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Editors have tried to provide unit conversions in 1910 London to Manchester air race. These keep being removed by the most frequent editor of the article. Edit summaries for removal include "if people can't figure it out themselves then tough". Some editors raised the issue on his talk page which says "If you're coming here to lecture, patronise, troll or otherwise fuck me about, then you definitely won't get the response you expect.". See the discussion.
Would anyone else like to try to improve the article? Lightmouse ( talk) 11:49, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
Lightmouse, User:Parrot of Doom’s edit was clearly improper and s/he has no leg to stand on. Roughly 45% of en.Wikipedia’s readership is American. Most of the rest thinks in metric terms. To make the articles as clear as possible for our readership, we provide conversions. Also, Parrot of Doom’s edit summary was patent nonsense. Providing conversions for our metric-thinking readership isn’t “pandering”; it’s making the article more accessible for a large segment of our readership. MOSNUM could not be any clearer on this principle. Greg L ( talk) 21:31, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
I see that this article is a 'Featured article':
It is beginning to look to me like the article falls short of that description. I don't want an edit war so can somebody else try to add units to save it from losing featured article status? Lightmouse ( talk) 16:23, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia is full of approximate and/or ambiguous values with conversions that help make WP accessible to ordinary readers. The question of nautical versus statute is a secondary issue. By default, ordinary people will read a distance in 'miles' and assess it against their experience of distances in statute miles. Similarly, conversions of the unqualified term 'mile' will default to statute miles. The use of parentheses shows that the conversion is just that: a conversion that relies on the original value being what it appears to be. It's likely to be near enough to give an idea and that's better than nothing for metric readers. Lightmouse ( talk) 20:33, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
Quite. Lightmouse ( talk) 21:30, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
I'm not sure if this is the correct place to ask/discuss this, but...I can't find any conventions for the case when multiple quantities of disparate units are used to represent a single logical measurement. (I'm guessing that this is probably only an issue with non-metric units.) The CMS seems to suggest the following:
If there are three or more units, there are even more options:
SixSix ( talk) 19:26, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
moved from Template_talk:Convert: begin
Mosnum says:
"Use long ton or short ton and not just ton; these units have no symbol or abbreviation and are always spelled out.".
However, the template says:
As you can see, even the template itself is inconsistent. Lightmouse ( talk) 17:35, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
I see two distinct issues, both important:
1. As we can see above, the format in parentheses is inconsistent. In one case it's 'long tons', in another it's 'LT'. We should choose one format and use it throughout.
2. Mosnum and the convert template output are inconsistent. I looked up mosnum talk and found the abbreviations
'LT' and 'ST' mentioned and as far as I could see, the prohibition still has mosnum consensus. There are dozens of other threads where tons have been discussed and I'm sure there will be plenty of input if we raise it again.
As far as I know, this is the only case where the template fails to comply with mosnum. I thought compliance was an objective, it certainly is one of the things that I assume. If we make the template compliant with mosnum, we don't have to raise the issue on mosnum. If we want to make the template consistent by using 'ST' and 'LT', then we need to raise it on mosnum. Is that a fair summary of the situation? Lightmouse ( talk) 14:39, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
moved from Template_talk:Convert: end
The project page contains "Dates of events in countries using the Gregorian calendar are given in the Gregorian calendar. This includes some of the Continent of Europe from 1582, the British Empire from 14 September 1752" While England did change to the Gregorian calendar in 1752, Scotland, as noted in the Gregorian calendar article, changed on January 1 1600 [1].
Would there be any problems rewording this as "Dates of events in countries using the Gregorian calendar are given in the Gregorian calendar. This includes some of the Continent of Europe from 1582, Scotland from 1600, the rest of the British Empire from 14 September 1752"? Kiore ( talk) 08:29, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
There is a discussion how to use coordinates for powerlines and cables. Your input is appreciated. Beagel ( talk) 17:30, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
Okay, I've been trying to find the original justification for this line, but the history is just too convoluted: The use of the few Unicode symbols available for fractions (such as ½) is discouraged entirely, for accessibility reasons among others. This strikes me as outdated. We use unicode characters everywhere, why not fractions? Can this be revisited? (And "½" is a bad example, as that's not a Unicode addition; it's part of ISO-8859-1.)— Chowbok ☠ 15:53, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
Mosnum contains the text: "15 sq mi" does that mean 'mi' is the symbol for mile? Lightmouse ( talk) 11:58, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
Mosnum already mentions mph but not mpg. It's worth mentioning that the convert template displays 'mi' and 'nmi' for the unit on its own. It displays 'mpg' and 'mph' for the unit in combinations. See:
That's in line with existing mosnum text and seems reasonable to me. Lightmouse ( talk) 13:45, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
Back to the comment that started this thread: The convert template uses mi as the symbol for mile on its own. For over two years, mosnum has used it within the text for mile on its own. I propose to update the table of specific units to make it the explicit symbol for mile on its own. Any objections? Lightmouse ( talk) 10:28, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
I've seen two symbols on Wikipedia for revolutions per minute:
The MOSNUM symbol for pounds per square inch is lower case 'psi'. Although MOSNUM doesn't yet state the symbol for miles per gallon, the convert template does show it in lower case. I propose that the table in MOSNUM is updated to show lower case 'rpm'. Any comments? Lightmouse ( talk) 10:29, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
The page doesn't specify a preference for the use of a hyphen when the adjective "mid" is added in front of years or decades. From what I can tell, "mid-1990s" is preferable to "mid 1990s". Is that correct? (See also Hyphen#Prefixes and suffixes, which isn't very helpful.) Will Beback talk 21:27, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
Discussion moved from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators/Strategy think tank#AD Vs CE by Macarenses. Note that there were a few comments there that were not moved with the rest of the discussion. Dana boomer ( talk) 15:32, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
I believe that the date style in the article within the scope of the project should be changed from the Christian centered AD-BC system to the BCE ireligious system. Since both systems denote the same years it is just a matter of changing the acronyms in every article. A small change in practice but a very important one in that this way the article doesn't take a religious stance. I mean can you imagine if instead of the seemingly harmless "AD" we would actually write the true meaning of the acronym- "the battle was fought in the year of OUR LORD 1627"- I think not! and yet we seem satisfied to keep this religious note in copious amounts, littering even articles regarding wars fought hundreds of years before " the anointed one".Thx for hearing me out-- Macarenses ( talk) 14:27, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
I get your point but the thing is that the current situation isn't neutral, not in the least. The fact that AD is used in academic literature doesn't seem to me to add that much weight to the argument as I've read academic publishings of Israeli scholars who write (translation) "...in the 1943 year of the Christian count.." and "...in the year 1245 according to their count.."- "their" being obviously Christians. Should we then allow for that format as well?. I believe a single non-religious format should be used. And if not then why shouldn't instead of "AD" to use the complete "Anno Domini" from time to time, it is what is means. "AD" in my mind cannot be viewed as anything but a Christian way and wikipedia should not be conscribed to the religious notion that every passing year is the year of jesus.-- Macarenses ( talk) 15:04, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
But, personally, I encourage editors to not be tempted to use Wikipedia as a platform in the vain hope of promoting the adoption of new-age ways of doing things; not until the practices become most common in the real world. Some wide-eyed wikipedians specializing in computer-releated articles tried in vain for three long years to promote the adoption of the IEC prefixes (mebibytes instead of megabytes) by flitting about and changing hundreds of articles nearly overnight. The result was some articles that spoke of “256 MiB of RAM” and still others that spoke of “256 MB of RAM”. It was pretty much an advertisement for how Wikipedia can do dumb things at times. Unfortunately, the naive effort didn’t help the world adopt the IEC prefixes one iota. All the IEC proponents accomplished was the inconsistent use of a writing style that drew untoward attention to itself and caused unnecessary confusion for our readership (both being highly verboten in all good technical writing).
With very rare exception, you will only see “BCE” in writing; it is very seldom used in narrated form in TV, radio, and movies. Next time you see a TV documentary on Egyptian pyramids, note whether you hear the narrator speak of “Bee See” or “Bee See Eee”. I personally think is superior to use a writing style that reflects what people are accustomed to hearing. For those here who think that several dozen wikipedians can Make A Difference®™© in whether a new writing style catches on and attains widespread acceptance, think again; the IEC prefixes showed that notion to be fallacious. Wikipedia does best when it simply goes with the flow. Greg L ( talk) 01:54, 27 December 2010 (UTC)
I just passed this subject article from idle interest, and am unfamiliar with the fractional templates, so if there's a consensus, perhaps someone here might be interested in fixing (or at least harmonising) the tenths and halves at Confederate States of America dollar#Banknotes —— Shakescene ( talk) 21:24, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
At the moment, MOSNUM says "Centuries are given in figures or words using adjectival hyphenation where appropriate: the 5th century BCE; nineteenth-century painting." The same section in MOS ( WP:MOS#Numbers as figures or words) says "Show centuries in figures". Who wins? - Dank ( push to talk) 02:21, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
I have restored from this this revert on MOS because the edit summary This is how MOS has read for many years, prior to any of us being involved. Discuss changes, don't push) is a falsehood; Art LaPella is also correct that the text is incoherent. That section, as it stands, is no older than its last serious rewriting, two or three years ago, in which both Tony and I were involved. I presume, since both of us missed it, the present garble is younger still. (The revert-warrior was also editing then; whether he was involved with MOS I do not recall.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:13, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
If I had only been exposed to examples of real-world practices and had no knowledge of how various manuals of style addressed this issue, I might write 19th-century engine refrigerates without CFCs, as did this New Scientist article. New Scientist, as I recall, is written using British English if that matters at all. I find that expressions like Galileo Galilei was a famous seventeenth-century inventor is a tediously long. The tediousness of the ‘teen’ centuries might underlie why we have Category:17th-century astronomers. At least, numeric centuries work in titles (as it did in New Scientist). Clearly though, numbered expressions like …theory of the 16th-century astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus… are used also in body text by seemingly professional looking publications like this article from The New York Observer.
I don’t know why, exactly, but I think I prefer the numeric centuries myself—as does Tony. Perhaps our eyes are simply more used to that form: Witness this Google search on "Sixteenth-century astronomer" (in quotes). That one returns 15,300 results. But "16th-century astronomer" returns 445,000 reults; 29 times more frequent.
If I had to throw out a proposal to change the guideline, it would be to follow the practices of the majority of most-reliable sources used in a given article. Practices might vary depending upon whether it is an archeology-based article, or an astronomy-based one, etc. This approach would best leverage the mission of any good encyclopedia: to properly prepare its readership for their continuing studies on the subject—writing conventions (writing style) and all. The outcome of such a guideline change would be that most articles would probably use numeric centuries. Greg L ( talk) 20:25, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
I agree with your point; that venue (Internet vs. actual books) account for a humungous difference in the outcome, with a 2:1 preference for “nineteenth-century” in books and a 29:1 preference for “19th-century” on the Web. I also note that this string "in the 19th century" yields 749,000 results whereas "in the nineteenth century" returns 7,820,000 results.
This may be as simple as book writers tend to be professionals who have actual manuals of style, vs. the Internet, where everyone’s an expert simply because they have an X-chromosome, a pulse, and an opinion. It would be a phenomenon similar to “gigawatts” (before computers got to giga-anything); it was properly jiga (as in “gigantic”). But because the the prefix “giga-” worked its way down the food chain into consumer-grade products and all the way into the Wal‑Mart crowd buying $549 Dell computers, it became—due to simple cluelessness—“giga as in biga which is gooder”.
I must be from the Wal‑Mart set, since I prefer the look of numeric centuries notwithstanding the fact that grammar-school teachers would whack my knuckles with their rulers. Maybe it’s funner that way. Greg L ( talk) 00:29, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
( edit conflict) My two cents: the current guideline (‘Centuries are given in figures or words&nsbp;...’) is no more informative than having no guideline at all. (Of course they are given in figures or words; how else could they be given? Egyptian hieroglyphs? IPA transcriptions of their names?) So I'd propose just removing it. (The consequence would be that the generic guideline would also apply for centuries: prefer words up to the ninth century, don't use words for some centuries and figures for other ones in the same context, etc.) A. di M. ( talk) 01:00, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
FWIW,
User:Noetica has been watching this thread and emailed me the following message, for posting here:
I see that Andy Walsh, at the first link-target, asked who wants "twenty-first-century music". A very reasonable question. Tony (talk) 12:08, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
Talk:Speaker of the New York State Assembly
Legislative terms use - (short dash) , life spans use – (long dash). Besides, 1820-21 is a one-year term which had sessions in two calendar years. 1820-1821 would be a two-year tenure. Besides, the dashes and numbers were messing up page references. Please check carefully what you are editing, the correct info should be preserved. Please avoid unnecessary edits. Kraxler ( talk) 21:42, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
I guess I didn’t get that memo? ― cobaltcigs 01:48, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
This strikes me as an artificial and counter-intuitive distinction. An imprecise time-span is indicated by the year in which it begins and the year in which it ends, without regard to calendar month/day. That is, if an individual holds office from “January 3, 2004 to December 31, 2005” or from “August 8, 2004 to August 8, 2005” we should use the abbreviation “2004–2005” in either case. Anything more specific would and should require displaying the months for comparison. ― cobaltcigs 01:39, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
Shouldn't the country sign always be in front of the dollar sign (US$, S$, A$ etc.). If it's just the first instance, people starting to read at a later section won't know for sure what currency they are reading about. It will also help highlight any mistakes. Certainly if you look at the style guides of serious financial publications - FT, Reuters, Economist etc., I'm pretty sure that would be the case, and surely wiki should be trying to keep to the same high standards. Mattun0211 ( talk) 07:48, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
A request for bot approval has been filed for a task that will, among other things, "delinks full dates (but not lone day-month strings or years), days, months, decades, centuries", "removes direct links to full dates, whether ISO8601, dd mmm yyyy or mmm dd, yyyy, including piped links of same to chronological articles in almost any imaginable form" (per WP:UNLINKDATES) and ensure articles uses a consistent date format throughout.
A member of the Bot Approvals Group has requested community input to determine if community consensus exists for an automated process of this nature.
Editors are invited to comment on the feasibility and desirability of the automated task here. – xeno talk 16:23, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
A calorie (symbol cal) refers to a gram calorie while the kilocalorie (symbol kcal) refers to the kilogram calorie (also known as small calorie and large calorie respectively). When used in a nutrition related article, use the kilocalorie as the primary unit. In US-related articles, use the synonym dietary calorie with a one-time link to kilogram calorie.
