This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 25 | ← | Archive 29 | Archive 30 | Archive 31 | Archive 32 | Archive 33 | → | Archive 35 |
How are issues like these finally resolved? It appears there are 6 individuals contributing to this discussion. 3 who don't like the current MoS entry and would like to see something more international and 3 who prefer the status quo. That probably means that the vast majority of wikipedians don't care and will carry on doing their own thing. In that case, should this entry in the MoS just be deleted and we accept that there will be a variety of number styles used across wikipedia? The intro to the style guide says that wikipedians are not bound by the style guide. I, for one, will never use commas as thousands separators (nor as decimal separators in English, come to that), whatever the style guide says - to me it is just plain WRONG. And I suspect that Messrs Harmil, Nygaard and Mzajac will never use anything but UK/US format. Maybe an acceptance of diversity is what's needed? -- Yaf201 12:49, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
A related problem is that many of the standards-setters such as CGPM and ISO are lost in their own little world, so out of touch with the real world, that they make no effort to reach out to those who actually set the standards for the style used in newspapers, books, and the like.
Furthermore, they had so little clout in the early days of computing that, even though they prescribed an international symbol for ohms, until Unicode was introduced and became fairly well established, most of us had no convient way to make this symbol Ω on our computers. Sure, many web pages used clumsy kludges, such as using graphics files for this symbol (but though the other letters were scalable, those weren't, often making things look funny). Actually, it goes back even further than that; they didn't have much more clout with those making daisy wheels for typewriters, either.
Another related problem is that these organizations often charge outragous prices for their standards, ensuring that they won't be bought by anyone outside of their captive audience of those required to do so because various governments have adopted those standards as applicable to a particular activity. They aren't going to be purchased, or followed, by those with only a casual interest in the subject. Gene Nygaard 12:58, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
I can't comment on the connection of CPGM and ISO with reality. But it seems to me that we're not going to hit consensus on the number format issue. So why not look at this issue another way? Should the MoS be prescriptive or descriptive? Should it aim to clarify by imposing rules for us to follow or to clarify by providing explanations of what we have done? If the MoS itself says that contributors are not bound by its contents, then I think it should be the latter. The number section could just describe the various number formats that the reader is likely to encounter on wikipedia? -- Yaf201 13:13, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
Skatebiker 08:24, 15 October 2005 (UTC):
Then I have a completely different idea. For each user logged in one can set preferences like skin, timezone, etc. So why not number format ? As Wikipedia is virtually completely script driven on
PHP (therefore 'wikifies' the content which is edited by the user) it is therefore possible to 'wikify' numbers to the user's preferred number format as e.g. '''bold text''' 'wikifies' to bold text. Simple PHP
regular expressions functions like preg_replace()
do the job.
A number like 9,999,999,999.9999 will be 'translated' into the user's preferred format. But in numbers containing a single point or comma like 2,005 is may not work.
I suppose I open an old wound here, but I'm not going to search through 27 archives. Maybe there should (also) be a single index to all the archives. Anyway...
I'm abhorred. Wikipedia does not use a year zero? I know that that causes a problem with old dates because the Romans didn't yet know about the zero. But there have been more changes in dating, such as the change to the gregorian calendar, so why not take this next logical step. Surely, Wikipedia should prefer an ISO norm ( ISO_8601#Dates) over an illogical tradition. At 1st century someone even removed the reference to that 'alternative'. This is sort of like only using feet and removing all translations into meters. Actually, it's even worse, because one can work quite decently with other systems than the metric system, but leaving out the zero would make modern science impossible. Even the simplest basics wouldn't work anymore. The invention of the zero is one of the greatest leaps ahead in human knowledge.
Suppose some aliens would pass by Earth, have a look at that great encyclopedia they see we have and happen to first read the 1st century article. Surely, they'd have to conclude that, since we haven't invented the zero yet, we're not worth contacting. :) And it looks extra stupid comsidering the table at the bottom. It looks like we have a great big gaping hole in our decimal system. How is it we have a '0' in our system but don't use it as a separate number? DirkvdM 05:45, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
Generally speaking, I like ISO standards, because they discourage us from believing that the way we do things is the way the rest of the world does them. I certainly have fallen foul of the American date format, missing a teleconference because i thought it had been scheduled for 5/6, which I read as 5th June not May 6. ISO 8601 is one way of avoiding that and current Wikipedia style of using month names is another. I'm happy with either.
