, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
Please look at the links I have supplied, and if that is not enough evidence for you I would be glad to provide other links to demonstrate that usage is mixed in Liberia. As for the difference between "most" and "almost all", it's the difference between making a clear underestimation of the spread of metrication and putting it more accurately. Of course "99 per cent of other countries" is another possibility. Would you agree to that? Michael Glass ( talk) 13:22, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
I have found this type of "date" in a few articles. Its quite common particularly in articles on "popular culture" subjects. For example a rock band's next world tour is described as "starting in the spring of 2011". As a denizen of the southern hemisphere I find this usage particularly irritating. Have schools stopped teaching that it isn't spring/summer/autumn/winter everywhere at the same time? I'd like to suggest that such "dates" be specifically banned unless they are used to describe actual seasonal phenomena such as "swallows arrive in the spring" or "heatwaves are very rare in winter". Roger ( talk) 14:14, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
I suggest we try to get Follow Current Literature into MOSNUM. I propose the following:
Generally, editors should use terminology and symbols commonly employed in current, reliable literature for that subject and level of technicality. When in doubt, use the units of measure, prefixes, unit symbols, number notation, and methods of disambiguation most often employed in reliable periodicals directed to a similar readership.
The objective of technical writing is to communicate with minimal confusion so that readers can learn about a subject and are primed as well as possible to learn even more in their studies elsewhere. There are three important elements in determining what terminology and units of measure are best suited for a given article:
Preference for international units
Greg L ( talk) 23:48, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
If the choice of units in the United Kingdom is political, then the WP:NPOV approach would be to quote the unit of measure used in the source document first. If there are multiple sources that use different units of measure, then the editor should use the units of measure from the most authoritative of those sources (which will usually be the same as the primary source). Martinvl ( talk) 11:26, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
(outdent) Minor nitpick with proposed text in the box up there: If it were not an intrinsically-US subject, then it should be "metres", not "meters". — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 06:09, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
Conversions between units add clarification for readers who are unfamiliar with the primary units used, but have a jarring effect for readers who are familiar with both. In cases where UK and US units are similar, but not the same may I propose that it is sufficient for editors to specify which units they are using without conversion. Thus if US gallons are quoted, it will be unnecessary to quote Imperial gallons as well.
In the same vein, the different types of ton(ne) should be clearly specified, but not converted - the United States generally using the short ton and the United Kingdom generally using the tonne. (The use of the tonne without conversion to [long] tons is in accordance with Times Style Guide). Martinvl ( talk) 11:29, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
I'm trying to find where there is consensus to what is being done exactly here. I'm not against it but this is the type of thing that inflamed the date delinking wars last time and there needs to be clear support to do it.
Specifically, User:Rjwilmsi is going through numerous articles tagged with {{ use dmy dates}} or {{ use mdy dates}} via AWB and converting the dates. Technically so far so good, but most of these seem to be converting the dates in the citations to the indicated format. I note that a major point in the past and still present in MOSNUM is that dates need to be consistent in the body of the article, and dates need to be consistent in the citations, but there does not need to be consistency of dates between the body and citations. It is unclear if the two templates were meant to be used to apply to citations, and if Rjwilmsi's changes are overriding the editors' preference on affected articles. I've not seen any date-related issues pop up recently so I'm wondering if this was an effort taken on only by the editor (there's a discussion with him on the talk page with OhConfusius regarding a safe range of pages to use it on, but the recent edits are considerably outside OC's suggestion).
I realize this basically converting ISO formats in the citations, and the amount of "harm" done is minimal, but again, I'm far from the extreme position of this and think there needs to be better assurance on this process. -- MASEM ( t) 21:24, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
[outdent] I'm all for the conversion. It's completely retarded to use one date format in main prose and another in the citations attached to them, and using YYYY-MM-DD dates in articles AT ALL is a terrible idea, as has been discussed here many times, with no solid reason given in support of doing so. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 06:13, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
(unindent) The intent is not so much to badger the person who incorrectly claims Wikipedia is governed by a particular standard, as to put others who might come across the claim on notice that the claim is disputed. I see no hope of ever resolving the date related disputes on Wikipedia, such as YYYY-MM-DD vs. DD Month YYYY or AD vs. CE. Jc3s5h ( talk) 16:22, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
Which is right per WP:MOS? "At 8:45 a.m., blah blah. At 9:00 a.m., blah blah blah. At 9:30 a.m., ..." or "At 8:45 a.m., blah blah. At 9:00, blah blah blah. At 9:30, ...". - Dank ( push to talk) 22:46, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 125 | Archive 126 | Archive 127 | Archive 128 | Archive 129 | Archive 130 | → | Archive 135 |
Question: Articles 1530 BC xxxxBC etc. Hello! Would you please explain me why the wikipedia has nearly only christian reminiscents according to the article series 1530 BC. Why are there are no 1530 BCE - articles, respectively? I would like to mention, that BC means Before Christ - which is a christian confession of faith and never a neutral appointment. Whereas BCE can be rendered Before Common Era or Before Christian Era alike, which is was more strong neutral appointment. Would you please help me on this - or guide me where I may get help? Sincerely -- 87.160.202.82 ( talk) 14:48, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
I propose to add a note that it is generally acceptable to specify the nation for currencies. While some editors may consider an article to be entirely country-related (an example would be a group of disputes about currencies in US university articles), others will see the article as of substantial international interest.
Also, if the subject *IS* the money, for example, sections on endowments, I think that again specifying the unit should be acceptable but not required. These bits of information will have international interest simply for comparison among nations. It seems reasonable for a document intended for a global audience to be at least tolerant of specifying the currency unit. - Sinneed 19:21, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
I have always, by convention, written ordinals like this: 22nd. It was a surprise to me therefore to see that it is written in the MOS as "The ordinal suffix (e.g., th) is not superscripted". No room for discussion?
A search reveals the page here. So it seems that originally there was no "rule" against superscripting ordinals, but a consensus in May 2007 lead to one being introduced.