JIMp talk· cont 21:27, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
In the UK the style used to be Calories (for kcal) and began to shift towards kcal around ten years ago, the kcal now being the most used. The reason was that the general public, and indeed manufacturers/media, were having difficulty differentiating between 100 calories and 100 Calories - often saying things such as "One slice of bread is 140 calories" as opposed to the correct version which would be "one slice of bread is 140 Calories". Chaosdruid ( talk) 17:09, 28 January 2011 (UTC) NB Having just examined three food items, bread, biscuits and fish fingers I can confirm that they are all given as "XXX kJ/XXX kcal".
As a medical researcher specializing in metabolism and weight loss, I know a bit about this subject and can relate to writing white papers for a general-interest readership as well as for an expert readership; they are two different things. If one were writing an article on Metabolic energy requirement, which we don’t have although we do have Energy balance (biology), then writing “kilocalories” might be appropriate. But even still, the principal always applies that Wikipedia is directed to a general-interest readership and is not a scientific journal. So “kilocalories” in a more scientifically toned article would, IMO, be properly introduced with a parenthetical like A daily expenditure of 2200 kilocalories (2200 dietary calories). Conversely, for an article that will receive a high proportion of a non-expert readership, such as Morbid obesity, the use of “dietary calorie” should, IMO, come first with the “kilocalorie” being the parenthetical.
This all falls under the same principal that for an article like Obesity, we write 2200 dietary calories per day and not the 2200 kcal·day–1 that some editors must think makes them seem like “They must be from the big city.” Wikipedia does best when it uses appropriate plain-speak for the most likely readership and doesn’t try to promote the adoption of way-cool ideas—even if it’s the SI. Greg L ( talk) 01:08, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
P.S. FWIW, editors need to make an extra effort to not think of Wikipedia as a single entity requiring perfect internal consistency amongst its 6,851,296 articles. There are oodles of inconsistencies where non-SI units of measure typically have symbols that do not follow the rule of the SI one twit. No one interested in nautical technology will ever run off thinking that U.S.S. Enterprise can travel 35 nanometers in an hour. “Yes, but the real world is fu**ing retarded” you might say. Fine; follow the real world—and it’s retarded too. The job of any good encyclopedia is to follow the real world and use the conventions used by modern, most-reliable sources so our readers are properly primed for their continuing studies elsewhere on the subject. When it comes to diet & exercise and metabolic energy requirements and whatnot, no one uses the gram-calorie. The phrase consume 2100 calories per day is perfectly clear to our novice and expert readers alike. Whether it is “calorie” with a capital “C” or lowercase doesn’t matter; just look to the sources cited in particular article and follow the convention used by the majority of the best ones.
Greg L (
talk)
02:58, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
The use of the calorie is dependant on context. When used in scientific contexts such as chemistry the calorie refers to the gram calorie (~4.2 J, symbol cal, also known as the small calorie). However, in nutritional contexts the calorie refers to the kilogram calorie (1000 cal, ~4.2 kJ, symbol Cal, also known as the large calorie, food calorie or dietary calorie).
∘ Metric prefixes may be applied to the gram-calorie to form units such as the kilocalorie (symbol kcal). Do not apply metric prefixes to the kilogram-calorie. In all contexts the kilocalorie refers to one thousand gram-calories (1000 cal, ~4.2 kJ).
∘Don't use the large calorie and the kilocalorie in the same article except when comparing the units themselves.
∘Conversions to SI units (joules, kilojoules, etc.) should be provided.
The calorie, depending on context, may refer to the gram calorie or the kilogram calorie.
∘ The gram calorie (symbol cal, also known as the small calorie) is approximately 4.2 J. Metric prefixes may be applied to the gram calorie to form units such as the kilocalorie.
∘ The kilogram calorie (symbol Cal, also known as the large calorie, food calorie or dietary calorie) is equal to one thousand gram calories (1000 cal, ~4.2 kJ). Do not apply metric prefixes to the kilogram calorie.
∘ The kilocalorie (symbol kcal) always refers to one thousand gram calories (1000 cal, ~4.2 kJ).
∘ In scientific or technological contexts (such as chemistry or nuclear energy) the calorie (cal) refers to the gram calorie.
∘ In nutritional contexts the calorie (Cal) refers to the kilogram calorie. The equilavent kilocalorie (kcal) may be used instead but not both in the same article.
∘ Conversions to SI units (joules, kilojoules, etc.) should be provided.
Why does the MOS recommend using the incorrect plurals "euros" and "cents" over the ECB's offically-defined plurals "euro" and "cent"? Stifle ( talk) 15:57, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
Note concerning the wording of the title: is there a risk that "Massive" is POV? Tony (talk) 05:47, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
I need a second opinion. User:Hmains is using the automated AWB tool to remove wikilinks to all “Century” articles ( 20th century, 19th century, 5th century BC, etc. [8], [9], [10] as recent examples of the delinking). I first became aware of his delinking here, which I reverted here with the edit comment “This is not an uncontroversial edit - possible misuse of AWB” which was ignored as Hmains's next edit was to restore his de-linking here. I am aware that there has been some debate about the linking of dates, but a “century” is not a date, and wikilinks to such “century” articles are useful navigational tools for our readers. He's edited/delinked thousands of articles, and he refused to stop when I warned him and tried to discuss it. [11], and Hmains' similar editing behaviour has also been previously discussed here, here, and here, but his use of AWB has not abated. I would appreciate your comments on whether or not Hmains use of AWB is contrary to its “Rules of Use” [12], and if so, can anything be done to stop his disruptive editing. Thank you for your attention. Dolovis ( talk) 22:58, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
P.S. (Oh… by the way…) Links are supposed to be germane and topical to the subject matter so they are something that has a half-way decent chance of being clicked upon by a reader studying “Ashland, Alabama.” The idea is not to link every fathomable word just because Wikipedia has an article on the subject and it can be linked to. In your differences, above, the subject matter of one of them was Ashland, Alabama, and one of the affected sentences was this:
Clay County was formed by an act of the Alabama General Assembly on December 7, 1866. Less than a year later, Ashland was established as the county seat on land donated by Hollingsworth Watts for the construction of a courthouse. Ashland was incorporated in 1871 and was named for 19th century statesman Henry Clay's Kentucky estate home.
How many of those links are really half-way well associated with Ashland? It’s interesting that our article, “ 19th century”, doesn’t mention “Clay County”—or even all of “Alabama” for that matter. The same goes for December 7 and for 1866. It’s safe to assume that someone reading up on “Ashland, Alabama” doesn’t need to be forked to an article that mentions the attack on Pearl Harbor. Normally, if one were to actually go read “1866”, one would *expect* to find that it has a bullet point mentioning how Clay County was formed that year—which would be pretty self-referential since the reader just read that much when the clicked the link. In this particular instance, the “1866” article doesn’t even mention that.
The linking principal to abide by is if it is a link that can help the reader better understand that particular subject and better prepare them for their future studies on the subject, then we provide a link. The reaction of the reader should be “Cool, it’s nice to know there is related reading on this subject!” Beyond that, we let the reader type things into the search field that are unrelated to Ashland, such as up and down, so as to not clutter up the article and turn it into a sea of mind-dumbing blue that obscures the truly valuable links that could assist with a better understanding of the study material at hand.
If the desire is to just ensure that readers are knowledgeable that “ 19th century” exists for further reading on the whole tangential subject of “old”, adding it to the See also section is a better way to accomplish that. Greg L ( talk) 03:35, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
I am not trying to suggest that every incident of 13th century and 5th century BC should be linked, but the massive automated delinking of all Century links by User:Hmains will result in these articles being orphans. My concern is not the delinking over-linked articles. My concern is that such delinking should be done in a careful way to avoid mistakes, and it appears to me that [Hmains is not being selective or careful when using AWB to perform such delinkings on the massive scale as he is continuing to do. His misuse of AWB results in some controversial edits, which is an abuse of AWB. I am asking him to slow down, and to stop using the automated tools for such delinking edits. Dolovis ( talk) 14:44, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
If the subject matter is Ancient Egypt, I’m sure there are contexts where linking to a century makes sense since the readers coming to that article are clearly interested in ancient civilization. Moreover, it’s fair to say that 3rd century BC actually mentions Egypt (three times, I see). As I stated above, if the article is Ashland, Alabama, linking to 19th century leads the reader to something that doesn’t mention all of Alabama once, let alone Ashland. We’re not here to “build the Web” by adding links merely because technology gives us the power to do so.
I note this useless link in Ashland, Alabama: There were 854 households out of which 27.5% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 43.0% were married couples living together. Really? “Married couples”?? That resolves to our “ Marriage” article. Now, that’s just stupid. Besides the fact that it is a link to totally generic information wholly unrelated to the topic of “Ashland, Alabama,” such a term is beyond-obvious to the type of readership coming to this article; we write for the middle of the bell curve of the intended or likely readership; if we wrote for 1st graders, we’d have a icon of of Barney the dinosaur at the top of all our articles with a little dialog balloon coming out of his mouth saying “Say kids, do you know where babies come from?” I’m deleting that link right now… Greg L ( talk) 22:26, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
Is there even a mote of this discussion thread that pertains to changing the guidelines of MOSNUM? Greg L ( talk) 04:08, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
I haven't read the whole thread but that's my opinion:
The WP:MOSNUM#Full date formatting section avoids an issue with month-day-year dates that other style manuals address. We find on the Chicago Manual of Style (14th ed., p. 176) the example "On October 6, 1924, Longo arrived in Bologna" together with the instruction "In the alternative style [month-day-year], however, commas must be used before and after the year". Similar requirements for commas before and after may be found in the Associated Press Style Book (2007) under the "Months" entry, the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed., p. 89), and the U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual section 8.49. Since all of the style manuals I have consulted agree there should be a comma following the year (unless some other punctuation makes it unnecessary) I believe we should change our examples so that the date occurs in the middle of the sentence, and the comma after the year be shown. Jc3s5h ( talk) 03:06, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
In the example "On October 6, 1924, Longo arrived in Bologna", the comma is placed after "1924", because "On October 6, 1924" in an introductory phrase. The same example is given in WP:COPYEDIT -- "On January 15, 1947, she began tertiary study." Neither are actually directly applicable to the year surrounding commas, better example of which is: "This was reflected in the June 13, 2007, report." (from USGPOSM) I have a feeling that the former examples give the wrong impression of what is meant by comma after year. Personally, though not having paid attention to this, I do not recall seeing this used too often. Anyway, no speculation, here's a rough list of 500 FA articles using mdy dates outside references (it's not tidy). — HELLKNOWZ ▎ TALK 10:51, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
People with interest in this subject may wish to be aware of the related discussion here.-- Epeefleche ( talk) 01:23, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
I'm not too thrilled in general with the guideline not to superscript "th", "rd", "st", but surely it's completely wrong in cases like nth, which is just about unreadable without the superscript. The workaround n-th strikes me as nonstandard. I think we should at least put in an exception to the guide for this case. -- Trovatore ( talk) 00:33, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
On more than one occasion, I’ve had editors do a drive-by on an article I was shepherding and doing all the heavy lifting on (translation: I acted like *owned* it). After I reverted them, they claimed “But… MOS or MOSNUM said this ‘n’ that.” If the rule amounted to trying to cram a square peg into a round hole, my response was “Yeah, and the rule is retarded, here’s why, so I’m ignoring it.” It helps if you actually have a clue of what you’re talking about if you take a stand like that, but it can at least be therapeutic in that crazy world that is the collaborative writing environment of Wikipedia.
But it’s nice, Jimp, that you are willing to devote the time necessary to actually get anything accomplished here. Greg L ( talk) 01:31, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
A WP:ORDINAL question. In the following list in a sentence: "The Fitzgerald's crew of 29 on its final voyage consisted of the captain, the first, second and third mates, 5 engineers, 3 oilers, a cook, a wiper, 2 maintenance men, 3 watchmen, 3 deckhands, 3 wheelsmen, 2 porters, a cadet and a steward. " should numbers be written out as words or can they stay as figures? -- Rontombontom ( talk) 23:22, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
Recently, User:Dl2000 changed [13] the section on date consistency withing articles and references.
These requirements apply to dates in general prose and reference citations, but not to dates in quotations or titles.
Dates in the article's body text and references should all have the same format. These requirements do not apply to dates in in quotations or in titles of works.
At priori, this seems like a minimal change, but as far as I know the bullets were intentionally separate, as articles text could read "25 September 2007" while references use "25 Sep 2007". The intention of the bullets were to prevent prose mixing (Julia ate a poisoned apple on 25 June 2005. She died three days later on June 28.) and reference mixing (Jones, J. (20 September 2008)... Smith, J. (March 20, 2005)., but to allow for differences between citation and prose.
I reverted the edit and gave more detailed (and hopefully clear) explanations, along with examples, for the current version. I also added the thing about accessdates, which had somehow been omitted. If things changed since the last date-delinking drama, (or that I'm simply wrong about some things), we should have an RFC on it. Otherwise, I doubt anyone will have much success in making anything stick, and it'll be a drama-fest all over again.
Headbomb { talk / contribs / physics / books} 20:30, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia does best when the writing style chosen for a given article does not draw undo attention to itself. No matter how well intentioned the ISO’s proposal is to ensure that another “Y2K bug” never happens, “2011-02-17T00:32Z” is a writing style that does draw attention to itself and causes *!* brain-interrupts that interfere with the transparent communication of thought.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution because articles closely associated with European issues will read most naturally in one format whereas still other articles have different needs. Maritime-related articles directed to an expert maritime readership might be best written in Zulu time; I don’t know and I don’t care. Astronomy and other specialty subjects should be left to the specialists of those articles and the denizens of WP:MOSNUM shouldn’t have to become 15-minute experts in everything. We should simply have some broad-brushed, global principals that ensures each article uses the most natural, human-readable dates that best serve the likely readership.
I agree with Tony: Setting aside special circumstances such as tables, where space is at a premium, articles should generally express dates with the month written out in English; lose the telephone numbers.
I’m also concerned about this text: Dates in article body text should all have the same format. That is overly prescriptive. Once it has been written that something occurred at a Boston Red Sox game on “February 13, 2011” or that so-n-so was beheaded in France on “2 February, 1799”, there is no need to keep repeating the year (I’m addressing the prescription for the “*all* have the same format” here) if the text in the next sentence says “and they beheaded his wife on “7 March”; the year is clear enough without belaboring the text with more numerals (although the ISO would be displeased because such an expression would cause problems with data exchange if you tried to buy a plane ticket with such sketchy information).