Logically there should be a year zero, but I doubt little confusion actually arises because wikipedia doesn't use it. Maybe the wikipedia style guide should allow the use of any calendar eg, Gregorian, Julian, Jewish, Islamic etc as long as the ISO date is also given? Having said that, I personally don't like the fact that the ISO date is based on the Gregorian calendar - maybe it could have had a more culturally neutral basis? But I suppose we're stuck with it -- Yaf201 09:23, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
Agreed it is just normal logic that a year 0 does exist as the natural number 0 does exist. Skatebiker 09:27, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
About using the gregorian calender as a basis; you have to pick one and a neutral one would have been one that no-one uses, which would be 'politically correct' but impractical. Now at least several hundred million people (?) don't have to change what they're used to. I'm afraid that using year 0 as a Wikirule is not going to happen because there will be too much opposition. But deleting a reference to it at 1st century certainly won't do, so I'll go and change it back. To change the text on this project page I'd like to have a little more consensus first, though, so I'll first wait for any further reactions. DirkvdM 18:26, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
Someone just changed "a 100-millimetre (4-in) pipe for 10 miles (16 km)" to "a 100 millimetre (4 in) pipe for 10 miles (16 km)". I was taught that compound adjectives are hyphenated: "4 in" means "four inches", "4-in" means "four-inch". Which is correct? — Michael Z. 2005-10-20 18:44 Z
I can't comment on the inches and miles, but I'd expect "a 100 mm pipe for 16 km" to see millimetres and kilometres written in full looks strange to me and the hyphen looks decidedly wrong. I don't know of any rules for this, that's just how it looks to me. 192.85.50.1 12:32, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
Ahem. The text was discussed many times before it went in the Manual without a hyphen. Then a hyphen was added without discussion on 20:44, 14 September 2005. Thus whoever changed it back was actually correcting an undiscussed change in style. Just look at the history.
We discussed the hyphen several times. We also looked at what is said in other styleguides. There is currently no Wikipedia policy. Anyone that would like to create a Wikipedia policy should read the previous discussions. Please look in the recent archives of this talk page. Bobblewik 17:32, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
Yup, B., I remember putting that hyphen in, with an edit summary explaining why I thought it was correct. I vaguely remember some related discussion, but not the details—couldn't find it when I looked, and perhaps I'm remembering something else.
The example cited was placed to demonstrate the use of units in running text vs. tables, and notation of source units vs. converted units. It's confusing because the two examples of measurements are used one as an adjective and the other as a noun, but there was no indication that this was meant to be a guide for those two different uses, or that that was even considered. I thought it hadn't been, and explicitly made an annotated change that attempted to resolve this. Editors' usage is all over the place, now there's a revert war which has finally removed the distinction instead of explicating it.
If there's no policy regarding this question, then how can you say am I creating new policy by changing what's there? By this reasoning, wasn't whoever originally wrote it the other way guilty of creating a new policy without agreement?
Guess I'm just a big dope. When I have some time on my hands, I may delve into the talk archive and see if I can find the discussion you're alluding to. But since it was inconclusive, I think I'll just keep it simple and discuss the pertinent facts here now.
Wayward's suggestion looks pretty good to me. I would add that in a tank history article where it appears many times, a contraction of the space like "100mm gun" reads quite smoothly, but "100 mm gun" seems awkward to me every single time. I start reading "hundred millimetres gun", oh, oops; "hundred-millimetre gun". I've also tried out pedantically sticking to hyphenating adjectives, but "100-mm gun" doesn't look so hot either.
I'd like to agree on a set of acceptable guidelines, because it's difficult enough to read an article with dozens of letter-and-number fragments, like "the Pzkw-IV with its 88, and T-34-85 tanks of 1943 with 76.2mm guns and 60 mm of armour," etc. etc., having to read three different notation formats. It's time-consuming and difficult just to determine what is already in use in a long article like this before editing, and usually there are two, three, or more inconsistent formats already there, some merely differing in style, and some definitely incorrect. — Michael Z. 2005-10-25 05:09 Z
Here is feedback to some of the excellent questions raised by Michael Z. Adjectival unit symbols are never hyphenated (100 mm pipe). This rule is specified in NIST SP811, Sect. 7.2.b; SAE TSB-003, Sect. C.1.17.12; etc. As such, it is consistent and therefore more logical to also not hyphenate noncompound adjectival, spelled-out unit names (100 millimetre pipe). Secondly, the space between a numeric value and its following unit symbol is never omitted (regardless of whether it's in adjectival use or not). This rule is specified in ISO 1000, Sect. 6.1; ISO 31-0, Sect. 3.4; NIST SP811, Sect. 7.2; SAE TSB-003, Sect. 7.3.10; ASTM SI-10, Sect. 3.5.1.e, etc. -- Simian, 2005-10-31, 20:20 Z
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 25 | ← | Archive 29 | Archive 30 | Archive 31 | Archive 32 | Archive 33 | → | Archive 35 |
How are issues like these finally resolved? It appears there are 6 individuals contributing to this discussion. 3 who don't like the current MoS entry and would like to see something more international and 3 who prefer the status quo. That probably means that the vast majority of wikipedians don't care and will carry on doing their own thing. In that case, should this entry in the MoS just be deleted and we accept that there will be a variety of number styles used across wikipedia? The intro to the style guide says that wikipedians are not bound by the style guide. I, for one, will never use commas as thousands separators (nor as decimal separators in English, come to that), whatever the style guide says - to me it is just plain WRONG. And I suspect that Messrs Harmil, Nygaard and Mzajac will never use anything but UK/US format. Maybe an acceptance of diversity is what's needed? -- Yaf201 12:49, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
A related problem is that many of the standards-setters such as CGPM and ISO are lost in their own little world, so out of touch with the real world, that they make no effort to reach out to those who actually set the standards for the style used in newspapers, books, and the like.