I would like to raise the discussion again. Had I been aware of it at the time, I most certainly would have objected to such a rule forbidding superscripting ordinals. Please note that the argument pur forward in the archive was to follow the "AP style guide". I did not know what this was, and had to look it up. It seems that the "Associated Press" guide is an American style guide, which takes no account of conventions in other countries.
I propose that if people do not wish to superscript their ordinals then they may continue not to do so - but it should be recognised that in non-USA varieties of English, ordinals can be correctly superscripted. So let's drop the absolute rule about it. EuroSong talk 15:48, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
From time to time there is a discussion here about US vs British vs rest of world units of measure or date format. Wikimedia released a study titled Wikipedia page views, a global perspective. Here is a breakdown on English Wikipedia page views by country. The top five are United States 52.9%, United Kingdom 10.4%, Canada 5.8%, Australia 4.0%, and India 2.5%. -- SWTPC6800 ( talk) 22:24, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
A few months ago, the Other date ranges section was changed significantly with little discussion. It was protected at the time, so the discussion was carried out on this obscure subpage, and it reversed part of the former guideline, which stated:
<!--as of 10 October 2007-->
. The form since 1996 should be used in favor of 1996–present in article text and infoboxes.The current version reads:
<!--as of 10 October 2007-->
. The form since 1996 should be used in favor of 1996–present in article text.So this is what was changed:
My proposal is to change the sentence "In the main text of articles, the form 1996–present should not be used, though it is preferred in infoboxes and other crowded templates or lists" to "The form 1996–present should be avoided in the main text of articles, though it may be used in infoboxes, crowded templates or lists". This way we would let users decide which form to use in infoboxes and templates, as needed, while still mandating since 1996 for article prose. Mushroom ( Talk) 08:04, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
So does anyone oppose my proposal to allow (but not mandate) the use of "since 1996" in infoboxes, templates, and lists? Mushroom ( Talk) 20:20, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
From out of nowhere, dates have been unlinked over the past few months. A date is as relevant as a place or a name. It answers one of the fundamental questions: "when?". Especially for biographies, this fact is relevant. Why then, was a vote not put to the entire Wikipedia community concerning this question? Why was it decided by a small group of usurpers? I will continue to link dates in biographies as the information is as relevant as a place. If a date isn't linked, then neither should a place. However, this all seems trivial to me as deciding whether or not to link or not link is a waste of time. Stereorock ( talk) 02:19, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
There was also the Requests for arbitration/Date delinking case that authorized a full-date unlinking bot to clean up the excessive date linking on Wikipedia. -- SWTPC6800 ( talk) 05:58, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
On the substance, as opposed to procedure, there are really two questions: one was about date auto-formatting, which allowed registered users who'd expressed a preference to see dates in their own preferred style, e.g. 9 May 1873 or May 9, 1873. The second question was whether the dates themselves should be linked for the reasons we enter other wikilinks: because the date itself is significant. Subsidiary parts of the second question were what element of a date is significant enough to link: the specific day in a millennium, like May 9, 1873, or the year ( 1873) or the day of the year ( May 9), or all of them, or none of them. A complicating factor is that some days in time are now linked not to everything that happened on them, but to an overwhelming event such as Kennedy's assassination ( November 22, 1963) or the terrorist acts of September 11, 2001. Because of the agglomerative way that Wikipedia's constructed, many day articles are rather incoherent, and many year articles can gradually change from being useful, informative chronologies or timelines into similar random lists. But no consensus was ever reached against linking dates for purposes of information, although it would be rare that for such purposes one would use the old autoformatting form of May 9, 1873. —— Shakescene ( talk) 05:59, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
Could we please remove, "For example, with respect to British date formats as opposed to American it would be acceptable to change from American format to British if the article concerned a British subject." It contradicts the next three sentences, "Edit warring over optional styles (such as 14 February and February 14) is unacceptable. If an article has been stable in a given style, it should not be converted without a style-independent reason. Where in doubt, defer to the style used by the first major contributor."
It's also not correct that January 30, 2010 is wrong in the UK. It isn't. It is used, and in fact used to be more common that 30 January 2010. See, for example, The Times. [1]
The problem with having articles changed is that the writers of the article have to stop and think whenever they write a date from that point on, and if they don't notice the change, and carry on editing as before, we end up with inconsistencies. I think we need to remove any language that encourages editors to arrive at what they see as a "British article" (which in itself is an odd idea) and change the date formats to the format they believe (wrongly!) is the only correct one. SlimVirgin TALK contribs 01:23, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
I don't believe that the rule about not changing a stable article should apply to YYYY-MM-DD dates in footnotes. It used to be that you had do use YYYY-MM-DD format in the citation templates because of the way they where linked. It has thus become common to see this format in footnotes. I can't see any reason to keep things that way though. JIMp talk· cont 09:27, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
This wouldn't go so far as to encourage the change, but it would indicate that it's permissible. (Personally, I'd love it if someone would program a bot to go through all those footnotes and change the YYYY-MM-DD dates to whatever's used in the rest of the article, but that would probably annoy some people.) — Josiah Rowe ( talk • contribs) 09:50, 1 February 2010 (UTC)YYYY-MM-DD style dates used to be common in footnotes due to template requirements, but are no longer encouraged; it is acceptable to change these dates to whatever date format is used in the rest of the article.