We’re here to write fluid, most-natural-reading, clear prose; not promote some Star Trek-style star‑date format or some standard organization’s all-numeric expression of temporal measures (for corpuscular beings caught in linear time in this universe). Greg L ( talk) 01:04, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
I still don't see any reason to ban or deprecated the YYYY-MM-DD format in footnotes, tables, infoboxes, accessdates, etc.. As much as some very vocal people hate them with a passion, consensus did not favour deprecating them last time anyone bothered asking the community for their feelings on the issue, and I don't see what has changed since then. Headbomb { talk / contribs / physics / books} 08:01, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
I once saw a “table” somewhere on Wikipedia listing a series of earthquakes—in California, I think. That had presented an opportunity for some ISO-advocate to use cryptic “You’re clear to land 1047 alpha tango charley 627 zulu on runway R24” for the time/date field. I can’t find that same list now. Maybe it’s been *downgraded* into the old-fashioned readable stuff that is wholly unsuitable for preparing Earth for its adoption into the United Federation of Planets (which is a waste, because too many humans still pursue the accumulation of personal wealth). Perhaps someone who fancies making stuff *readable* weighed in on that list of earthquakes and nearly got himself the Wikipedia-equivalent of an atomic wedgie for his trouble. Greg L ( talk) 18:32, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
P.S. Oh, BTW. There’s no need to circle the wagons about “deprecating” anything. I see now that some of what Tony and I wrote above looked like there was a scheme afoot to change MOSNUM to rid Wikipedia of time/date ciphers. I suspect Tony was just advocating minimizing the use of date cryptography; I know *I* certainly was. Neither of us would be foolish enough to seriously think we could pry 256-bit RSA cypher blocks out of MOSNUM. Greg L ( talk) 18:53, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
Much is said about compactness. Compare "2011-09-07" to "7 Sep 2011"; they're the same (ten characters each including hyphens and spaces). "17 Sep 2011" is only one character more than "2011-09-17". Put the month first & you have to add a comma, just a little comma. So, there's no significant space saving with YYYY-MM-DD. Also the template {{ dts}} makes YYYY-MM-DD unnecessary for sorting. Let's use YYYY-MM-DD in the references, where it's all a jumble of data anyway ... why? The more readable the data, the better, right? No, we'd need more momentum than this to bury the telephone-number dates but what's the harm in making it known that there's still opposition to them and asking again what point they serve. JIMp talk· cont 01:08, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
There is nothing at all that is *intuitive* about 2011-02-08 because many people are accustomed to days going before the month. So only through *experience* can anyone know that it is year-month-day and not day-month. 2011-02-08 can easily mean August 2nd. Only a *rule* that must be learned stipulates the order.
That’s why it is always better to write out the month, for that is the only “clear and logical” way to unambiguously convey dates to all readers. Like Pete wrote above, what I am describing (spell out the month everywhere unless there is a *legitimate and real* situation where space is truly at a premium) “this is pretty much the way experienced editors work”. Jimp too has the obvious figured out and reduced to practice, above. And Tony, who makes a living as a writer, also has the wisdom to understand how it is important to just write clearly so the writing style doesn’t cause unnecessary confusion nor draw undo attention to itself.
Now, please get with the game plan and follow the way the real world works and write out months, which is clear as glass and absolutely unambiguous and stop grasping for absurd reasons like *there’s no room* as an excuse to code months as numbers. And please stop trying to use Wikipedia as a platform to Change The World To A New And More Logical, All-Numeric Order®™©. I’m done here dealing with you because what you write is simply false and, IMO, borne out of extreme bias. In short: I don’t agree with you. At all. Nor do I care to weigh in on this thread anymore since it’s clear you like ISO format and always will. Greg L ( talk) 21:34, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
Yes, I do like the format for certain applications, but those uses are few, and I only occasionally (but not always) use it for reference accessdates on here. Some people use it more often both on here and in the real world, where it is used a hell of a lot more than you seem to think. I see no need for legislating against in on the basis of claims that are dubious at best. You just don't like it and it would be a lot better if you simply stated that rather than resorting to sarcasm, false assertions and ad hominem remarks. wjemather bigissue 18:08, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
This hijacking of Wikipedia to adopt spiffy ideas before the rest of the world caught on en masse first happened (to my knowledge—there may be still others out there) with the IEC prefixes, where a standard body that is unimpressed with how “megabyte” can mean two slightly different values depending upon context (for instance, random access memory vs. hard drives), came up with a New and Better©™® way of doing things and proposed “mebibytes (MiB)” for the world to line up behind them. Of course, the computer manufacturers didn’t have “Now with 256 MiB of RAM so it can run the soooo easy-to-use Windows 95” on their packaging or in their advertisements, nor did computer magazines directed to such a general-interest readership use such language. But readers would come here, to Wikipedia, where some George Jetsons had hijacked hundreds of articles overnight. With the help of an admin, who claimed there had to be a consensus to revert articles back to the real world, the idiotic practice stuck for three long years. I lead the battle that deprecated that practice… What fun… (*sigh*).
So now we have the ISO 8601 pushing this standard body’s “2011-03-01” and “2011-03-01 15:52Z”. As the ISO’s own FAQ page states, the standard is a standard data-exchange protocol for IT systems to prevent another “Y2K bug.”
Of course, this being the not-so-reliable Wikipedia that anyone can edit, back in February 2008 (note my readable date there), User:Richardrw made this ∆ edit—entirely uncited—stating that the ISO 8601’s scope was for pretty much all expressions of time and date, including “hand written” notes. That whopper read It applies to all written communications that contain dates, times, and time intervals regardless of the communication medium (printed, electronic, or hand written) or the location of the sender and receiver (either within an organization, between organizations, or across international boundaries). See that jewel in all its Star Trek glory here at “Scope and application of the standard”.
That was back in Feb. 2008 and persisted for 19 months when, in Sept. 2009, I added some {citation needed} tags to the nonsense. I was new then, and User:A. di M. added tags to the section the following day. Finally, on Sept. 19, I deleted (∆ edit) the fairy tale of POV-pushing.
Again, Wikipedia had the pure fabrication (complete nonsense) for 19 months! No wonder teachers across the land counsel their students against actually using Wikipedia in their research.
Now, the part I am concerned about is User:Jc3s5h twice edited the ISO 8601 article (here and here), when it had that outrageous fabrication and POV-pushing to hijack Wikipedia to promote a *good idea* that for obvious reasons (humans aren’t IT machines) hadn’t caught on. The article stated that the ISO standard was for all written communications, including printed, electronic, or hand written, whether within an organization, between organizations, or across international boundaries. So…
To User:Jc3s5h: I ask you to repudiate that now-deleted text (that I had to flag and A. di M. had to tag and I had to delete). You made two edits to the article in that sad state and didn’t seem to have a problem with the fabrications in it. Please affirm that you either never noticed that, or that you did notice it but that you now no longer believe it. Your answer will help me to understand your continued promotion of something intended for IT managers to ensure another “Y2K” problem doesn’t occur and why all-numeric dates (with leading zeros that machines are fond of) are such cool-beans in your book. Greg L ( talk) 2011-03-01T17:06Z
Let me dispel the ill-conceived notion that my fighting him on the change was driven by the use/configuration of my script. He has got the fact arse about face: the configuration of the tool was driven by my understanding of the guideline for as long as I have known it; it does not (I emphasise NOT) drive my conversion of same into dmy or mdy formats.-- Ohconfucius ¡digame! 02:34, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
Here are some statistics from 500 featured articles (with marginal error due to parsing/formatting errors):
field | YYYY-MM-DD (i.e. 2011-03-02) |
MMMM DD, YYYY (i.e. March 2, 2011) |
DD MMMM YYYY (i.e. 2 March 2011) |
---|---|---|---|
total | 18673 | 6354 | 6267 |
|date= |
5565 | 3673 | 2446 |
|accessdate= |
13098 | 2674 | 3799 |
years | YYYY-MM-DD | MMMM DD, YYYY | DD MMMM YYYY |
2010–2011 | 1397 | 1245 | 1320 |
2000–2009 | 16334 | 4404 | 4459 |
1990–1999 | 456 | 209 | 170 |
1980–1989 | 111 | 128 | 47 |
1970–1979 | 30 | 16 | 18 |
1960–1969 | 127 | 26 | 15 |
1950–1959 | 76 | 7 | 107 |
1900–1949 | 118 | 209 | 106 |
1800–1899 | 23 | 7 | 19 |
1000–1799 | 0 | 1 (July 29, 1797) | 6 (all 13 January 1797) |
0–999 | 0 | 0 | 5 (3x 5 March 200; 2x 1 January 988) |
Other formats:
— HELLKNOWZ ▎ TALK 14:10, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
Having read the TIMEZONE section of this manual I think I need more clarification. The reason that I went to the section is to find out how to format a time zone for a live stream of podcast recording. The event I assume is local to place it's being recorded but to include the city seems to be too much information. That leaves writing 7:00 pm PT or (UTC-8)/(UTC-7)-daylight saving time. The problem I see with the PT is that outside of the North America I am not sure that means a lot to other English speakers. The UTC is problematic because of daylight saving time.
I am not just writing to get an answer but to see if the time zone section could use some clarity on how to specify local time. If I can't find something in the MOS I will go with common practice, but I have seen time zones written a number of different ways, hence the above. Thanks. — Rɑːlɑːjər talk² 05:11, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
Reading a lot of articles on NASA related articles, it is apparent that these two numbers don't equate once gravity is not equal to the 32.2 ft/s^2. So, for clarification
1) Assume pound-mass = pound-force = 0.454 kgm as on Earth gravity 2) Add mass in slugs (this would clarify a lot as Newtons clarify kgm from kgf) 3) When writing pounds, specify force or mass in subscript
Any thoughts?
Senior Trend ( talk) 04:31, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
99.255.0.57 ( talk) 06:31, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
A couple of things:
First, how does one define major contributor? For example, for date formats;
Where in doubt, defer to the style used by the first major contributor.
Second (and this question may belong somewhere else), when it comes to pages where there isn't a clear indication of what form (American/British/Regional Dialect) of English is used (for example, on pages with primarily German, Italian, Japanese or French subject matter), what is the default spelling pattern in such instances?
I'll try to make this last question a little clearer:
Which of the following would be correct for a page about a village in Russia;
The town hall is located in the city centre.
The town hall is located in the city center.
Magus732 (
talk)
22:17, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
These two bullets seem to be saying almost the same thing. Can't we combine them?
TCO ( talk) 07:49, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
The allowability of vulgar fractions with Imperial units is equally applicable to United States customary units, so I've added the latter and linked both terms. -- Thnidu ( talk) 17:55, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
On looking back at the Imperial units page I saw that it also references English units and Avoirdupois, which follow the same logic, so I added mentions and links to those as well. -- Thnidu ( talk) 18:33, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
This question must have been raised many times before but oddly I can't find a good answer in the archive. What's the correct way to refer to the decade between 2000 and 2009 to avoid confusion, is it "the 2000s decade"? I saw a recommendation to use "the first decade of the 21st century", but as the 21st century starts at 2001 this seems wrong. This is also what was said in another discussion. Whatever the consensus may be, I think it should be added to the page itself as well, not just be discussed at the talk page (it might be there somewhere, but not where I expected it to be). -- Muhandes ( talk) 10:53, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
It's been asserted recently that WP:MOSTIME requires colons in times (i.e. 5:00 p.m., not 5 p.m.). What it actually says is: "... colons separate hours, minutes and seconds (e.g. 1:38:09 pm or 13:38:09)." Does anyone else read this to require colons? I don't see this in any style guide, and my take is that 5 p.m isn't the same as 5:00 p.m., just as 1 meter isn't the same as 1.00 meters. - Dank ( push to talk) 17:58, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser#Removing spaces from a year range after "c." Art LaPella ( talk) 20:58, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
I don't see any mention of non-breaking space insertion over at the AWB documentation (and I'd rather use a script, anyway). Anyone got one? I hate inserting them by hand. (I'm not a fan of nbsp's if it's not obvious, I just need them for FAC.) - Dank ( push to talk) 15:14, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
{{nbsp}}
is two keystrokes more than
, and the latter is already familiar to whoever knows HTML. An actual improvement would need a one- or two-character shortcut, such as my proposal _
or Noetica's ,,
. (Oh God, why did I go into this again?) --
A. di M. (
talk)
14:40, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
January 1, 2001{{nbsp}}{{spaced ndash}}{{nbsp}}December 31, 2001
would be easier to parse to a novice editor than January 1, 2001 – December 31, 2011
even though there's brevity of character use there. Of course, there's multiple ways of doing this, we just want the solution(s) that produce the minimal havoc on the rest of the work but offer the most benefit. --
MASEM (
t)
15:50, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
January_1, 2001_-- December_31, 2001
would be even easier on the eye. :-) --
A. di M. (
talk)
17:46, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
<wikify>January_1, 2001_-- December_31, 2001</wikify>
; once to that version, it can then always be template wrapped: {{wikify|January_1, 2001_-- December_31, 2001}}
. Maybe we could repurpose the "~" character in prose to do this: ~January_1, 2001_-- December_31, 2001~
. --
MASEM (
t)
17:55, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
See a full draft of the proposal |
---|
|
– ⊥¡ɐɔıʇǝoNoetica! T– 23:25, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
I am disappointed that the style guide appears to mandate the insertion of a non-breaking space between a value and the abbreviation of the unit, e.g. 35 mm or 50 Hz rather than the clearer and easier to read 35mm or 50Hz. I've been writing technical articles and papers for 40 years and until I started contributing to Wikipedia I've never had anyone comment on my non-use of spaces. Looking at a random selection of technical journals and books I see that both forms are used in about equal measure; so why can this not be made an area where both are acceptable?
Davidlooser ( talk) 15:41, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
Well that's as maybe. I was taught, 40 years ago, that when an abreviation for a unit is used then it's incorrect to include a space, and that's what I've always done. In the world of film (which I'm particularly interested in) it's rare indeed for a space to be included between the film size and "mm" (thus 35mm NOT 35 mm). The later just looks plain wrong, it's less clear and takes more typing. I've also just looked at various containers of household items (food stuffs, cleaners etc.) in my house, without exception they omit a space.
I'd say that the SI are wrong about this. They chose the wrong style, which is probably why it's so widely ignored.