Furthermore, they had so little clout in the early days of computing that, even though they prescribed an international symbol for ohms, until Unicode was introduced and became fairly well established, most of us had no convient way to make this symbol Ω on our computers. Sure, many web pages used clumsy kludges, such as using graphics files for this symbol (but though the other letters were scalable, those weren't, often making things look funny). Actually, it goes back even further than that; they didn't have much more clout with those making daisy wheels for typewriters, either.
Another related problem is that these organizations often charge outragous prices for their standards, ensuring that they won't be bought by anyone outside of their captive audience of those required to do so because various governments have adopted those standards as applicable to a particular activity. They aren't going to be purchased, or followed, by those with only a casual interest in the subject. Gene Nygaard 12:58, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
I can't comment on the connection of CPGM and ISO with reality. But it seems to me that we're not going to hit consensus on the number format issue. So why not look at this issue another way? Should the MoS be prescriptive or descriptive? Should it aim to clarify by imposing rules for us to follow or to clarify by providing explanations of what we have done? If the MoS itself says that contributors are not bound by its contents, then I think it should be the latter. The number section could just describe the various number formats that the reader is likely to encounter on wikipedia? -- Yaf201 13:13, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
Skatebiker 08:24, 15 October 2005 (UTC):
Then I have a completely different idea. For each user logged in one can set preferences like skin, timezone, etc. So why not number format ? As Wikipedia is virtually completely script driven on
PHP (therefore 'wikifies' the content which is edited by the user) it is therefore possible to 'wikify' numbers to the user's preferred number format as e.g. '''bold text''' 'wikifies' to bold text. Simple PHP
regular expressions functions like preg_replace()
do the job.
A number like 9,999,999,999.9999 will be 'translated' into the user's preferred format. But in numbers containing a single point or comma like 2,005 is may not work.
I suppose I open an old wound here, but I'm not going to search through 27 archives. Maybe there should (also) be a single index to all the archives. Anyway...
I'm abhorred. Wikipedia does not use a year zero? I know that that causes a problem with old dates because the Romans didn't yet know about the zero. But there have been more changes in dating, such as the change to the gregorian calendar, so why not take this next logical step. Surely, Wikipedia should prefer an ISO norm ( ISO_8601#Dates) over an illogical tradition. At 1st century someone even removed the reference to that 'alternative'. This is sort of like only using feet and removing all translations into meters. Actually, it's even worse, because one can work quite decently with other systems than the metric system, but leaving out the zero would make modern science impossible. Even the simplest basics wouldn't work anymore. The invention of the zero is one of the greatest leaps ahead in human knowledge.
Suppose some aliens would pass by Earth, have a look at that great encyclopedia they see we have and happen to first read the 1st century article. Surely, they'd have to conclude that, since we haven't invented the zero yet, we're not worth contacting. :) And it looks extra stupid comsidering the table at the bottom. It looks like we have a great big gaping hole in our decimal system. How is it we have a '0' in our system but don't use it as a separate number? DirkvdM 05:45, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
Generally speaking, I like ISO standards, because they discourage us from believing that the way we do things is the way the rest of the world does them. I certainly have fallen foul of the American date format, missing a teleconference because i thought it had been scheduled for 5/6, which I read as 5th June not May 6. ISO 8601 is one way of avoiding that and current Wikipedia style of using month names is another. I'm happy with either.