Slimvirgin, ArbCom has clearly stated that region-related ties are a valid reason for converting an article. That would a "style-independent reason" (as mentioned in the guideline) that would trump the "first contributor" provision. Beyond that, changing the guideline in the manner you've suggested would require far more than just a casual discussion here, given that it would be a fairly major alteration of the way we handle the matter. -- Ckatz chat spy 11:40, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
Eubulides ( talk · contribs) slightly changed the language regarding conversions, and this edit was reverted because it was an "undiscussed policy change". Editors who disagreed with the change may wish to comment at Wikipedia talk:Featured article criteria#Unit conversions, where the issue was first raised. Dabomb87 ( talk) 00:19, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
In certain instances, numbers might exist in logical progression, as associations with a progressing number are described. For example, in counting by twos, you might say, "The 1st number in the sequence is 2, or 1*2. The 2nd is 4, or 2*2. The 3rd is 6, or 3*2," or, "The first number in the sequence is two, or 1*2. The second is four, or 2*2. The third is six, or 3*2." This particular example is elementary, and easy to process. But in situations where the numbers are associated with a more complex relationship, it may be harder to follow the progression without the visual cue points that numerals provide. They are easily visually filtered from the surrounding Latin lettering. Being able to immediately jump to the beginning of the associated description by using those cue points allows the reader to recall the associated information quicker, reading only enough to recognize each train of thought, and piece together a logical progression out of the conclusions with less rereading. Further, if you're expecting this, for example by being able to see an upcoming "2nd" and "3rd" as you read a "1st," you can prepare the logical segmentation of the trains of thought before actually reading them, much in the same way as punctuation marks and ordered tables of values. So, I believe and propose that the first sentence's form should be preferred in these types of numerical-logical progressions. LokiClock ( talk) 23:51, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
User:Ryoung122 has requested comment at Wikipedia_talk:Linking#Request_for_Comment:_Year-linking_exceptions_for_persons_noted_as_.22links.22_to_the_past. HWV258 . 03:21, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
As a result of a recent discussion on the FA page I installed the following edit:
My edit was reverted with the edit summary "Undo undiscussed policy change. Conversions normally should be given, unless they create excessive clutter."
Now, as can be found in FA thread, that's not what's actually happening in featured articles: reviewers and delegates are saying that for naval articles it's OK to convert just the first instance of "knots" (or whatever), and leave the rest alone, which is all that the proposed change is trying to say. In such articles (which is the topic of the above text), converting each instance of the units is invariably clutter. The current wording is quite confusing (I mostly just trimmed noise phrases like "it could be best to note that" from it), and I was trying to distill away the confusion and reflect what's actually happening. If the proposed wording isn't quite right, let's have better wording; but the current wording is quite bad and needs improvement. Eubulides ( talk) 09:19, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
When units are part of the subject of a topic—nautical miles in articles about the history of nautical law, SI units in scientific articles, yards in articles about American football—only the first use of a unit needs conversion and linking, possibly giving the conversion factor to another familiar unit in a parenthetical note or a footnote.
When an article contains many measurements, only the first use of a unit needs conversion and linking, possibly giving the conversion factor to another familiar unit in a parenthetical note or a footnote. When conversions are omitted, the unit used should be the one given first in the first instance: The goal lines in American football are 100 yards (91 m) apart...the ball must be advanced 10 yards to achieve a first down.
I was just considering this clause from a different perspective with a view to making changes. There is a difficulty with things like '12 pounder gun' which may not translate well because the designation is the name of the model rather than an accurate projectile weight, which might be 11.5 or 12.5 or even variable depending on ammunition. I think this probably comes under this section as something which should not normally be converted but just be noted somewhere what the equivalent would be. Anyway, my conclusion was that somewhere the guide should make it more clear that where something which appears to be a measurement is actually a name, it should not simply be converted but needs to be explained with an appropriate equivalent. Discussion elsewhere pointed out the similar example of a motor car engine described as 1200cc, which might be a marketing device rather than a measurement of its 1175cc actual capacity. Where the article explained it was 1175cc then this could perfectly well be converted, but converting the 1200 would be misleading. Sandpiper ( talk) 12:05, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Frank Lebby Stanton uses the style of 1857 February 22 thoughout the article. Since this is a very odd style, I changed it to February 22, 1857, but I was revert with the reason that articles should use the format chosen by the first major contributor. This is a nonstandard style for any national variety, and this page does not even mention it. It says not to use YYYY-MM-DD, but this is the spelled-out version. Should it be changed? Reywas92 Talk 04:33, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
It's easy to edit the text to include {{ xt}}, but I'm having a bit of trouble working out where, and would appreciate some confirmation before I start:
I cannot see any other quoted text that needs conversion, although there are probably some more phrases in italics or just plain text that I'll notice later. Johnuniq ( talk) 11:58, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
There is no such ambiguity with recurring events, such as January 1 is New Year's Day.
Thanks for info. I made quite a lot of changes and will wait at least 24 hours before doing more (I'm up to "Scientific notation, engineering notation, and uncertainty"). In the line starting "The ordinal suffix", I used xt, but (owing to the font), it is not entirely successful in appearance. I tried xt for the italics at "Non-base-10 notations" but it looks bad with xt, so I did not use it. Johnuniq ( talk) 04:32, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
I am really impressed with your conservative, stepped approach to improving MOSNUM. Your style should be widely emulated. Greg L ( talk) 18:09, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
P.S. I just realized that if you edited numeric examples so their digits, when they are used in significands, superscripts, and subscripts, are segregated into—and chosen from pallets of—three families: 012, and 34579, and 68, then that ought to fix the appearance problem you are wrestling with. For instance: The chance that 68 editors on Wikipedia will have 100% agreement on any one issue on WT:MOSNUM is 9.7435×10−21. Greg L ( talk) 18:51, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
I see you coded the good-looking one as follows:
{{xt|1=<span style="font-family: sans">''x''<sup>1</sup>''x''²''x''³''x''<sup>4</sup></span>}} vs. {{xt|1=<span style="font-family: sans">''x''<sup>1</sup>''x''<sup>2</sup>''x''<sup>3</sup>''x''<sup>4</sup></span>}}
.
Indeed, the example text appears small on my Mac because it uses Times, but it still looks nice, and—indeed—that is quite the kluge to code.
So let me try the {{ xt}} treatment: x1x²x³x4 vs. x1x2x3x4. I see. A big, stupid superscripted “3” and “4” because one must do a progression, where choosing from a segregated pallet isn’t possible.
However, this is an situation where the example text is sufficiently clear from context since it is numerics surrounded by words. Greg L ( talk) 19:35, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
My finished converting all "quoted examples" and italic examples to use {{ xt}}. It turned out that there were very few changes in that last edit; I included changing "US" to "US gallon" at one point where it looked like an oversight.