Davidlooser ( talk) 17:43, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
The Geographical coordinates section goes into agonizing detail about how to tag articles with geo coordinates, but it doesn't explain at all which articles should be tagged. This section should be expanded to explain which of the following types of articles should be geotagged and which shouldn't:
These are all cases that are unclear. Without guidance we end up with inconsistent application across articles, or worse, edit wars. Kaldari ( talk) 20:52, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
The question of whether to supply coordinates is content question, not a style question. Content guidance belongs elsewhere, not in the Manual of Style.— Stepheng3 ( talk) 11:47, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
I don't think IEC prefixes should be used in this table. http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Hard_disk_drive&diff=next&oldid=422880783 Please advise. 220.255.2.94 ( talk) 16:37, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
User Glider87 is entirely correct. The IEC prefixes (both the written-out unit names, prefixes, and their symbols) are not used in the real world. No computer manufacturer in materials directed to a general-interest customer base—not in their advertising, brochures, packaging, or instruction manuals. Because of this fact, no computer-related magazines that are directed to a general-interest readership use such terminology. So we don’t use them in Wikipedia’s computer-related articles to describe computer or hard drive capacity.
In Quantities of bytes and bits, the permissible uses of those units of measure are limited to the following:
The argument over on Talk:Hard disk drive that goes This table compares SI and binary prefixes. That counts as "explicitly discussing" it amounts to saying “we’re discussing the IEC prefixes now because I just now got through adding them to a table”. Nice try. But that is precisely the sort of argument the current guidelines are intended to shoot down. So, forget it. Such an argument employs mental subterfuge and circuitous logic.
At the top of this page is the archive box containing 18 archives under the rubric of “Binary prefixes.” Indeed, we debated and battled over this practice of using the IEC prefixes on Wikipedia for three long years. After it became clear that Wikipedia has to follow the way the real world works because it doesn’t go the other way around, we abandoned use of those units of measure except as narrowly permitted per the above three bullet points. It doesn’t matter if the standards body who made the proposal has three letters in their acronym or four. Nor does it matter if the IEC’s proposal sorely addresses an ambiguity or is way-cool and Wesley Crusher would most certainly be using them 300 years from now. Today, anyway, the computing world has so-far soundly said “Meh” to the IEC prefixes and they are virtually unknown to our readership.
The argument that our readership will learn them here and the idea will catch on like wild fire was soundly proven specious after trying that very stunt over a three-year period on Wikipedia (again, see the Binary prefixes archives, above). The two editors heavily responsible for that three-year-long jihad fell onto their Wikipedia swords after we decided to jettison routine use of the IEC prefixes to describe the magnitude of binary quantities in our articles. They’ve moved onto real life and will one-day meet their Wikipedia God (Jimbo?)—I suppose—as a reward for their efforts to grease Earth’s adoption into the United Federation of Planets.
We aren’t going to use units of measure in a table of hard drive capacity on Wikipedia if this is the only place the reader will ever likely encounter such terminology; our readership will A) simply be initially confused, and B) forget what they learned anyway since they won’t encounter such terminology in the real world again.
Someone, please be sure to archive this thread to the B17 archive (it’s closed but just add it to the bottom as the separate thread it is), or (*sigh*) create a whole new thread for when this sort of thing crops up. Greg L ( talk) 02:03, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
And if you don’t want this issue discussed here too, then I suggest that you don’t respond here. Just that simple. But since what you are trying to do is 180 degrees contrary to the clear guidance of MOSNUM, then the matter may be touched upon here too.
Your argument that the consensus view when MOSNUM adopted its guideline somehow supports logic of yours that goes… This table compares SI and binary prefixes. That counts as "explicitly discussing" it ( ∆ edit here), is just about the oddest thing I think I have ever seen written on Wikipedia’s talk pages. Wow… By your logic, MOSNUM says it’s OK to use the IEC prefixes in that article because you just then discussed them when you used them!! (Wooow…) So just pardon me all over the place if I don’t buy into that one. Greg L ( talk) 02:31, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
See RFC on the use of IEC prefixes to describe binary quantities, below. Greg L ( talk) 15:26, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
Notice: An RFC is being conducted here at Talk:Hard diskdrive#RFC on the use of the IEC prefixes. The debate under consideration is the use in this table of the “ Hard disk drive” article of nomenclature such as “KiB”, “MiB”, and “GiB” to describe capacities. The governing guideline on MOSNUM is Quantities of bytes and bits. Greg L ( talk) 15:25, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
Request: It seems to me that our “ Hard disk drive” article has a table with a glaring error in it that was the product of purposeful disregard for an explicit guideline on MOSNUM. We need greater participation on this RfC by experienced members of the MOSNUM. The quality of the discussion can be improved (too many personal attacks) by broadening participation of the discussion. This will hopefully more fully achieve a consensus. Greg L ( talk) 17:41, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
NOTE: Concluded The RfC concluded. Thanks to those who helped out by thinking through the issues and weighing in.
Greg L (
talk)
16:18, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
Coming from Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/Yobot_20 related to The ordinal suffix (e.g., th) is not superscripted (23rd and 496th, not 23rd and 496th).
Question: does this apply to quoted text? That is, do we remove the superscripted ordinals in quotations? — HELLKNOWZ ▎ TALK 17:38, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia is an international institution and as such should conform to international conventions as much as possible. This is particularly true for the English language Wikipedia, which is read by users from all over the world. This means that units of measures should prefer the SI system over any other nonstandard or regional system. Legacy units (e.g. feet, miles, cubits, leagues, etc) are fine and may be used in certain contexts, but absolutely not without expressing the values in conventional units as well. Most people in this world have no idea of how many stones they weigh or how many square feet their house measures, so please let's not be provincial and let's allow people from other countries to understand what we're talking about. Cheers —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.100.22.178 ( talk) 22:11, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
Objections to source-based units have been expressed on numerous occasions, and notably include the fact that there are editors here who have a record of picking the sources to match the units they prefer rather than vice versa. I still oppose them on these grounds and on the other grounds that have been expressed on dozens of occasions.
Articles primarily about the United Kingdom should take as primary the system of measures in general use in the United Kingdom, just as articles primarily about the United States take as primary the system of measures in general use in the United States. This system is best described by the Times style guide. Pfainuk talk 17:03, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
The responses to my proposal have been strong on emotion but short on relevance. This is not a question of saying what British usage is, but in dealing with style guides more even-handedly. The comment about finding style guides misses the mark. The style guides (Times, Guardian and Economist) have already been found and compared, and they differ slightly on details [16]. My present proposal is to refer to these three style guides instead of just one of them. The proposal does not even touch on the specific prescriptions of MOSNUM. All the talk about British practice, American practice, Army rucksacks, driver location signs, doctors' scales, bathroom scales, my persistence, someone else's alcohol intake and the use of miles or kilometres on roads are red herrings.
The question at issue is really quite simple. Do we have wording that pretends to be even-handed but favours one style guide over others, or do we have wording that refers quite even-handedly to three prominent style guides. Here is the difference:
The second passage could then be linked to the three style guides directly or linked to the analysis of the style guides in Metrication in the United Kingdom. Any comments or concerns? Michael Glass ( talk) 23:19, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
Wow. That was quick! The wording of my proposal is as follows:
This links directly to the discussion of the style guides in Metrication in the United Kingdom. The relevant passage reads as follows:
That's what I propose. Any comments or concerns? Michael Glass ( talk) 23:55, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
But that's not what I proposed. I proposed a way of linking to all three of these style guides instead of choosing just one. Choosing the most conservative of the style guides and passing that off as representative is just as bad as selecting the most radical and trying to run with that. As I said, I was trying to do something more even-handed by referring to all three policies. So if there are problems in only linking to the most radical of the style guides and there are exactly the same problems in linking to the most conservative of them, as the policy does at the moment, then what is to be done?
I believe that the solution to this conundrum is either linking to all of these policies, or linking to none of them. It is the cherry-picking that is objectionable. Michael Glass ( talk) 07:34, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
That's easy to assert, but where is your evidence? When the style guides agree, that is certainly evidence that this is British usage. However, when the Times style guide is not the same as, for instance The Guardian, this is evidence that usage may be divided. At the moment what I see is several style guides that agree on certain things but differ on details, and I see editors picking the style guide that suits them best. Show me the evidence that your preference is more than cherry-picking. Michael Glass ( talk) 11:33, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
Pfainuk, you are not answering the question I asked. The style guides are united in saying that miles should be used and also that hectares should be used. The fact that you have even raised the question of miles versus kilometres is a straw man argument. I was discussing instances where the style guides differ, such as in the treatment of square miles versus square kilometres, and in whether feet and inches and stones and pounds should be used instead of metric measures (The Times) or whether metric measures should be used, with the older measures in parentheses (The Guardian). This is not about what you do with the scales in your bathroom, but how an editor may report on the area of Dorset or what an editor might do when Premier League gives the height of players in centimetres only [17]. If you follow the sources and The Guardian Style Guide you will get one answer, but if you follow the Times Style Guide you will get another.
So the question is not whether editors should follow your preferences or my preferences, but whether they should have the freedom to decide what to do when style guides are at variance. I state that they should have the freedom to decide these issues; you appear to be one on the side of compulsion.
So please stop using straw man arguments and ridiculous misrepresentations. I was asking you to provide evidence of usage in the areas where the style guides differ. If you cannot or will not do that then why should I take your assertions seriously? Michael Glass ( talk) 14:02, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
Pfainuk is right that there is a genuine split of usage when it comes to temperatures, and the same split in usage applies in other areas. That is what is causing an increasing gap between the sources and the style guide. It is British usage when an Englishman describes his height in feet and inches; it is also British usage when Premier League (and the BBC) describes the height of players in centimetres. Similarly, it is British usage both when the Times expresses a preference for square miles and when The Guardian expresses a preference for square kilometres and when both express a preference for hectares over acres. Usage is more divided than the anti-metricationists are willing to admit. Michael Glass ( talk) 22:58, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
Premier League uses metric units but so do the Premier League clubs of Fulham, Liverpool and Sunderland. Other teams provide information in Imperial units and yet others provide no such information. This demonstrates that British usage in written information is divided, and that's where it counts for Wikipedia documentation.
A rigid rule about British usage clashes with actual written usage, reasonable consistency and plain common sense. Follow a rigid rule and you get inconsistencies like this:
The rules of Wikipedia should not be set by the British Weights and Measures Society. If these are examples of what Pfainuk wants to inflict on editors more widely, Heaven help us! Michael Glass ( talk) 01:38, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
Regarding the original point by 81.100.22.178, I would say that I don't agree. This is the English Wikipedia, and our main pool of readers is going to be native English speakers, just as the main pool for the Russian Wikipedia is going to be native Russian speakers and so forth. People who speak English as a second language do of course use the English Wikipedia and are welcome and more than welcome. But people who choose to operate in English ought, to some extent, to recognize that in doing so they are entering into the English-speaking world, with all its idiosyncracies.
When I use the Russian Wikipedia, I certainly don't expect them to express distances in miles for my benefit. Even for articles dealing with the United States. Consequently, I think that it is perfectly acceptable for the English Wikipedia to use miles first when dealing with articles about France or anywhere else, let alone articles about Britain or the United States. Of course, template:convert or hand conversion should be used always, so I don't really see the problem. It doesn't much matter much if a value is described as "X meters (Y feet)" or "Y feet (X meters)". If this is all about which value goes "first", that is quibbling in my opinion. If it's a situation where only kilometers or only miles (or whatever) is given, I would would say that this should not be done, it is an error and should be fixed on sight, in my view, Herostratus ( talk) 07:25, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
Ohconfucius, I'm sorry you have taken offence because I described Imperial/customary units as the older units. It just so happens that they are - except for the Imperial pint and gallon. If I refer to the older units and you accuse me of implying that Imperial/customary units are historic and obsolete, isn't there more than a little straw in your argument? We agree that it is more important to have accurate information than whether it is expressed in metres or feet and inches. We agree on the need for conversions. We agree on respecting different varieties of English, including different preferences for weights and measures. In fact, I explicitly stated that a variety in usage would remain. All I am saying is that as a general rule, articles should follow the sources in their choice of which unit should come first. This is not a declaration of war against the pound weight. Ohconfucius, I'm afraid there is even more straw in your argument than there is swearing. Michael Glass ( talk) 22:30, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
Wee Curry Monster, I acknowledge and appreciate your politeness, and I believe that my response to you was equally polite. You have stated that my proposal would result in an inconsistent application of units. All I have asked is that you demonstrate this assertion with a concrete example. If you are not prepared to do that, so be it. There is nothing more to be said. By all means let the matter rest.
Pfainuk, I raised the idea of following the sources as a way of defusing arguments about which unit should be preferred. Following local sources is a good way of ascertaining what the local preferences really are. But let's say that I or someone else chooses sources on the ground of the units used. This is easily overturned when someone comes up with a better source. So a battle about which unit to use is changed into a struggle to find the best source of information for the article. It's a win-win situation.
The present proposal was one that was limited to areas where British style guides were at variance but this seems to have been lost on you. So let's leave it at that and not waste any more of each other's time. Michael Glass ( talk) 02:04, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
I understand your concern that 'source based' throws an additional layer of complication into the style area. However, another danger can be seen from the application of WP:FALKLANDSUNITS to the Falkland Island articles. Take West Falkland and Hummock Island. If the sources were followed the articles would be consistent and metric first. However, by following "Falklands Units" the articles are inconsistent in their use of units and partly inconsistent with the sources. The application of "Falklands Units" to Jason Islands had a far more serious result. Information about the length, width and height of several islands was cut from the article because of this clash.
"Falklands Units," rigidly applied, results in the very problems that are attributed to following the sources. No one has taken up my challenge to provide an example of where following the sources would cause problems. As no one else has backed up their assertions with concrete examples, further discussion is pointless. Michael Glass ( talk) 06:34, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
My responses to the above two postings:
Michael Glass ( talk) 12:23, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
The constant criticism is that my proposals would metricate Wikipedia by the back door. In answer to this I would just like to state the following points:
The question of which unit to use in UK related articles needs a flexibility in approach, not rigidity. UK usage about weights and measures varies. Dogmatism about which unit to use is out of place in such a context. Michael Glass ( talk) 14:55, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
As my closing remark to this discussion, I cite you a parallel: while dd mmm yyyy date format is by no means universally British – the mmm dd, yyyy format is used by some important British newspapers, the consensus is that British articles should universally use dd mmm yyyy, despite the sources. This is the Wikipedia Manual of Style, it may be influenced by other external style guidelines, but remains "ours". -- Ohconfucius ¡digame! 02:45, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
On the question of dd mmm yyyy versus mmm dd yyyy, this is a matter of style. 18 April is the same date as April 18. However, when it comes to units of measure there is the question of rounding errors. Though such errors are usually very small it is preferable not to make them. (I also hope that this will be my last remark in this discussion.) Michael Glass ( talk) 11:41, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
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Editors have tried to provide unit conversions in 1910 London to Manchester air race. These keep being removed by the most frequent editor of the article. Edit summaries for removal include "if people can't figure it out themselves then tough". Some editors raised the issue on his talk page which says "If you're coming here to lecture, patronise, troll or otherwise fuck me about, then you definitely won't get the response you expect.". See the discussion.
