[WikiEN-l] Excessive units conversion?

Wed Nov 1 15:04:23 UTC 2006

> George Herbert wrote:
>
>> I just found this:
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truman_Capote#In Cold Blood
>>
>> Apparently some time ago, someone added a metric conversion (4 km^2)
>> to the term "1,000 acres" in the quoted New York Times article.
>>
>> That's a direct historical quote - is an in-line metric units
>> conversion appropriate within the quote?
>>
>> It seems to me like we shouldn't be doing that.
>>
> It's a questionable practice.  It is in square brackets to show that
> it's an addition, but I think a footnote would be better in this case.
> Why too is it in km^2 instead of hectares?

Because it's Bobblewik.

This particular editor is or has in the past been focussed on  
providing SI equivalents for almost everything that doesn't have  
them. I had a discussion with him on this particular point, because I  
feel strongly that "hectares" is what you might call the idiomatic  
metric conversion for "acres." Bobblewik is somewhat single-minded  
and determined, but always courteous, well-informed, intelligent, and  
willing to engage in discussion. I don't want to bother looking up  
what he said at the time, but I believe he cited chapter and verse  
for km^2 rather than hectares being the only true, proper, scientific  
SI unit.

Whether it's appropriate to stick strictly to best scientific  
practice in unscientific topic matter is not so clear.

I think I tried to find evidence that _lay_ European readers would be  
more comfortable with and more easily understand hectares than km^2  
and failed to find anything crushingly conclusive.

I think the square brackets are very important here. I really detest  
editors correcting spelling or grammatical "errors" in direct  
quotations. But Bobblewik is very punctilious about such things.

I agree that a footnote would be better, and I suspect Bobblewik  
wouldn't object to a footnote, nor object to the footnote including  
both km^2 and hectares... but I don't feel like bothering about this  
on an article that is not one that I work on actively.

I don't see any terrible harm in it the way it is. 