In the line beginning "Use nautical mile or statute mile" (and some other places) I used xt for the examples which included links, so they are blue and look a tiny bit strange (but I think ok). I did not touch the examples in the "Quantities of bytes and bits" section because 10003 renders unsatisfactorily as 10003 and the 3 can't really be changed to follow Greg's above suggestion. The idea of an xtc template sounds useful for rendering the numeric examples mentioned above, and it looks very simple to do for a trial. Johnuniq ( talk) 09:26, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
<font color="#002BB8">
fake link</font color>
.<font color="#006F00">
example formula without the accompanying Georgia font</font color>
.<font color="#006F00">
with {{xtc|
. You know the drill; same on the back end.My sense is that using <font color="#002BB8">
to fix the last few stragglers will be the perfect demonstration for a “trial,” as you say. It’s also been my observation in the past that having code like that in MOSNUM, if the practice sticks, is just the very sort of thing that prompts someone to make a template so they can get rid of the code. By dipping our toes into this with a color-call, we can all look at the result and see if it serves a good and valuable end.
I know that my use of CSS spans when making really nice-looking scientific notation (like 9.743534579(35)×10−21 kg) precipitated the effort to make templates to accomplish the same end and that resulted in the {{
xt}} template. People just couldn’t stand looking at my hand-written code for scientific notation, which looked like 6.022<span style="margin-left:0.25em">141<span style="margin-left:0.2em">79(30)</span></span><span style="margin-left:0.25em">×</span><span style="margin-left:0.15em">10</span><sup>–21</sup> kg
. ;-)
Greg L (
talk)
19:29, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
I used Greg's font color="#006F00" in Quantities of bytes and bits. It looks good to me (although I now think I should have added a greeen period to each of the three "Acceptable examples include"). Following is what Template:xtc should be (needs documentation):
{{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACE}}|{{ns:0}}|{{FormattingError|Template:xtc is only for examples of style and formatting. Do not use it in actual articles.}}|<span class="example"style= "color: #006F00;">{{{1|}}}</span>}}<noinclude> {{Documentation}} <!-- If/when the <samp> element is included in WikiText, replace span with samp, which would be more appropriate. --> </noinclude>
Hmmm, interesting off-topic: Why does {{ xt}} fail when used like this abc{{xt|font color="#006F00"}}def which renders as abcExample textdef? Johnuniq ( talk) 04:53, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
font color
whose value is "#006F00"
. You have to use 1=
to specify the value of the first unnamed parameter when it itself contains equals signs (font color="#006F00"). --
___A. di M.
14:37, 16 September 2009 (UTC){{xt|1=''M''<span style="margin-left:0.15em"><sup>2</sup></span>}}
→ M2 (one must use the “1=” technique because the = sign is functional in a CSS span… the span here is just an example that came to mind.){{xt|2 × 3 {{=}} 6}}
→ 2 × 3 = 6 ( {{
=}} (template replacement of the = as it is only display){{xt|2 × 3 = 6}}
→ 2 × 3 = 6 (character reference to replace the = as it is only display)I mentioned this in the section above, but I think it got a bit lost in the larger discussion of date formats. I'd like to add a sentence to the section about YYYY-MM-DD dates:
I've just seen a user who's been changing date formats in footnotes to YYYY-MM-DD, because he thought it was standard Wikipedia style. YYYY-MM-DD dates are ugly, not widely used, and (as SlimVirgin points out above) potentially unclear to readers. I don't think it's time to actively discourage the use of this date format (because it's in millions of articles, and changing them all without more discussion would be disruptive), but I think it would be appropriate to note that they're not encouraged either. What do other people think? I'm open to discussion on the wording, of course. — Josiah Rowe ( talk • contribs) 22:09, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
I didn't realize the proposal was so recent; for some reason, I thought the discussion was longer ago. Well, from reviewing that discussion I see that there is no consensus about the use of YYYY-MM-DD dates in footnotes. That said, can we agree that changing normal, region-appropriate, human-format dates (that is, February 4, 2010 or 4 February 2010) to YYYY-MM-DD dates is not desirable? If so, is that covered by the existing warnings about not changing optional styles, or should the MoS say more? — Josiah Rowe ( talk • contribs) 23:26, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
I support the proposal above. It's not creep, it's getting the word out that YYYY-MM-DD is not WP format for footnotes. JIMp talk· cont 09:07, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
Would it then be appropriate for the MoS to say something like:
Does that reflect the current consensus better? — Josiah Rowe ( talk • contribs) 17:07, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
I realize that Wikipedia tends to be dominated by American editors, but I support ISO 8601 (YYYY-MM-DD) as the rapidly developing international and web (see W3C at http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/iso-date) consensus is that the ISO 8601 format is internationally unambiguous and elegant (and already the cultural standard of half the world's people). Only some Americans seem to find it fundamentally offensive, for reasons which escape me. Also note that the typical reference style in Wikipedia most closely follows the APA standard, which currently recommends a hybrid style (e.g., "2010, February 20"). The strong trend by a wide range of editors toward using the "YYYY-MM-DD" format (e.g., "2010-02-20") actually post-dates the general decision to stop using the date format templates. The real reason for its increasing popularity is that it represents a fundamental shift toward using ISO 8601, which was finalized only a few years ago. As awareness of the benefits of the new date format standard increases, so does general adoption. Even Canada has started to use YYYY-MM-DD extensively on many documents, especially those generated electronically. This is one discussion which will probably keep popping up again and again, meeting violent resistance from some, until ultimately accepted as common sense by most. Yeng-Wang-Yeh ( talk) 00:18, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
I just created {{
Currency}} in order to do currency formatting values inline with the MOS guidelines here. The template is currently functional for a decent selection of the largest currencies, but it's nowhere near 100% complete yet. Value ranges need to be added as well, along with conversions from one currency to another (which I think that I'll use {{
Currency value}} to provide). Feel free ot jump in and change things though, if you'd like, as I generally dislike working alone anyway. Regards,
—
V = I * R (
Talk •
Contribs)
03:40, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Would appreciate some input here guys. A few weeks ago I queried the use of the short scale million on Wikipedia: Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view/Noticeboard/Archive_10#Short_scale_billion. While I don't have a fundamental objection to the short scale I was not aware of the protocol and often wondered which scale was in use, especially in regards to British articles which may reference the billion in the long scale sense. Many people in Britain from the older generation and people especially from non-English speaking countries where the long scale is still in use may be unaware of MOS directive to use short scale and write using the long scale billion. In many other cases the readers may be confused about which scale is in use.