Would anyone else like to try to improve the article? Lightmouse ( talk) 11:49, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
Lightmouse, User:Parrot of Doom’s edit was clearly improper and s/he has no leg to stand on. Roughly 45% of en.Wikipedia’s readership is American. Most of the rest thinks in metric terms. To make the articles as clear as possible for our readership, we provide conversions. Also, Parrot of Doom’s edit summary was patent nonsense. Providing conversions for our metric-thinking readership isn’t “pandering”; it’s making the article more accessible for a large segment of our readership. MOSNUM could not be any clearer on this principle. Greg L ( talk) 21:31, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
I see that this article is a 'Featured article':
It is beginning to look to me like the article falls short of that description. I don't want an edit war so can somebody else try to add units to save it from losing featured article status? Lightmouse ( talk) 16:23, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia is full of approximate and/or ambiguous values with conversions that help make WP accessible to ordinary readers. The question of nautical versus statute is a secondary issue. By default, ordinary people will read a distance in 'miles' and assess it against their experience of distances in statute miles. Similarly, conversions of the unqualified term 'mile' will default to statute miles. The use of parentheses shows that the conversion is just that: a conversion that relies on the original value being what it appears to be. It's likely to be near enough to give an idea and that's better than nothing for metric readers. Lightmouse ( talk) 20:33, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
Quite. Lightmouse ( talk) 21:30, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
I'm not sure if this is the correct place to ask/discuss this, but...I can't find any conventions for the case when multiple quantities of disparate units are used to represent a single logical measurement. (I'm guessing that this is probably only an issue with non-metric units.) The CMS seems to suggest the following:
If there are three or more units, there are even more options:
SixSix ( talk) 19:26, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
moved from Template_talk:Convert: begin
Mosnum says:
"Use long ton or short ton and not just ton; these units have no symbol or abbreviation and are always spelled out.".
However, the template says:
As you can see, even the template itself is inconsistent. Lightmouse ( talk) 17:35, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
I see two distinct issues, both important:
1. As we can see above, the format in parentheses is inconsistent. In one case it's 'long tons', in another it's 'LT'. We should choose one format and use it throughout.
2. Mosnum and the convert template output are inconsistent. I looked up mosnum talk and found the abbreviations
'LT' and 'ST' mentioned and as far as I could see, the prohibition still has mosnum consensus. There are dozens of other threads where tons have been discussed and I'm sure there will be plenty of input if we raise it again.
As far as I know, this is the only case where the template fails to comply with mosnum. I thought compliance was an objective, it certainly is one of the things that I assume. If we make the template compliant with mosnum, we don't have to raise the issue on mosnum. If we want to make the template consistent by using 'ST' and 'LT', then we need to raise it on mosnum. Is that a fair summary of the situation? Lightmouse ( talk) 14:39, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
moved from Template_talk:Convert: end
The project page contains "Dates of events in countries using the Gregorian calendar are given in the Gregorian calendar. This includes some of the Continent of Europe from 1582, the British Empire from 14 September 1752" While England did change to the Gregorian calendar in 1752, Scotland, as noted in the Gregorian calendar article, changed on January 1 1600 [1].
Would there be any problems rewording this as "Dates of events in countries using the Gregorian calendar are given in the Gregorian calendar. This includes some of the Continent of Europe from 1582, Scotland from 1600, the rest of the British Empire from 14 September 1752"? Kiore ( talk) 08:29, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
There is a discussion how to use coordinates for powerlines and cables. Your input is appreciated. Beagel ( talk) 17:30, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
Okay, I've been trying to find the original justification for this line, but the history is just too convoluted: The use of the few Unicode symbols available for fractions (such as ½) is discouraged entirely, for accessibility reasons among others. This strikes me as outdated. We use unicode characters everywhere, why not fractions? Can this be revisited? (And "½" is a bad example, as that's not a Unicode addition; it's part of ISO-8859-1.)— Chowbok ☠ 15:53, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
Mosnum contains the text: "15 sq mi" does that mean 'mi' is the symbol for mile? Lightmouse ( talk) 11:58, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
Mosnum already mentions mph but not mpg. It's worth mentioning that the convert template displays 'mi' and 'nmi' for the unit on its own. It displays 'mpg' and 'mph' for the unit in combinations. See:
That's in line with existing mosnum text and seems reasonable to me. Lightmouse ( talk) 13:45, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
Back to the comment that started this thread: The convert template uses mi as the symbol for mile on its own. For over two years, mosnum has used it within the text for mile on its own. I propose to update the table of specific units to make it the explicit symbol for mile on its own. Any objections? Lightmouse ( talk) 10:28, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
I've seen two symbols on Wikipedia for revolutions per minute:
The MOSNUM symbol for pounds per square inch is lower case 'psi'. Although MOSNUM doesn't yet state the symbol for miles per gallon, the convert template does show it in lower case. I propose that the table in MOSNUM is updated to show lower case 'rpm'. Any comments? Lightmouse ( talk) 10:29, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
The page doesn't specify a preference for the use of a hyphen when the adjective "mid" is added in front of years or decades. From what I can tell, "mid-1990s" is preferable to "mid 1990s". Is that correct? (See also Hyphen#Prefixes and suffixes, which isn't very helpful.) Will Beback talk 21:27, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
Discussion moved from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators/Strategy think tank#AD Vs CE by Macarenses. Note that there were a few comments there that were not moved with the rest of the discussion. Dana boomer ( talk) 15:32, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
I believe that the date style in the article within the scope of the project should be changed from the Christian centered AD-BC system to the BCE ireligious system. Since both systems denote the same years it is just a matter of changing the acronyms in every article. A small change in practice but a very important one in that this way the article doesn't take a religious stance. I mean can you imagine if instead of the seemingly harmless "AD" we would actually write the true meaning of the acronym- "the battle was fought in the year of OUR LORD 1627"- I think not! and yet we seem satisfied to keep this religious note in copious amounts, littering even articles regarding wars fought hundreds of years before " the anointed one".Thx for hearing me out-- Macarenses ( talk) 14:27, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
I get your point but the thing is that the current situation isn't neutral, not in the least. The fact that AD is used in academic literature doesn't seem to me to add that much weight to the argument as I've read academic publishings of Israeli scholars who write (translation) "...in the 1943 year of the Christian count.." and "...in the year 1245 according to their count.."- "their" being obviously Christians. Should we then allow for that format as well?. I believe a single non-religious format should be used. And if not then why shouldn't instead of "AD" to use the complete "Anno Domini" from time to time, it is what is means. "AD" in my mind cannot be viewed as anything but a Christian way and wikipedia should not be conscribed to the religious notion that every passing year is the year of jesus.-- Macarenses ( talk) 15:04, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
But, personally, I encourage editors to not be tempted to use Wikipedia as a platform in the vain hope of promoting the adoption of new-age ways of doing things; not until the practices become most common in the real world. Some wide-eyed wikipedians specializing in computer-releated articles tried in vain for three long years to promote the adoption of the IEC prefixes (mebibytes instead of megabytes) by flitting about and changing hundreds of articles nearly overnight. The result was some articles that spoke of “256 MiB of RAM” and still others that spoke of “256 MB of RAM”. It was pretty much an advertisement for how Wikipedia can do dumb things at times. Unfortunately, the naive effort didn’t help the world adopt the IEC prefixes one iota. All the IEC proponents accomplished was the inconsistent use of a writing style that drew untoward attention to itself and caused unnecessary confusion for our readership (both being highly verboten in all good technical writing).
With very rare exception, you will only see “BCE” in writing; it is very seldom used in narrated form in TV, radio, and movies. Next time you see a TV documentary on Egyptian pyramids, note whether you hear the narrator speak of “Bee See” or “Bee See Eee”. I personally think is superior to use a writing style that reflects what people are accustomed to hearing. For those here who think that several dozen wikipedians can Make A Difference®™© in whether a new writing style catches on and attains widespread acceptance, think again; the IEC prefixes showed that notion to be fallacious. Wikipedia does best when it simply goes with the flow. Greg L ( talk) 01:54, 27 December 2010 (UTC)
I just passed this subject article from idle interest, and am unfamiliar with the fractional templates, so if there's a consensus, perhaps someone here might be interested in fixing (or at least harmonising) the tenths and halves at Confederate States of America dollar#Banknotes —— Shakescene ( talk) 21:24, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
At the moment, MOSNUM says "Centuries are given in figures or words using adjectival hyphenation where appropriate: the 5th century BCE; nineteenth-century painting." The same section in MOS ( WP:MOS#Numbers as figures or words) says "Show centuries in figures". Who wins? - Dank ( push to talk) 02:21, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
I have restored from this this revert on MOS because the edit summary This is how MOS has read for many years, prior to any of us being involved. Discuss changes, don't push) is a falsehood; Art LaPella is also correct that the text is incoherent. That section, as it stands, is no older than its last serious rewriting, two or three years ago, in which both Tony and I were involved. I presume, since both of us missed it, the present garble is younger still. (The revert-warrior was also editing then; whether he was involved with MOS I do not recall.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:13, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
If I had only been exposed to examples of real-world practices and had no knowledge of how various manuals of style addressed this issue, I might write 19th-century engine refrigerates without CFCs, as did this New Scientist article. New Scientist, as I recall, is written using British English if that matters at all. I find that expressions like Galileo Galilei was a famous seventeenth-century inventor is a tediously long. The tediousness of the ‘teen’ centuries might underlie why we have Category:17th-century astronomers. At least, numeric centuries work in titles (as it did in New Scientist). Clearly though, numbered expressions like …theory of the 16th-century astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus… are used also in body text by seemingly professional looking publications like this article from The New York Observer.
I don’t know why, exactly, but I think I prefer the numeric centuries myself—as does Tony. Perhaps our eyes are simply more used to that form: Witness this Google search on "Sixteenth-century astronomer" (in quotes). That one returns 15,300 results. But "16th-century astronomer" returns 445,000 reults; 29 times more frequent.
If I had to throw out a proposal to change the guideline, it would be to follow the practices of the majority of most-reliable sources used in a given article. Practices might vary depending upon whether it is an archeology-based article, or an astronomy-based one, etc. This approach would best leverage the mission of any good encyclopedia: to properly prepare its readership for their continuing studies on the subject—writing conventions (writing style) and all. The outcome of such a guideline change would be that most articles would probably use numeric centuries. Greg L ( talk) 20:25, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
I agree with your point; that venue (Internet vs. actual books) account for a humungous difference in the outcome, with a 2:1 preference for “nineteenth-century” in books and a 29:1 preference for “19th-century” on the Web. I also note that this string "in the 19th century" yields 749,000 results whereas "in the nineteenth century" returns 7,820,000 results.
This may be as simple as book writers tend to be professionals who have actual manuals of style, vs. the Internet, where everyone’s an expert simply because they have an X-chromosome, a pulse, and an opinion. It would be a phenomenon similar to “gigawatts” (before computers got to giga-anything); it was properly jiga (as in “gigantic”). But because the the prefix “giga-” worked its way down the food chain into consumer-grade products and all the way into the Wal‑Mart crowd buying $549 Dell computers, it became—due to simple cluelessness—“giga as in biga which is gooder”.
I must be from the Wal‑Mart set, since I prefer the look of numeric centuries notwithstanding the fact that grammar-school teachers would whack my knuckles with their rulers. Maybe it’s funner that way. Greg L ( talk) 00:29, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
( edit conflict) My two cents: the current guideline (‘Centuries are given in figures or words&nsbp;...’) is no more informative than having no guideline at all. (Of course they are given in figures or words; how else could they be given? Egyptian hieroglyphs? IPA transcriptions of their names?) So I'd propose just removing it. (The consequence would be that the generic guideline would also apply for centuries: prefer words up to the ninth century, don't use words for some centuries and figures for other ones in the same context, etc.) A. di M. ( talk) 01:00, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
FWIW,
User:Noetica has been watching this thread and emailed me the following message, for posting here:
I see that Andy Walsh, at the first link-target, asked who wants "twenty-first-century music". A very reasonable question. Tony (talk) 12:08, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
Talk:Speaker of the New York State Assembly
Legislative terms use - (short dash) , life spans use – (long dash). Besides, 1820-21 is a one-year term which had sessions in two calendar years. 1820-1821 would be a two-year tenure. Besides, the dashes and numbers were messing up page references. Please check carefully what you are editing, the correct info should be preserved. Please avoid unnecessary edits. Kraxler ( talk) 21:42, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
I guess I didn’t get that memo? ― cobaltcigs 01:48, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
This strikes me as an artificial and counter-intuitive distinction. An imprecise time-span is indicated by the year in which it begins and the year in which it ends, without regard to calendar month/day. That is, if an individual holds office from “January 3, 2004 to December 31, 2005” or from “August 8, 2004 to August 8, 2005” we should use the abbreviation “2004–2005” in either case. Anything more specific would and should require displaying the months for comparison. ― cobaltcigs 01:39, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
Shouldn't the country sign always be in front of the dollar sign (US$, S$, A$ etc.). If it's just the first instance, people starting to read at a later section won't know for sure what currency they are reading about. It will also help highlight any mistakes. Certainly if you look at the style guides of serious financial publications - FT, Reuters, Economist etc., I'm pretty sure that would be the case, and surely wiki should be trying to keep to the same high standards. Mattun0211 ( talk) 07:48, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
A request for bot approval has been filed for a task that will, among other things, "delinks full dates (but not lone day-month strings or years), days, months, decades, centuries", "removes direct links to full dates, whether ISO8601, dd mmm yyyy or mmm dd, yyyy, including piped links of same to chronological articles in almost any imaginable form" (per WP:UNLINKDATES) and ensure articles uses a consistent date format throughout.
A member of the Bot Approvals Group has requested community input to determine if community consensus exists for an automated process of this nature.
Editors are invited to comment on the feasibility and desirability of the automated task here. – xeno talk 16:23, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
A calorie (symbol cal) refers to a gram calorie while the kilocalorie (symbol kcal) refers to the kilogram calorie (also known as small calorie and large calorie respectively). When used in a nutrition related article, use the kilocalorie as the primary unit. In US-related articles, use the synonym dietary calorie with a one-time link to kilogram calorie.
