[WikiEN-l] Excessive units conversion?

Wed Nov 1 16:15:05 UTC 2006

On 11/1/06, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
> > 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.

When silly conversions are added, particularly when they mess up
quotes, and particularly when done by someone with a history of doing
this, I would simply revert them.  No amount of discussion seems to
make an impact in these sorts of situations.

Jay.