One of the suggestions at the NPOV discussion was to overlink the first billion in an article to make it explicit i.e. billion. I personally though this was a clever idea since readers can ascertain without any doubt which scale is being used, so I thought that was issue closed. I overlinked a few billions but have now been accused of violating the "over-linking" protocol and some of the billions have been un-linked.
I would appreciate your thoughts on this. Do you think it is acceptable to link a billion once at the start of an article (or maybe once a section in a large article) to achieve clarity for the reader, given the alternative that the reader could be left confused otherwise? Obviously I don't want to get into edit wars over linking, so if this is a no-go then I'll just cut my losses, but I would welcome your opinions on this. Betty Logan ( talk) 01:39, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
Accordingly to, I think, ALL British news media, the recent financial crisis has involved bailouts of sums typically stated to be in the tens of billions (e.g., £50 billion bank rescue). And it is said that the population of earth may peak at about 10 billion. It beggars belief what older Britons must be thinking if any of the uncertainties mentioned above exist. "Billion" in current English-language usage ALWAYS means a thousand million. Everywhere. My commiserations to anyone who may have emigrated pre-1974 and not heard the news. Pol098 ( talk) 11:37, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
In the project page "Time of day" section we find: "24:00 [refers] to midnight at the end of a date". In the best of cases this is not always used; Wednesday certainly becomes Thursday at 0:00 on Thursday. I don't even know if it is correct, or common, to speak of 24:00 on Wednesday. The text should be altered either to mandate 0:00, or to allow both usages (in my opinion incorrect, the clock rolls over from 23:59 to 00:00, never 24:00, that time doesn't exist).
While I'm on the subject, in the 12-hour clock section we could clarify that it is equally acceptable to say either "12 noon" or simply "noon", and the same for midnight (I think both usages are common). Pol098 ( talk) 11:46, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Actually 24:00 refers to midnight of the following day. Each day has only one midnight. 167.107.191.217 ( talk) 19:14, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
The wording of the introductory sentence of the section on rendering numbers as figures or words is vague, contradictory and confusing. "As a general rule, in the body of an article, single-digit whole numbers from zero to nine are spelled out in words; numbers greater than nine are commonly rendered in numerals, or may be rendered in words if they are expressed in one or two words". This is not style, this is vague provision of choice. If it is accepted that the demarcation point for rendering numbers as figures or words is two-digit numbers (i.e., eight, nine, 10, 11) then say so. I am tired of editors changing 15 to fifteen, 11 to eleven and so on when the style guide seems to allow either, without any logical reason. The Times Style Guide (UK) directs: "Numbers write from one to ten in full, 11 upwards as numerals except when they are approximations, eg, “about thirty people turned up”. News Ltd's Style Guide in Australia directs that only single-digit numbers be rendered as words, thus 10 and above are figures. For the sake of consistency, Wiki's style guide needs to be as clear and unambiguous. LTSally ( talk) 21:19, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
At the moment the policy says:
I feel there are a few potential problems with the wording:
Perhaps the reality of the situation would be more adequately represented if we replaced the word usually with "increasingly". Then the wording would read:
What do others think of this proposal? Michael Glass ( talk) 12:04, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
I don't agree that the change in usage has no effect on Wikipedia, if only because the sources for Wikipedia articles are increasingly being expressed in metric units. However, this might answer your objection to the wording:
Any further comments or suggestions? Michael Glass ( talk) 11:31, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
Let's wait and see if any others express their opinions here. Michael Glass ( talk) 00:32, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
Not all of these 60% are like the people you say that can't realize common units like km or kg; that's an statistic of access origins, not unit uses of readers. There are non-US/UK/Can natives who access from there, or use proxies like me sometimes. I support metrics as I understand wikipedia as a encyclopedia who gathers contributed knowledge for anyone to access. Whatever aids the understanding of the readers is positive, and standards are great for that purpose. For the same reason, offering imperial and US units are good too, since a big portion of readers are yet not familiarized with metrics. As an encyclopedia, objectivity and NPOV is fundamental, and standards also contribute for that. Using imperials first which are only used on UK, gives the impression that the article is on a British POV. The actual MOS reflects perfectly what I think. Metrics and most widespread first, with exceptions I also agree (I'm an aviator and use feets everytime, but that's formalities and a generalized protocol, if I used my preferred unit I will end dead on my first landing; your previous comment about sailing is the same, these are specific context which has particular protocols, and are excepted already MOS). Which one should be first is also clear on the MOS, correct me if I'm wrong: if is not an exception case, and editors can't agree, then source unit got first. if the choice is arbitrary, SI first. pmt7ar ( t| c) 08:41, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
This has been a very interesting discussion but it has veered right away from considering the actual wording of the policy. Should we have a policy which says:
The question at issue is which one is a more accurate description of the UK use of units. The point is descriptive not prescriptive. Are their any comments on the words, and which one is the most accurate summation of the use of units in the UK? Michael Glass ( talk) 12:53, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
I am asking about how to write out number, as # or "number". For example, in an album article, the album "charted at 'number'/# one on the Billboard 200". Dan56 ( talk) 00:26, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
What is consensus here in the wikipedia year BC or year BCE? IMHO BCE would be more neutral for all cultures. Just want to know. -- Sukarnobhumibol ( talk) 23:59, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
Please could somebody clarify the meaning of the following statement?