JIMp talk· cont 21:27, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
In the UK the style used to be Calories (for kcal) and began to shift towards kcal around ten years ago, the kcal now being the most used. The reason was that the general public, and indeed manufacturers/media, were having difficulty differentiating between 100 calories and 100 Calories - often saying things such as "One slice of bread is 140 calories" as opposed to the correct version which would be "one slice of bread is 140 Calories". Chaosdruid ( talk) 17:09, 28 January 2011 (UTC) NB Having just examined three food items, bread, biscuits and fish fingers I can confirm that they are all given as "XXX kJ/XXX kcal".
As a medical researcher specializing in metabolism and weight loss, I know a bit about this subject and can relate to writing white papers for a general-interest readership as well as for an expert readership; they are two different things. If one were writing an article on Metabolic energy requirement, which we don’t have although we do have Energy balance (biology), then writing “kilocalories” might be appropriate. But even still, the principal always applies that Wikipedia is directed to a general-interest readership and is not a scientific journal. So “kilocalories” in a more scientifically toned article would, IMO, be properly introduced with a parenthetical like A daily expenditure of 2200 kilocalories (2200 dietary calories). Conversely, for an article that will receive a high proportion of a non-expert readership, such as Morbid obesity, the use of “dietary calorie” should, IMO, come first with the “kilocalorie” being the parenthetical.
This all falls under the same principal that for an article like Obesity, we write 2200 dietary calories per day and not the 2200 kcal·day–1 that some editors must think makes them seem like “They must be from the big city.” Wikipedia does best when it uses appropriate plain-speak for the most likely readership and doesn’t try to promote the adoption of way-cool ideas—even if it’s the SI. Greg L ( talk) 01:08, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
P.S. FWIW, editors need to make an extra effort to not think of Wikipedia as a single entity requiring perfect internal consistency amongst its 6,851,296 articles. There are oodles of inconsistencies where non-SI units of measure typically have symbols that do not follow the rule of the SI one twit. No one interested in nautical technology will ever run off thinking that U.S.S. Enterprise can travel 35 nanometers in an hour. “Yes, but the real world is fu**ing retarded” you might say. Fine; follow the real world—and it’s retarded too. The job of any good encyclopedia is to follow the real world and use the conventions used by modern, most-reliable sources so our readers are properly primed for their continuing studies elsewhere on the subject. When it comes to diet & exercise and metabolic energy requirements and whatnot, no one uses the gram-calorie. The phrase consume 2100 calories per day is perfectly clear to our novice and expert readers alike. Whether it is “calorie” with a capital “C” or lowercase doesn’t matter; just look to the sources cited in particular article and follow the convention used by the majority of the best ones.
Greg L (
talk)
02:58, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
The use of the calorie is dependant on context. When used in scientific contexts such as chemistry the calorie refers to the gram calorie (~4.2 J, symbol cal, also known as the small calorie). However, in nutritional contexts the calorie refers to the kilogram calorie (1000 cal, ~4.2 kJ, symbol Cal, also known as the large calorie, food calorie or dietary calorie).
∘ Metric prefixes may be applied to the gram-calorie to form units such as the kilocalorie (symbol kcal). Do not apply metric prefixes to the kilogram-calorie. In all contexts the kilocalorie refers to one thousand gram-calories (1000 cal, ~4.2 kJ).
∘Don't use the large calorie and the kilocalorie in the same article except when comparing the units themselves.
∘Conversions to SI units (joules, kilojoules, etc.) should be provided.
The calorie, depending on context, may refer to the gram calorie or the kilogram calorie.
∘ The gram calorie (symbol cal, also known as the small calorie) is approximately 4.2 J. Metric prefixes may be applied to the gram calorie to form units such as the kilocalorie.
∘ The kilogram calorie (symbol Cal, also known as the large calorie, food calorie or dietary calorie) is equal to one thousand gram calories (1000 cal, ~4.2 kJ). Do not apply metric prefixes to the kilogram calorie.
∘ The kilocalorie (symbol kcal) always refers to one thousand gram calories (1000 cal, ~4.2 kJ).
∘ In scientific or technological contexts (such as chemistry or nuclear energy) the calorie (cal) refers to the gram calorie.
∘ In nutritional contexts the calorie (Cal) refers to the kilogram calorie. The equilavent kilocalorie (kcal) may be used instead but not both in the same article.
∘ Conversions to SI units (joules, kilojoules, etc.) should be provided.
Why does the MOS recommend using the incorrect plurals "euros" and "cents" over the ECB's offically-defined plurals "euro" and "cent"? Stifle ( talk) 15:57, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
Note concerning the wording of the title: is there a risk that "Massive" is POV? Tony (talk) 05:47, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
I need a second opinion. User:Hmains is using the automated AWB tool to remove wikilinks to all “Century” articles ( 20th century, 19th century, 5th century BC, etc. [8], [9], [10] as recent examples of the delinking). I first became aware of his delinking here, which I reverted here with the edit comment “This is not an uncontroversial edit - possible misuse of AWB” which was ignored as Hmains's next edit was to restore his de-linking here. I am aware that there has been some debate about the linking of dates, but a “century” is not a date, and wikilinks to such “century” articles are useful navigational tools for our readers. He's edited/delinked thousands of articles, and he refused to stop when I warned him and tried to discuss it. [11], and Hmains' similar editing behaviour has also been previously discussed here, here, and here, but his use of AWB has not abated. I would appreciate your comments on whether or not Hmains use of AWB is contrary to its “Rules of Use” [12], and if so, can anything be done to stop his disruptive editing. Thank you for your attention. Dolovis ( talk) 22:58, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
P.S. (Oh… by the way…) Links are supposed to be germane and topical to the subject matter so they are something that has a half-way decent chance of being clicked upon by a reader studying “Ashland, Alabama.” The idea is not to link every fathomable word just because Wikipedia has an article on the subject and it can be linked to. In your differences, above, the subject matter of one of them was Ashland, Alabama, and one of the affected sentences was this:
Clay County was formed by an act of the Alabama General Assembly on December 7, 1866. Less than a year later, Ashland was established as the county seat on land donated by Hollingsworth Watts for the construction of a courthouse. Ashland was incorporated in 1871 and was named for 19th century statesman Henry Clay's Kentucky estate home.
How many of those links are really half-way well associated with Ashland? It’s interesting that our article, “ 19th century”, doesn’t mention “Clay County”—or even all of “Alabama” for that matter. The same goes for December 7 and for 1866. It’s safe to assume that someone reading up on “Ashland, Alabama” doesn’t need to be forked to an article that mentions the attack on Pearl Harbor. Normally, if one were to actually go read “1866”, one would *expect* to find that it has a bullet point mentioning how Clay County was formed that year—which would be pretty self-referential since the reader just read that much when the clicked the link. In this particular instance, the “1866” article doesn’t even mention that.
The linking principal to abide by is if it is a link that can help the reader better understand that particular subject and better prepare them for their future studies on the subject, then we provide a link. The reaction of the reader should be “Cool, it’s nice to know there is related reading on this subject!” Beyond that, we let the reader type things into the search field that are unrelated to Ashland, such as up and down, so as to not clutter up the article and turn it into a sea of mind-dumbing blue that obscures the truly valuable links that could assist with a better understanding of the study material at hand.
If the desire is to just ensure that readers are knowledgeable that “ 19th century” exists for further reading on the whole tangential subject of “old”, adding it to the See also section is a better way to accomplish that. Greg L ( talk) 03:35, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
I am not trying to suggest that every incident of 13th century and 5th century BC should be linked, but the massive automated delinking of all Century links by User:Hmains will result in these articles being orphans. My concern is not the delinking over-linked articles. My concern is that such delinking should be done in a careful way to avoid mistakes, and it appears to me that [Hmains is not being selective or careful when using AWB to perform such delinkings on the massive scale as he is continuing to do. His misuse of AWB results in some controversial edits, which is an abuse of AWB. I am asking him to slow down, and to stop using the automated tools for such delinking edits. Dolovis ( talk) 14:44, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
If the subject matter is Ancient Egypt, I’m sure there are contexts where linking to a century makes sense since the readers coming to that article are clearly interested in ancient civilization. Moreover, it’s fair to say that 3rd century BC actually mentions Egypt (three times, I see). As I stated above, if the article is Ashland, Alabama, linking to 19th century leads the reader to something that doesn’t mention all of Alabama once, let alone Ashland. We’re not here to “build the Web” by adding links merely because technology gives us the power to do so.
I note this useless link in Ashland, Alabama: There were 854 households out of which 27.5% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 43.0% were married couples living together. Really? “Married couples”?? That resolves to our “ Marriage” article. Now, that’s just stupid. Besides the fact that it is a link to totally generic information wholly unrelated to the topic of “Ashland, Alabama,” such a term is beyond-obvious to the type of readership coming to this article; we write for the middle of the bell curve of the intended or likely readership; if we wrote for 1st graders, we’d have a icon of of Barney the dinosaur at the top of all our articles with a little dialog balloon coming out of his mouth saying “Say kids, do you know where babies come from?” I’m deleting that link right now… Greg L ( talk) 22:26, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
Is there even a mote of this discussion thread that pertains to changing the guidelines of MOSNUM? Greg L ( talk) 04:08, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
I haven't read the whole thread but that's my opinion:
The WP:MOSNUM#Full date formatting section avoids an issue with month-day-year dates that other style manuals address. We find on the Chicago Manual of Style (14th ed., p. 176) the example "On October 6, 1924, Longo arrived in Bologna" together with the instruction "In the alternative style [month-day-year], however, commas must be used before and after the year". Similar requirements for commas before and after may be found in the Associated Press Style Book (2007) under the "Months" entry, the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed., p. 89), and the U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual section 8.49. Since all of the style manuals I have consulted agree there should be a comma following the year (unless some other punctuation makes it unnecessary) I believe we should change our examples so that the date occurs in the middle of the sentence, and the comma after the year be shown. Jc3s5h ( talk) 03:06, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
In the example "On October 6, 1924, Longo arrived in Bologna", the comma is placed after "1924", because "On October 6, 1924" in an introductory phrase. The same example is given in WP:COPYEDIT -- "On January 15, 1947, she began tertiary study." Neither are actually directly applicable to the year surrounding commas, better example of which is: "This was reflected in the June 13, 2007, report." (from USGPOSM) I have a feeling that the former examples give the wrong impression of what is meant by comma after year. Personally, though not having paid attention to this, I do not recall seeing this used too often. Anyway, no speculation, here's a rough list of 500 FA articles using mdy dates outside references (it's not tidy). — HELLKNOWZ ▎ TALK 10:51, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
People with interest in this subject may wish to be aware of the related discussion here.-- Epeefleche ( talk) 01:23, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
I'm not too thrilled in general with the guideline not to superscript "th", "rd", "st", but surely it's completely wrong in cases like nth, which is just about unreadable without the superscript. The workaround n-th strikes me as nonstandard. I think we should at least put in an exception to the guide for this case. -- Trovatore ( talk) 00:33, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
On more than one occasion, I’ve had editors do a drive-by on an article I was shepherding and doing all the heavy lifting on (translation: I acted like *owned* it). After I reverted them, they claimed “But… MOS or MOSNUM said this ‘n’ that.” If the rule amounted to trying to cram a square peg into a round hole, my response was “Yeah, and the rule is retarded, here’s why, so I’m ignoring it.” It helps if you actually have a clue of what you’re talking about if you take a stand like that, but it can at least be therapeutic in that crazy world that is the collaborative writing environment of Wikipedia.
But it’s nice, Jimp, that you are willing to devote the time necessary to actually get anything accomplished here. Greg L ( talk) 01:31, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
A WP:ORDINAL question. In the following list in a sentence: "The Fitzgerald's crew of 29 on its final voyage consisted of the captain, the first, second and third mates, 5 engineers, 3 oilers, a cook, a wiper, 2 maintenance men, 3 watchmen, 3 deckhands, 3 wheelsmen, 2 porters, a cadet and a steward. " should numbers be written out as words or can they stay as figures? -- Rontombontom ( talk) 23:22, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
Recently, User:Dl2000 changed [13] the section on date consistency withing articles and references.
These requirements apply to dates in general prose and reference citations, but not to dates in quotations or titles.
Dates in the article's body text and references should all have the same format. These requirements do not apply to dates in in quotations or in titles of works.
At priori, this seems like a minimal change, but as far as I know the bullets were intentionally separate, as articles text could read "25 September 2007" while references use "25 Sep 2007". The intention of the bullets were to prevent prose mixing (Julia ate a poisoned apple on 25 June 2005. She died three days later on June 28.) and reference mixing (Jones, J. (20 September 2008)... Smith, J. (March 20, 2005)., but to allow for differences between citation and prose.
I reverted the edit and gave more detailed (and hopefully clear) explanations, along with examples, for the current version. I also added the thing about accessdates, which had somehow been omitted. If things changed since the last date-delinking drama, (or that I'm simply wrong about some things), we should have an RFC on it. Otherwise, I doubt anyone will have much success in making anything stick, and it'll be a drama-fest all over again.
Headbomb { talk / contribs / physics / books} 20:30, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia does best when the writing style chosen for a given article does not draw undo attention to itself. No matter how well intentioned the ISO’s proposal is to ensure that another “Y2K bug” never happens, “2011-02-17T00:32Z” is a writing style that does draw attention to itself and causes *!* brain-interrupts that interfere with the transparent communication of thought.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution because articles closely associated with European issues will read most naturally in one format whereas still other articles have different needs. Maritime-related articles directed to an expert maritime readership might be best written in Zulu time; I don’t know and I don’t care. Astronomy and other specialty subjects should be left to the specialists of those articles and the denizens of WP:MOSNUM shouldn’t have to become 15-minute experts in everything. We should simply have some broad-brushed, global principals that ensures each article uses the most natural, human-readable dates that best serve the likely readership.
I agree with Tony: Setting aside special circumstances such as tables, where space is at a premium, articles should generally express dates with the month written out in English; lose the telephone numbers.
I’m also concerned about this text: Dates in article body text should all have the same format. That is overly prescriptive. Once it has been written that something occurred at a Boston Red Sox game on “February 13, 2011” or that so-n-so was beheaded in France on “2 February, 1799”, there is no need to keep repeating the year (I’m addressing the prescription for the “*all* have the same format” here) if the text in the next sentence says “and they beheaded his wife on “7 March”; the year is clear enough without belaboring the text with more numerals (although the ISO would be displeased because such an expression would cause problems with data exchange if you tried to buy a plane ticket with such sketchy information).
