[Wikipedia-l] Metric v. English

Fri Jan 3 14:47:06 UTC 2003

Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Magnus Manske wrote:
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>>As a scientist, I have to insist that the metric system is to be the 
>>main system used on Wikipedia! (Of course, feel free to mention 
>>miles&co. somewhere too;-)
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>>
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>I have no opposition to including the metric system, and especially in
>scientific articles.  But in many articles, Americans will have a hard
>time understanding unless English equivalents are given.
>
The [[Orders of Magnitude]] group of pages should help with this -- 
wherever units are given they should link to one of the "chain pages" 
that give comparisons & conversions.

Besides, the metric system is really not hard to grasp. There's one 
basic unit for each type of measurement that can be used for anything. 
and the same multipying prefixes apply to all units.

>
>So, I would say that in cases where Americans expect to see miles and
>gallons, we should give both miles/kilometers and gallons/liters.
>
The problem is that most US / Imperial units are ambiguous:
there are two gallons -- see http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallon
there are 3 miles.

Furthermore, the units aren't consistently applied -- different units 
for different circumstances of the same measurement.
I found articles on water reservoirs that gave capacity in something 
bizarre I can't remember (YARD-FEET or something).
Then you have *dry* measures of volume, barrels for oil & so on.

There is a very good reason why countries across the world have adopted 
the SI system. It's simpler, and if everybody uses the same system we 
don't get problems like this.

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