Does this mean the use of an encoded non-breaking space character (such as U+00A0), or is it something else? Thank you.— RJH ( talk) 15:02, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
because some browsers for some reason would replace the character itself with a normal space when uploading. ―
A._di_M. (formerly Army1987)
20:36, 21 March 2010 (UTC)The present wording of the policy reads:
I believe the present wording would be better expressed as:
The law in the UK insists on Imperial measures for road distances. However, the evidence makes it clear that in other contexts, British usage is more mixed. Here are some examples of the use of kilometres for land measurements
[5] and [6]. The Sandstone Trail also has marker posts giving the distance in kilometres [7]
These are just a few examples of the use of kilometres for distances in the UK context. It therefore seems to me to be appropriate to leave it to the good sense of editors to put miles or kilometres first, which ever seems appropriate in the context. Michael Glass ( talk) 23:53, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
Is it appropriate to include a note that these countries and most other Commonwealth countries are fully metric? I believe that there are a few exceptions on some of the Carribean islands, but not in Africa, not I believe South Asia. Of course if we included such a note, Canada would needs its own note. Martinvl ( talk) 21:32, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
Not a really important question, but one that I'm curious about the answer to. On the Yosef Sholom Eliashiv article, there's is a disagreement as to what age to list him at as of today. By the Hebrew calendar he turned 100 on March 16, and is therefore eligible for Category:Israeli centenarians. By the Gregorian calendar, however, he won't turn 100 until April 10, and should not be in that category. I would have thought that the "Calendar" subsection would cover this so that all ages are listed by the standard of the Gregorian calendar (perhaps under "Current events are given in the Gregorian calendar"), but not everyone agrees, reasonably so. Obviously this hopefully won't really matter in a couple weeks and I doubt that this kind of situation will arise often, so it's hardly a pressing issue, but I would like to know for certain. Also, this kind of issue crops up with certain Asian countries that start their age count at "1" instead of "0". I don't really have a strong opinion on this, or much knowledge of the different calender systems, so I'm not really advocating for one way or another here, but I do think it should be clarified. Canadian Paul 02:52, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
Currently WP:SEASON says:
While this is all true, I believe that we should state explicitly that seasons are reversed in northern and southern hemisphere, and it is not always obvious which hemisphere's seasons are being referred to (or words to that effect).
Another consideration is that: not all English-speaking countries have a season named "fall", so use of that term may not be appropriate.
Comments anyone? Mitch Ames ( talk) 01:18, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
There used to be instruction in here, I'm almost certain, to avoid constructions like "1995–present" and "1995–current", or "June 2, 2001 – present", in favor of "1995–" or "June 2, 2001 –", respectively. This is especially needed because statements that something continues to the "present" or is "current" are actually almost always technically a form of original research, when they remain potentially accurate at all. For example, it isn't necessarily true to give a date range for Caprica (TV series) of "January 2010 – present", because the series could have been canceled this morning and no editors here yet know about it. Also "current", "present", etc., are moving targets. Many [mis]uses of these terms lead to false information remaining in articles that are not frequently edited. The trailing "–" suggests the present, but really only means "no end date specified". The guideline does (as of this writing) say to prefer "born 12 May 1980" over "12 May 1980 –", but the "born"/"founded", etc., wordy format is only any good for certain cases, and the "12 May 1980 –" format is common in infoboxes for all sorts of things, and should certainly be preferred over "12 May 1980 – present". That advice needs to get back in here, because some projects are actively spreading the worse-than-useless "– present" format. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 22:25, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
{{ Infobox television}} | |
---|---|
Original release | |
Release | November 29, 2008 present | –
Since it seems to have been missed/avoided completely, it should be noted that this discussion was prompted by SMcCandlish's opposition to the use of "present" in the "|last_aired=
" field of {{
Infobox television}}. At
The Penguins of Madagascar he reverted use of "present" in "|last_aired=
" three times,
[16]
[17]
[18] once claiming "Don't put "present" or "current" at the end of date ranges, per WP:MOSNUM, just leave them open." However,
Template:Infobox television's instructions, which were the result of consesnsus,
[19] for "|last_aired=
" says, "Use "present" if the show is ongoing or renewed and {{
end date}} if the show is ended." The real question therefore simply is, is use of "November 29, 2008 – present" acceptable in infoboxes, where information from the article is in summary form? --
AussieLegend (
talk)
09:09, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
{{ Infobox television}} | |
---|---|
Original release | |
Release | Beginning November 29, 2008 |
I think SMcCandlish has already suggested the ideal solution for Infobox television: use "Beginning xxxx" to produce something like what's on the right. There's no ambiguity and no accessibility issue. I take PL290's point about there being a continuum of claims from those extremely unlikely to become out-of-date to those practically certain to become out-of-date, but it's still prudent to take reasonable steps to avoid making errors regarding those claims down the second end of the continuum. However, I realise the "Beginning..." format would be awkward in some infobox fields, such as for a current spouse. Adrian J. Hunter( talk• contribs) 13:06, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
{{ Infobox television}} | |
---|---|
Original release | |
Release | Began November 29, 2008 |
Thanks, of course you're right that beginning is incorrect and should be began. But we seem to have lost track of the original point of this thread. "November 29, 2008 – present" (should be an en dash) and "Since November 29, 2008" both imply that the series is still running today. For a little-watched page, this claim has a high risk of becoming untrue and remaining uncorrected. The fact that "Began November 29, 2008" does not specify whether a series is still running is its advantage. The question is whether informing readers that a series is still running is worth the risk that we'll someday be wrong. I guess the answer depends, in part, on how great that risk is, which is best evaluated by experienced Wikiproject Television members. Adrian J. Hunter( talk• contribs) 13:59, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
{{
As of}}
system demands that the phrase "as of" be the only way to word such a textual situation."2004–{{As of |EDIT-DATE |alt=present}}
" displays as "2004–present" just fine.A third method of indicating time in the 24 hour clock would be 0100 (for 1 a.m. or 1 am) At present the MOS requires that the time be written either 1 a.m. or 01:00. However, in some circles (for example, militaries), this time would be expressed as 0100, without the colons. I'm suggesting that 0100 is an appropriate expression of 01:00, 1:00, 1 a.m. or 1 am. Auntieruth55 ( talk) 01:19, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
I'm sorry, we've probably discussed this already and I missed it, but in my experience, no one writes out "one-hundred sixty-two" any more, or at least they wouldn't in an encyclopedia meant for a general audience; that really looks old-fashioned to me. But it seems to be required by our guideline to consistently write out the numbers in a list or consistently use numerals. I'm thinking of Japanese_battleship_Yamato#Armament, now at FAC, where I changed it to 162. I didn't want to also change "six" and "twenty-four" to numerals, because the whole paragraph makes good use of the distinction between numbers as numerals and numbers written out ... but "one-hundred sixty-two" just seems a little too much to me. Thoughts? - Dank ( push to talk) 22:45, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
Two sections of this guideline address non-breaking spaces. At WP:NBSP, the guideline states that such hard spaces are recommended between a numeral and an abbreviated unit, "to prevent the end-of-line displacement of elements that would be awkward at the beginning of a new line". At WP:ORDINAL, the guideline suggests that un-abbreviated units, fully spelled-out units, could benefit from the non-breaking space. It states:
128 million
or 128{{nbsp}}million
to prevent a line break from occurring between them.(This entry first appeared on 19 March 2009 with this edit by Ckatz, who apparently intended to swap a disputed section for a protected one. I guess the protected version was composed independently—I don't know.)