We’re here to write fluid, most-natural-reading, clear prose; not promote some Star Trek-style star‑date format or some standard organization’s all-numeric expression of temporal measures (for corpuscular beings caught in linear time in this universe). Greg L ( talk) 01:04, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
I still don't see any reason to ban or deprecated the YYYY-MM-DD format in footnotes, tables, infoboxes, accessdates, etc.. As much as some very vocal people hate them with a passion, consensus did not favour deprecating them last time anyone bothered asking the community for their feelings on the issue, and I don't see what has changed since then. Headbomb { talk / contribs / physics / books} 08:01, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
I once saw a “table” somewhere on Wikipedia listing a series of earthquakes—in California, I think. That had presented an opportunity for some ISO-advocate to use cryptic “You’re clear to land 1047 alpha tango charley 627 zulu on runway R24” for the time/date field. I can’t find that same list now. Maybe it’s been *downgraded* into the old-fashioned readable stuff that is wholly unsuitable for preparing Earth for its adoption into the United Federation of Planets (which is a waste, because too many humans still pursue the accumulation of personal wealth). Perhaps someone who fancies making stuff *readable* weighed in on that list of earthquakes and nearly got himself the Wikipedia-equivalent of an atomic wedgie for his trouble. Greg L ( talk) 18:32, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
P.S. Oh, BTW. There’s no need to circle the wagons about “deprecating” anything. I see now that some of what Tony and I wrote above looked like there was a scheme afoot to change MOSNUM to rid Wikipedia of time/date ciphers. I suspect Tony was just advocating minimizing the use of date cryptography; I know *I* certainly was. Neither of us would be foolish enough to seriously think we could pry 256-bit RSA cypher blocks out of MOSNUM. Greg L ( talk) 18:53, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
Much is said about compactness. Compare "2011-09-07" to "7 Sep 2011"; they're the same (ten characters each including hyphens and spaces). "17 Sep 2011" is only one character more than "2011-09-17". Put the month first & you have to add a comma, just a little comma. So, there's no significant space saving with YYYY-MM-DD. Also the template {{ dts}} makes YYYY-MM-DD unnecessary for sorting. Let's use YYYY-MM-DD in the references, where it's all a jumble of data anyway ... why? The more readable the data, the better, right? No, we'd need more momentum than this to bury the telephone-number dates but what's the harm in making it known that there's still opposition to them and asking again what point they serve. JIMp talk· cont 01:08, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
There is nothing at all that is *intuitive* about 2011-02-08 because many people are accustomed to days going before the month. So only through *experience* can anyone know that it is year-month-day and not day-month. 2011-02-08 can easily mean August 2nd. Only a *rule* that must be learned stipulates the order.
That’s why it is always better to write out the month, for that is the only “clear and logical” way to unambiguously convey dates to all readers. Like Pete wrote above, what I am describing (spell out the month everywhere unless there is a *legitimate and real* situation where space is truly at a premium) “this is pretty much the way experienced editors work”. Jimp too has the obvious figured out and reduced to practice, above. And Tony, who makes a living as a writer, also has the wisdom to understand how it is important to just write clearly so the writing style doesn’t cause unnecessary confusion nor draw undo attention to itself.
Now, please get with the game plan and follow the way the real world works and write out months, which is clear as glass and absolutely unambiguous and stop grasping for absurd reasons like *there’s no room* as an excuse to code months as numbers. And please stop trying to use Wikipedia as a platform to Change The World To A New And More Logical, All-Numeric Order®™©. I’m done here dealing with you because what you write is simply false and, IMO, borne out of extreme bias. In short: I don’t agree with you. At all. Nor do I care to weigh in on this thread anymore since it’s clear you like ISO format and always will. Greg L ( talk) 21:34, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
Yes, I do like the format for certain applications, but those uses are few, and I only occasionally (but not always) use it for reference accessdates on here. Some people use it more often both on here and in the real world, where it is used a hell of a lot more than you seem to think. I see no need for legislating against in on the basis of claims that are dubious at best. You just don't like it and it would be a lot better if you simply stated that rather than resorting to sarcasm, false assertions and ad hominem remarks. wjemather bigissue 18:08, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
This hijacking of Wikipedia to adopt spiffy ideas before the rest of the world caught on en masse first happened (to my knowledge—there may be still others out there) with the IEC prefixes, where a standard body that is unimpressed with how “megabyte” can mean two slightly different values depending upon context (for instance, random access memory vs. hard drives), came up with a New and Better©™® way of doing things and proposed “mebibytes (MiB)” for the world to line up behind them. Of course, the computer manufacturers didn’t have “Now with 256 MiB of RAM so it can run the soooo easy-to-use Windows 95” on their packaging or in their advertisements, nor did computer magazines directed to such a general-interest readership use such language. But readers would come here, to Wikipedia, where some George Jetsons had hijacked hundreds of articles overnight. With the help of an admin, who claimed there had to be a consensus to revert articles back to the real world, the idiotic practice stuck for three long years. I lead the battle that deprecated that practice… What fun… (*sigh*).
So now we have the ISO 8601 pushing this standard body’s “2011-03-01” and “2011-03-01 15:52Z”. As the ISO’s own FAQ page states, the standard is a standard data-exchange protocol for IT systems to prevent another “Y2K bug.”
Of course, this being the not-so-reliable Wikipedia that anyone can edit, back in February 2008 (note my readable date there), User:Richardrw made this ∆ edit—entirely uncited—stating that the ISO 8601’s scope was for pretty much all expressions of time and date, including “hand written” notes. That whopper read It applies to all written communications that contain dates, times, and time intervals regardless of the communication medium (printed, electronic, or hand written) or the location of the sender and receiver (either within an organization, between organizations, or across international boundaries). See that jewel in all its Star Trek glory here at “Scope and application of the standard”.
That was back in Feb. 2008 and persisted for 19 months when, in Sept. 2009, I added some {citation needed} tags to the nonsense. I was new then, and User:A. di M. added tags to the section the following day. Finally, on Sept. 19, I deleted (∆ edit) the fairy tale of POV-pushing.
Again, Wikipedia had the pure fabrication (complete nonsense) for 19 months! No wonder teachers across the land counsel their students against actually using Wikipedia in their research.
Now, the part I am concerned about is User:Jc3s5h twice edited the ISO 8601 article (here and here), when it had that outrageous fabrication and POV-pushing to hijack Wikipedia to promote a *good idea* that for obvious reasons (humans aren’t IT machines) hadn’t caught on. The article stated that the ISO standard was for all written communications, including printed, electronic, or hand written, whether within an organization, between organizations, or across international boundaries. So…
To User:Jc3s5h: I ask you to repudiate that now-deleted text (that I had to flag and A. di M. had to tag and I had to delete). You made two edits to the article in that sad state and didn’t seem to have a problem with the fabrications in it. Please affirm that you either never noticed that, or that you did notice it but that you now no longer believe it. Your answer will help me to understand your continued promotion of something intended for IT managers to ensure another “Y2K” problem doesn’t occur and why all-numeric dates (with leading zeros that machines are fond of) are such cool-beans in your book. Greg L ( talk) 2011-03-01T17:06Z
Let me dispel the ill-conceived notion that my fighting him on the change was driven by the use/configuration of my script. He has got the fact arse about face: the configuration of the tool was driven by my understanding of the guideline for as long as I have known it; it does not (I emphasise NOT) drive my conversion of same into dmy or mdy formats.-- Ohconfucius ¡digame! 02:34, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
Here are some statistics from 500 featured articles (with marginal error due to parsing/formatting errors):
field | YYYY-MM-DD (i.e. 2011-03-02) |
MMMM DD, YYYY (i.e. March 2, 2011) |
DD MMMM YYYY (i.e. 2 March 2011) |
---|---|---|---|
total | 18673 | 6354 | 6267 |
|date= |
5565 | 3673 | 2446 |
|accessdate= |
13098 | 2674 | 3799 |
years | YYYY-MM-DD | MMMM DD, YYYY | DD MMMM YYYY |
2010–2011 | 1397 | 1245 | 1320 |
2000–2009 | 16334 | 4404 | 4459 |
1990–1999 | 456 | 209 | 170 |
1980–1989 | 111 | 128 | 47 |
1970–1979 | 30 | 16 | 18 |
1960–1969 | 127 | 26 | 15 |
1950–1959 | 76 | 7 | 107 |
1900–1949 | 118 | 209 | 106 |
1800–1899 | 23 | 7 | 19 |
1000–1799 | 0 | 1 (July 29, 1797) | 6 (all 13 January 1797) |
0–999 | 0 | 0 | 5 (3x 5 March 200; 2x 1 January 988) |
Other formats:
— HELLKNOWZ ▎ TALK 14:10, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
Having read the TIMEZONE section of this manual I think I need more clarification. The reason that I went to the section is to find out how to format a time zone for a live stream of podcast recording. The event I assume is local to place it's being recorded but to include the city seems to be too much information. That leaves writing 7:00 pm PT or (UTC-8)/(UTC-7)-daylight saving time. The problem I see with the PT is that outside of the North America I am not sure that means a lot to other English speakers. The UTC is problematic because of daylight saving time.
I am not just writing to get an answer but to see if the time zone section could use some clarity on how to specify local time. If I can't find something in the MOS I will go with common practice, but I have seen time zones written a number of different ways, hence the above. Thanks. — Rɑːlɑːjər talk² 05:11, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
Reading a lot of articles on NASA related articles, it is apparent that these two numbers don't equate once gravity is not equal to the 32.2 ft/s^2. So, for clarification
1) Assume pound-mass = pound-force = 0.454 kgm as on Earth gravity 2) Add mass in slugs (this would clarify a lot as Newtons clarify kgm from kgf) 3) When writing pounds, specify force or mass in subscript
Any thoughts?
Senior Trend ( talk) 04:31, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
99.255.0.57 ( talk) 06:31, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
A couple of things:
First, how does one define major contributor? For example, for date formats;
Where in doubt, defer to the style used by the first major contributor.
Second (and this question may belong somewhere else), when it comes to pages where there isn't a clear indication of what form (American/British/Regional Dialect) of English is used (for example, on pages with primarily German, Italian, Japanese or French subject matter), what is the default spelling pattern in such instances?
I'll try to make this last question a little clearer:
Which of the following would be correct for a page about a village in Russia;
The town hall is located in the city centre.
The town hall is located in the city center.
Magus732 (
talk)
22:17, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
These two bullets seem to be saying almost the same thing. Can't we combine them?
TCO ( talk) 07:49, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
The allowability of vulgar fractions with Imperial units is equally applicable to United States customary units, so I've added the latter and linked both terms. -- Thnidu ( talk) 17:55, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
On looking back at the Imperial units page I saw that it also references English units and Avoirdupois, which follow the same logic, so I added mentions and links to those as well. -- Thnidu ( talk) 18:33, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
This question must have been raised many times before but oddly I can't find a good answer in the archive. What's the correct way to refer to the decade between 2000 and 2009 to avoid confusion, is it "the 2000s decade"? I saw a recommendation to use "the first decade of the 21st century", but as the 21st century starts at 2001 this seems wrong. This is also what was said in another discussion. Whatever the consensus may be, I think it should be added to the page itself as well, not just be discussed at the talk page (it might be there somewhere, but not where I expected it to be). -- Muhandes ( talk) 10:53, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
It's been asserted recently that WP:MOSTIME requires colons in times (i.e. 5:00 p.m., not 5 p.m.). What it actually says is: "... colons separate hours, minutes and seconds (e.g. 1:38:09 pm or 13:38:09)." Does anyone else read this to require colons? I don't see this in any style guide, and my take is that 5 p.m isn't the same as 5:00 p.m., just as 1 meter isn't the same as 1.00 meters. - Dank ( push to talk) 17:58, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser#Removing spaces from a year range after "c." Art LaPella ( talk) 20:58, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
I don't see any mention of non-breaking space insertion over at the AWB documentation (and I'd rather use a script, anyway). Anyone got one? I hate inserting them by hand. (I'm not a fan of nbsp's if it's not obvious, I just need them for FAC.) - Dank ( push to talk) 15:14, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
{{nbsp}}
is two keystrokes more than
, and the latter is already familiar to whoever knows HTML. An actual improvement would need a one- or two-character shortcut, such as my proposal _
or Noetica's ,,
. (Oh God, why did I go into this again?) --
A. di M. (
talk)
14:40, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
January 1, 2001{{nbsp}}{{spaced ndash}}{{nbsp}}December 31, 2001
would be easier to parse to a novice editor than January 1, 2001 – December 31, 2011
even though there's brevity of character use there. Of course, there's multiple ways of doing this, we just want the solution(s) that produce the minimal havoc on the rest of the work but offer the most benefit. --
MASEM (
t)
15:50, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
January_1, 2001_-- December_31, 2001
would be even easier on the eye. :-) --
A. di M. (
talk)
17:46, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
<wikify>January_1, 2001_-- December_31, 2001</wikify>
; once to that version, it can then always be template wrapped: {{wikify|January_1, 2001_-- December_31, 2001}}
. Maybe we could repurpose the "~" character in prose to do this: ~January_1, 2001_-- December_31, 2001~
. --
MASEM (
t)
17:55, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
See a full draft of the proposal |
---|
|
– ⊥¡ɐɔıʇǝoNoetica! T– 23:25, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
I am disappointed that the style guide appears to mandate the insertion of a non-breaking space between a value and the abbreviation of the unit, e.g. 35 mm or 50 Hz rather than the clearer and easier to read 35mm or 50Hz. I've been writing technical articles and papers for 40 years and until I started contributing to Wikipedia I've never had anyone comment on my non-use of spaces. Looking at a random selection of technical journals and books I see that both forms are used in about equal measure; so why can this not be made an area where both are acceptable?
Davidlooser ( talk) 15:41, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
Well that's as maybe. I was taught, 40 years ago, that when an abreviation for a unit is used then it's incorrect to include a space, and that's what I've always done. In the world of film (which I'm particularly interested in) it's rare indeed for a space to be included between the film size and "mm" (thus 35mm NOT 35 mm). The later just looks plain wrong, it's less clear and takes more typing. I've also just looked at various containers of household items (food stuffs, cleaners etc.) in my house, without exception they omit a space.
I'd say that the SI are wrong about this. They chose the wrong style, which is probably why it's so widely ignored.