Logically there should be a year zero, but I doubt little confusion actually arises because wikipedia doesn't use it. Maybe the wikipedia style guide should allow the use of any calendar eg, Gregorian, Julian, Jewish, Islamic etc as long as the ISO date is also given? Having said that, I personally don't like the fact that the ISO date is based on the Gregorian calendar - maybe it could have had a more culturally neutral basis? But I suppose we're stuck with it -- Yaf201 09:23, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
Agreed it is just normal logic that a year 0 does exist as the natural number 0 does exist. Skatebiker 09:27, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
About using the gregorian calender as a basis; you have to pick one and a neutral one would have been one that no-one uses, which would be 'politically correct' but impractical. Now at least several hundred million people (?) don't have to change what they're used to. I'm afraid that using year 0 as a Wikirule is not going to happen because there will be too much opposition. But deleting a reference to it at 1st century certainly won't do, so I'll go and change it back. To change the text on this project page I'd like to have a little more consensus first, though, so I'll first wait for any further reactions. DirkvdM 18:26, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
Someone just changed "a 100-millimetre (4-in) pipe for 10 miles (16 km)" to "a 100 millimetre (4 in) pipe for 10 miles (16 km)". I was taught that compound adjectives are hyphenated: "4 in" means "four inches", "4-in" means "four-inch". Which is correct? — Michael Z. 2005-10-20 18:44 Z
I can't comment on the inches and miles, but I'd expect "a 100 mm pipe for 16 km" to see millimetres and kilometres written in full looks strange to me and the hyphen looks decidedly wrong. I don't know of any rules for this, that's just how it looks to me. 192.85.50.1 12:32, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
Ahem. The text was discussed many times before it went in the Manual without a hyphen. Then a hyphen was added without discussion on 20:44, 14 September 2005. Thus whoever changed it back was actually correcting an undiscussed change in style. Just look at the history.
We discussed the hyphen several times. We also looked at what is said in other styleguides. There is currently no Wikipedia policy. Anyone that would like to create a Wikipedia policy should read the previous discussions. Please look in the recent archives of this talk page. Bobblewik 17:32, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
Yup, B., I remember putting that hyphen in, with an edit summary explaining why I thought it was correct. I vaguely remember some related discussion, but not the details—couldn't find it when I looked, and perhaps I'm remembering something else.
The example cited was placed to demonstrate the use of units in running text vs. tables, and notation of source units vs. converted units. It's confusing because the two examples of measurements are used one as an adjective and the other as a noun, but there was no indication that this was meant to be a guide for those two different uses, or that that was even considered. I thought it hadn't been, and explicitly made an annotated change that attempted to resolve this. Editors' usage is all over the place, now there's a revert war which has finally removed the distinction instead of explicating it.
If there's no policy regarding this question, then how can you say am I creating new policy by changing what's there? By this reasoning, wasn't whoever originally wrote it the other way guilty of creating a new policy without agreement?
Guess I'm just a big dope. When I have some time on my hands, I may delve into the talk archive and see if I can find the discussion you're alluding to. But since it was inconclusive, I think I'll just keep it simple and discuss the pertinent facts here now.
Wayward's suggestion looks pretty good to me. I would add that in a tank history article where it appears many times, a contraction of the space like "100mm gun" reads quite smoothly, but "100 mm gun" seems awkward to me every single time. I start reading "hundred millimetres gun", oh, oops; "hundred-millimetre gun". I've also tried out pedantically sticking to hyphenating adjectives, but "100-mm gun" doesn't look so hot either.
I'd like to agree on a set of acceptable guidelines, because it's difficult enough to read an article with dozens of letter-and-number fragments, like "the Pzkw-IV with its 88, and T-34-85 tanks of 1943 with 76.2mm guns and 60 mm of armour," etc. etc., having to read three different notation formats. It's time-consuming and difficult just to determine what is already in use in a long article like this before editing, and usually there are two, three, or more inconsistent formats already there, some merely differing in style, and some definitely incorrect. — Michael Z. 2005-10-25 05:09 Z
Here is feedback to some of the excellent questions raised by Michael Z. Adjectival unit symbols are never hyphenated (100 mm pipe). This rule is specified in NIST SP811, Sect. 7.2.b; SAE TSB-003, Sect. C.1.17.12; etc. As such, it is consistent and therefore more logical to also not hyphenate noncompound adjectival, spelled-out unit names (100 millimetre pipe). Secondly, the space between a numeric value and its following unit symbol is never omitted (regardless of whether it's in adjectival use or not). This rule is specified in ISO 1000, Sect. 6.1; ISO 31-0, Sect. 3.4; NIST SP811, Sect. 7.2; SAE TSB-003, Sect. 7.3.10; ASTM SI-10, Sect. 3.5.1.e, etc. -- Simian, 2005-10-31, 20:20 Z