Back in 2006, this same subject came up at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/Archive_50#Non-breaking_space_before_non-abbreviated_unit with Centrx avowing that the non-breaking space was needed so that a numeral is not left hanging at the end of a line. Centrx described how, in the grouping '50 centimetres', the the numeral '50' would need a non-breaking space following it, but a written word 'fifty' would not. I disagree—I see no awkwardness in leaving the '50' or the 'fifty' hanging at the end of the line if the next word is a fully spelled-out unit such as 'centimetres'. There is no difference between the two in terms of reader comprehension. The reader reads fifty in each case, and waits the few milliseconds for the beginning of the next line to come into view before understanding what units are being discussed.
So, is the non-breaking space supposed to prevent awkward elements that would otherwise begin a new line, or to prevent awkward elements otherwise left hanging at the end of a line?
Back at WP:NBSP, the guideline helps us understand that the non-breaking space is used when a possible line break would make for awkward reading, such as beginning a line with an abbreviated unit. I gather that the point of the rule is to prevent this:
1. The large-bore frammis encloses a schmoo which is 50
cm in diameter.
Okay, fine, I can see that the beginning of a line is kind of ugly when it is just an abbreviation. The reader might be momentarily confused by in: is it a preposition or an abbreviation for inches? Here's what our WP:NBSP guideline would rather have:
2. The large-bore frammis encloses a schmoo which is 50 cm
in diameter.
The following two examples are both unambiguous to me. They yield the same level of reading comprehension, the same relative lack of ugliness, yet the last one is deprecated at WP:ORDINAL:
3. The large-bore frammis encloses a schmoo which is fifty
centimetres in diameter.
4. The large-bore frammis encloses a schmoo which is 50
centimetres in diameter.
I see no need for preventing a line break if the units are unabbreviated full words; there is no ambiguity. Can we remove that nbsp-conflicting entry from WP:ORDINAL, and let the WP:NBSP section describe every case of non-breaking spaces? Binksternet ( talk) 21:31, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
Comment Thanks to Binksternet for letting me know that this was under discussion. However, I have to ask if this is actually the edit you intended to highlight. I don't recall the non-breaking space issue being a part of that edit, nor does it appear to be mentioned anywhere in the text. The sole purpose of the change was to stop a festering edit war over the "Dates" section of the MoS. The existing text was copied as-is into a sub-page which was then fully protected from editing, allowing us to keep editing open on the rest of the MoS page. -- Ckatz chat spy 22:16, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
128 million
, the version you established had this bit, and it stayed in the guideline until now.
Binksternet (
talk)
22:42, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
More specifically, "128 million
" is quite different from "$128 million
"; the presence or absence of the preceding sign indicating unit of currency is crucial to the question of how confused the reader may get if the line breaks. Some of our editors would give it a non-breaking space in both cases—I would only do so when the currency sign was there. Personally, I think this first type of line break is okay:
Very different reading flow between those two. Binksternet ( talk) 00:46, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
I don't have my style references with me, so I'm not sure if I was describing some established English editorial practice, or summarizing the previous forty-nine Talk-page archives and years of WPMOS, or describing a sensible and logical practice ipse dixit, but what springs compelling to mind at the moment is: if standard style prescribes that even the longest year numbers must begin a sentence spelled out in words, even in bare two thousand and ten, why should a numeral hang out alone amongst a sea of words, away from the unit it depends on for meaning? If the number is so troublesome it can't be spelled out in common words, why not also trouble for elegance and clarity? If the number's scientific context demands a numeral, why not follow the same principle that binds a number to its unit in the dimensional analysis and conversion factors of Chapter 1 Chemistry? — Centrx→ talk • 06:00, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
Should the following line be removed from the guideline or moved up from the WP:ORDINAL section to the WP:NBSP section?
128 million
or 128{{nbsp}}million
to prevent a line break from occurring between them.The question is whether non-breaking spaces are used between a numeral and a unit of any sort, or just between a numeral and an abbreviation of a unit. In all cases non-breaking spaces would continue to be used as otherwise prescribed to address problems of ambiguity. Binksternet ( talk) 14:34, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
WP:NBSP says:
Does that mean that nbsp's should be added to MOS:DOB before BC and BCE where it says:
and
? Art LaPella ( talk) 17:56, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
I have started a WP:WQA concerning Michael Glass' comments on units on various forums. The relevant discussion is here. Justin the Evil Scotsman talk 14:07, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
There is currently an ongoing discussion about the future of this and others MoS naming style. Please consider the issues raised in the discussion and vote if you wish GnevinAWB ( talk) 20:54, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
The present policy reads:
In fact, articles about all other countries than the United States and Britain (plus dependencies) generally put metric units first. This includes Liberia and Myanmar. Therefore the policy should read:
Any objections or suggestions? Michael Glass ( talk) 01:21, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
One way to get round the possible exceptions for Liberia and Myanmar is by this wording:
The problem is not an ambiguity with the word "country" which is clear enough, but with the rest of the advice which mentions the UK and the US without specifying which of their territories use what weights and measures. Leaving out all may be enough to do the trick.