Davidlooser ( talk) 17:43, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
The Geographical coordinates section goes into agonizing detail about how to tag articles with geo coordinates, but it doesn't explain at all which articles should be tagged. This section should be expanded to explain which of the following types of articles should be geotagged and which shouldn't:
These are all cases that are unclear. Without guidance we end up with inconsistent application across articles, or worse, edit wars. Kaldari ( talk) 20:52, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
The question of whether to supply coordinates is content question, not a style question. Content guidance belongs elsewhere, not in the Manual of Style.— Stepheng3 ( talk) 11:47, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
I don't think IEC prefixes should be used in this table. http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Hard_disk_drive&diff=next&oldid=422880783 Please advise. 220.255.2.94 ( talk) 16:37, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
User Glider87 is entirely correct. The IEC prefixes (both the written-out unit names, prefixes, and their symbols) are not used in the real world. No computer manufacturer in materials directed to a general-interest customer base—not in their advertising, brochures, packaging, or instruction manuals. Because of this fact, no computer-related magazines that are directed to a general-interest readership use such terminology. So we don’t use them in Wikipedia’s computer-related articles to describe computer or hard drive capacity.
In Quantities of bytes and bits, the permissible uses of those units of measure are limited to the following:
The argument over on Talk:Hard disk drive that goes This table compares SI and binary prefixes. That counts as "explicitly discussing" it amounts to saying “we’re discussing the IEC prefixes now because I just now got through adding them to a table”. Nice try. But that is precisely the sort of argument the current guidelines are intended to shoot down. So, forget it. Such an argument employs mental subterfuge and circuitous logic.
At the top of this page is the archive box containing 18 archives under the rubric of “Binary prefixes.” Indeed, we debated and battled over this practice of using the IEC prefixes on Wikipedia for three long years. After it became clear that Wikipedia has to follow the way the real world works because it doesn’t go the other way around, we abandoned use of those units of measure except as narrowly permitted per the above three bullet points. It doesn’t matter if the standards body who made the proposal has three letters in their acronym or four. Nor does it matter if the IEC’s proposal sorely addresses an ambiguity or is way-cool and Wesley Crusher would most certainly be using them 300 years from now. Today, anyway, the computing world has so-far soundly said “Meh” to the IEC prefixes and they are virtually unknown to our readership.
The argument that our readership will learn them here and the idea will catch on like wild fire was soundly proven specious after trying that very stunt over a three-year period on Wikipedia (again, see the Binary prefixes archives, above). The two editors heavily responsible for that three-year-long jihad fell onto their Wikipedia swords after we decided to jettison routine use of the IEC prefixes to describe the magnitude of binary quantities in our articles. They’ve moved onto real life and will one-day meet their Wikipedia God (Jimbo?)—I suppose—as a reward for their efforts to grease Earth’s adoption into the United Federation of Planets.
We aren’t going to use units of measure in a table of hard drive capacity on Wikipedia if this is the only place the reader will ever likely encounter such terminology; our readership will A) simply be initially confused, and B) forget what they learned anyway since they won’t encounter such terminology in the real world again.
Someone, please be sure to archive this thread to the B17 archive (it’s closed but just add it to the bottom as the separate thread it is), or (*sigh*) create a whole new thread for when this sort of thing crops up. Greg L ( talk) 02:03, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
And if you don’t want this issue discussed here too, then I suggest that you don’t respond here. Just that simple. But since what you are trying to do is 180 degrees contrary to the clear guidance of MOSNUM, then the matter may be touched upon here too.
Your argument that the consensus view when MOSNUM adopted its guideline somehow supports logic of yours that goes… This table compares SI and binary prefixes. That counts as "explicitly discussing" it ( ∆ edit here), is just about the oddest thing I think I have ever seen written on Wikipedia’s talk pages. Wow… By your logic, MOSNUM says it’s OK to use the IEC prefixes in that article because you just then discussed them when you used them!! (Wooow…) So just pardon me all over the place if I don’t buy into that one. Greg L ( talk) 02:31, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
See RFC on the use of IEC prefixes to describe binary quantities, below. Greg L ( talk) 15:26, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
Notice: An RFC is being conducted here at Talk:Hard diskdrive#RFC on the use of the IEC prefixes. The debate under consideration is the use in this table of the “ Hard disk drive” article of nomenclature such as “KiB”, “MiB”, and “GiB” to describe capacities. The governing guideline on MOSNUM is Quantities of bytes and bits. Greg L ( talk) 15:25, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
Request: It seems to me that our “ Hard disk drive” article has a table with a glaring error in it that was the product of purposeful disregard for an explicit guideline on MOSNUM. We need greater participation on this RfC by experienced members of the MOSNUM. The quality of the discussion can be improved (too many personal attacks) by broadening participation of the discussion. This will hopefully more fully achieve a consensus. Greg L ( talk) 17:41, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
NOTE: Concluded The RfC concluded. Thanks to those who helped out by thinking through the issues and weighing in.
Greg L (
talk)
16:18, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
Coming from Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/Yobot_20 related to The ordinal suffix (e.g., th) is not superscripted (23rd and 496th, not 23rd and 496th).
Question: does this apply to quoted text? That is, do we remove the superscripted ordinals in quotations? — HELLKNOWZ ▎ TALK 17:38, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia is an international institution and as such should conform to international conventions as much as possible. This is particularly true for the English language Wikipedia, which is read by users from all over the world. This means that units of measures should prefer the SI system over any other nonstandard or regional system. Legacy units (e.g. feet, miles, cubits, leagues, etc) are fine and may be used in certain contexts, but absolutely not without expressing the values in conventional units as well. Most people in this world have no idea of how many stones they weigh or how many square feet their house measures, so please let's not be provincial and let's allow people from other countries to understand what we're talking about. Cheers —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.100.22.178 ( talk) 22:11, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
Objections to source-based units have been expressed on numerous occasions, and notably include the fact that there are editors here who have a record of picking the sources to match the units they prefer rather than vice versa. I still oppose them on these grounds and on the other grounds that have been expressed on dozens of occasions.
Articles primarily about the United Kingdom should take as primary the system of measures in general use in the United Kingdom, just as articles primarily about the United States take as primary the system of measures in general use in the United States. This system is best described by the Times style guide. Pfainuk talk 17:03, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
The responses to my proposal have been strong on emotion but short on relevance. This is not a question of saying what British usage is, but in dealing with style guides more even-handedly. The comment about finding style guides misses the mark. The style guides (Times, Guardian and Economist) have already been found and compared, and they differ slightly on details [16]. My present proposal is to refer to these three style guides instead of just one of them. The proposal does not even touch on the specific prescriptions of MOSNUM. All the talk about British practice, American practice, Army rucksacks, driver location signs, doctors' scales, bathroom scales, my persistence, someone else's alcohol intake and the use of miles or kilometres on roads are red herrings.
The question at issue is really quite simple. Do we have wording that pretends to be even-handed but favours one style guide over others, or do we have wording that refers quite even-handedly to three prominent style guides. Here is the difference:
The second passage could then be linked to the three style guides directly or linked to the analysis of the style guides in Metrication in the United Kingdom. Any comments or concerns? Michael Glass ( talk) 23:19, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
Wow. That was quick! The wording of my proposal is as follows:
This links directly to the discussion of the style guides in Metrication in the United Kingdom. The relevant passage reads as follows:
That's what I propose. Any comments or concerns? Michael Glass ( talk) 23:55, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
But that's not what I proposed. I proposed a way of linking to all three of these style guides instead of choosing just one. Choosing the most conservative of the style guides and passing that off as representative is just as bad as selecting the most radical and trying to run with that. As I said, I was trying to do something more even-handed by referring to all three policies. So if there are problems in only linking to the most radical of the style guides and there are exactly the same problems in linking to the most conservative of them, as the policy does at the moment, then what is to be done?
I believe that the solution to this conundrum is either linking to all of these policies, or linking to none of them. It is the cherry-picking that is objectionable. Michael Glass ( talk) 07:34, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
That's easy to assert, but where is your evidence? When the style guides agree, that is certainly evidence that this is British usage. However, when the Times style guide is not the same as, for instance The Guardian, this is evidence that usage may be divided. At the moment what I see is several style guides that agree on certain things but differ on details, and I see editors picking the style guide that suits them best. Show me the evidence that your preference is more than cherry-picking. Michael Glass ( talk) 11:33, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
Pfainuk, you are not answering the question I asked. The style guides are united in saying that miles should be used and also that hectares should be used. The fact that you have even raised the question of miles versus kilometres is a straw man argument. I was discussing instances where the style guides differ, such as in the treatment of square miles versus square kilometres, and in whether feet and inches and stones and pounds should be used instead of metric measures (The Times) or whether metric measures should be used, with the older measures in parentheses (The Guardian). This is not about what you do with the scales in your bathroom, but how an editor may report on the area of Dorset or what an editor might do when Premier League gives the height of players in centimetres only [17]. If you follow the sources and The Guardian Style Guide you will get one answer, but if you follow the Times Style Guide you will get another.
So the question is not whether editors should follow your preferences or my preferences, but whether they should have the freedom to decide what to do when style guides are at variance. I state that they should have the freedom to decide these issues; you appear to be one on the side of compulsion.
So please stop using straw man arguments and ridiculous misrepresentations. I was asking you to provide evidence of usage in the areas where the style guides differ. If you cannot or will not do that then why should I take your assertions seriously? Michael Glass ( talk) 14:02, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
Pfainuk is right that there is a genuine split of usage when it comes to temperatures, and the same split in usage applies in other areas. That is what is causing an increasing gap between the sources and the style guide. It is British usage when an Englishman describes his height in feet and inches; it is also British usage when Premier League (and the BBC) describes the height of players in centimetres. Similarly, it is British usage both when the Times expresses a preference for square miles and when The Guardian expresses a preference for square kilometres and when both express a preference for hectares over acres. Usage is more divided than the anti-metricationists are willing to admit. Michael Glass ( talk) 22:58, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
Premier League uses metric units but so do the Premier League clubs of Fulham, Liverpool and Sunderland. Other teams provide information in Imperial units and yet others provide no such information. This demonstrates that British usage in written information is divided, and that's where it counts for Wikipedia documentation.
A rigid rule about British usage clashes with actual written usage, reasonable consistency and plain common sense. Follow a rigid rule and you get inconsistencies like this:
The rules of Wikipedia should not be set by the British Weights and Measures Society. If these are examples of what Pfainuk wants to inflict on editors more widely, Heaven help us! Michael Glass ( talk) 01:38, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
Regarding the original point by 81.100.22.178, I would say that I don't agree. This is the English Wikipedia, and our main pool of readers is going to be native English speakers, just as the main pool for the Russian Wikipedia is going to be native Russian speakers and so forth. People who speak English as a second language do of course use the English Wikipedia and are welcome and more than welcome. But people who choose to operate in English ought, to some extent, to recognize that in doing so they are entering into the English-speaking world, with all its idiosyncracies.
When I use the Russian Wikipedia, I certainly don't expect them to express distances in miles for my benefit. Even for articles dealing with the United States. Consequently, I think that it is perfectly acceptable for the English Wikipedia to use miles first when dealing with articles about France or anywhere else, let alone articles about Britain or the United States. Of course, template:convert or hand conversion should be used always, so I don't really see the problem. It doesn't much matter much if a value is described as "X meters (Y feet)" or "Y feet (X meters)". If this is all about which value goes "first", that is quibbling in my opinion. If it's a situation where only kilometers or only miles (or whatever) is given, I would would say that this should not be done, it is an error and should be fixed on sight, in my view, Herostratus ( talk) 07:25, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
Ohconfucius, I'm sorry you have taken offence because I described Imperial/customary units as the older units. It just so happens that they are - except for the Imperial pint and gallon. If I refer to the older units and you accuse me of implying that Imperial/customary units are historic and obsolete, isn't there more than a little straw in your argument? We agree that it is more important to have accurate information than whether it is expressed in metres or feet and inches. We agree on the need for conversions. We agree on respecting different varieties of English, including different preferences for weights and measures. In fact, I explicitly stated that a variety in usage would remain. All I am saying is that as a general rule, articles should follow the sources in their choice of which unit should come first. This is not a declaration of war against the pound weight. Ohconfucius, I'm afraid there is even more straw in your argument than there is swearing. Michael Glass ( talk) 22:30, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
Wee Curry Monster, I acknowledge and appreciate your politeness, and I believe that my response to you was equally polite. You have stated that my proposal would result in an inconsistent application of units. All I have asked is that you demonstrate this assertion with a concrete example. If you are not prepared to do that, so be it. There is nothing more to be said. By all means let the matter rest.
Pfainuk, I raised the idea of following the sources as a way of defusing arguments about which unit should be preferred. Following local sources is a good way of ascertaining what the local preferences really are. But let's say that I or someone else chooses sources on the ground of the units used. This is easily overturned when someone comes up with a better source. So a battle about which unit to use is changed into a struggle to find the best source of information for the article. It's a win-win situation.
The present proposal was one that was limited to areas where British style guides were at variance but this seems to have been lost on you. So let's leave it at that and not waste any more of each other's time. Michael Glass ( talk) 02:04, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
I understand your concern that 'source based' throws an additional layer of complication into the style area. However, another danger can be seen from the application of WP:FALKLANDSUNITS to the Falkland Island articles. Take West Falkland and Hummock Island. If the sources were followed the articles would be consistent and metric first. However, by following "Falklands Units" the articles are inconsistent in their use of units and partly inconsistent with the sources. The application of "Falklands Units" to Jason Islands had a far more serious result. Information about the length, width and height of several islands was cut from the article because of this clash.
"Falklands Units," rigidly applied, results in the very problems that are attributed to following the sources. No one has taken up my challenge to provide an example of where following the sources would cause problems. As no one else has backed up their assertions with concrete examples, further discussion is pointless. Michael Glass ( talk) 06:34, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
My responses to the above two postings:
Michael Glass ( talk) 12:23, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
The constant criticism is that my proposals would metricate Wikipedia by the back door. In answer to this I would just like to state the following points:
The question of which unit to use in UK related articles needs a flexibility in approach, not rigidity. UK usage about weights and measures varies. Dogmatism about which unit to use is out of place in such a context. Michael Glass ( talk) 14:55, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
As my closing remark to this discussion, I cite you a parallel: while dd mmm yyyy date format is by no means universally British – the mmm dd, yyyy format is used by some important British newspapers, the consensus is that British articles should universally use dd mmm yyyy, despite the sources. This is the Wikipedia Manual of Style, it may be influenced by other external style guidelines, but remains "ours". -- Ohconfucius ¡digame! 02:45, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
On the question of dd mmm yyyy versus mmm dd yyyy, this is a matter of style. 18 April is the same date as April 18. However, when it comes to units of measure there is the question of rounding errors. Though such errors are usually very small it is preferable not to make them. (I also hope that this will be my last remark in this discussion.) Michael Glass ( talk) 11:41, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
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