(As an aside, Liberia appears to be switching over to the metric system. See [21], [22], [23]. Michael Glass ( talk) 06:00, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
Let's just get back to the wording. The present wording says:
This offers guidance about what to do in Sierra Leone (Commonwealth) but not Mali, Malaysia (Commonwealth) but not Indonesia, India (Commonwealth) but not Nepal. And yet we know that all of these countries are metric. I am trying to deal with this anomalous situation.
So whatever difficulties there might be with any suggested revisions, the wording as it stands is manifestly inconsistent.
Here is my suggestion, designed to deal with Pfainuk's concern about US and UK territories, and Martinvl's point about usage.
I think that this answers the specific questions about the wording. Of course, it does not go into whether Myanmar or Liberia do or do not use metric measures or whether Government usage is the same as or different from popular usage. These exceptions are covered by the word, generally. Note also that in the case of the UK and the US the wording states that some of these territories use the same units, not all. Well known exceptions are Gibraltar (compared with the UK) and Puerto Rico (compared with the US).
Are there any other suggestions or criticisms? Michael Glass ( talk) 08:52, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
On doing a quick check on which territories were covered, I'll accept most.
For the other clause, I'm puzzled by your objection. Can you suggest a wording that you would find more acceptable? Michael Glass ( talk) 23:11, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
Most countries is too wide, as this only applies to Liberia and Myanmar, and in both these countries usage is mixed. Almost all would be closer to the mark. Perhaps this would be closer to what you meant:
Any comments or suggestions? Michael Glass ( talk) 23:55, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
Please look at the links I have supplied, and if that is not enough evidence for you I would be glad to provide other links to demonstrate that usage is mixed in Liberia. As for the difference between "most" and "almost all", it's the difference between making a clear underestimation of the spread of metrication and putting it more accurately. Of course "99 per cent of other countries" is another possibility. Would you agree to that? Michael Glass ( talk) 13:22, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
I have found this type of "date" in a few articles. Its quite common particularly in articles on "popular culture" subjects. For example a rock band's next world tour is described as "starting in the spring of 2011". As a denizen of the southern hemisphere I find this usage particularly irritating. Have schools stopped teaching that it isn't spring/summer/autumn/winter everywhere at the same time? I'd like to suggest that such "dates" be specifically banned unless they are used to describe actual seasonal phenomena such as "swallows arrive in the spring" or "heatwaves are very rare in winter". Roger ( talk) 14:14, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
I suggest we try to get Follow Current Literature into MOSNUM. I propose the following:
Generally, editors should use terminology and symbols commonly employed in current, reliable literature for that subject and level of technicality. When in doubt, use the units of measure, prefixes, unit symbols, number notation, and methods of disambiguation most often employed in reliable periodicals directed to a similar readership.
The objective of technical writing is to communicate with minimal confusion so that readers can learn about a subject and are primed as well as possible to learn even more in their studies elsewhere. There are three important elements in determining what terminology and units of measure are best suited for a given article:
Preference for international units
Greg L ( talk) 23:48, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
If the choice of units in the United Kingdom is political, then the WP:NPOV approach would be to quote the unit of measure used in the source document first. If there are multiple sources that use different units of measure, then the editor should use the units of measure from the most authoritative of those sources (which will usually be the same as the primary source). Martinvl ( talk) 11:26, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
(outdent) Minor nitpick with proposed text in the box up there: If it were not an intrinsically-US subject, then it should be "metres", not "meters". — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 06:09, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
Conversions between units add clarification for readers who are unfamiliar with the primary units used, but have a jarring effect for readers who are familiar with both. In cases where UK and US units are similar, but not the same may I propose that it is sufficient for editors to specify which units they are using without conversion. Thus if US gallons are quoted, it will be unnecessary to quote Imperial gallons as well.
In the same vein, the different types of ton(ne) should be clearly specified, but not converted - the United States generally using the short ton and the United Kingdom generally using the tonne. (The use of the tonne without conversion to [long] tons is in accordance with Times Style Guide). Martinvl ( talk) 11:29, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
I'm trying to find where there is consensus to what is being done exactly here. I'm not against it but this is the type of thing that inflamed the date delinking wars last time and there needs to be clear support to do it.
Specifically, User:Rjwilmsi is going through numerous articles tagged with {{ use dmy dates}} or {{ use mdy dates}} via AWB and converting the dates. Technically so far so good, but most of these seem to be converting the dates in the citations to the indicated format. I note that a major point in the past and still present in MOSNUM is that dates need to be consistent in the body of the article, and dates need to be consistent in the citations, but there does not need to be consistency of dates between the body and citations. It is unclear if the two templates were meant to be used to apply to citations, and if Rjwilmsi's changes are overriding the editors' preference on affected articles. I've not seen any date-related issues pop up recently so I'm wondering if this was an effort taken on only by the editor (there's a discussion with him on the talk page with OhConfusius regarding a safe range of pages to use it on, but the recent edits are considerably outside OC's suggestion).
I realize this basically converting ISO formats in the citations, and the amount of "harm" done is minimal, but again, I'm far from the extreme position of this and think there needs to be better assurance on this process. -- MASEM ( t) 21:24, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
[outdent] I'm all for the conversion. It's completely retarded to use one date format in main prose and another in the citations attached to them, and using YYYY-MM-DD dates in articles AT ALL is a terrible idea, as has been discussed here many times, with no solid reason given in support of doing so. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 06:13, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
(unindent) The intent is not so much to badger the person who incorrectly claims Wikipedia is governed by a particular standard, as to put others who might come across the claim on notice that the claim is disputed. I see no hope of ever resolving the date related disputes on Wikipedia, such as YYYY-MM-DD vs. DD Month YYYY or AD vs. CE. Jc3s5h ( talk) 16:22, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
Which is right per WP:MOS? "At 8:45 a.m., blah blah. At 9:00 a.m., blah blah blah. At 9:30 a.m., ..." or "At 8:45 a.m., blah blah. At 9:00, blah blah blah. At 9:30, ...". - Dank ( push to talk) 22:46, 21 May 2010 (UTC)