[Wikipedia-l] Metric v. English

Fri Jan 3 16:03:53 UTC 2003

Erik Moeller wrote:
> en.wikipedia.org is not us.wikpedia.org. I am not an American or even a
> native English speaker and I read the en.wikipedia a lot, for many different
> reasons. en certainly should accomodate US idiosyncracies, but not to the
> confusion of a more broadly defined target audience.

That's all completely correct.  en should accomodate local
idiosyncracies of any major population in contexts where confusion and
difficulties are likely.

> The right thing to do is to introduce Wiki syntax for formatting units, so
> that they can be converted on the fly. SI should be the default.

I don't agree that this is the right thing to do.  Automatic
conversion is a very bad idea in most cases.

The article that started this discussion is a case in point.  "Europe
added almost 23,000,000 km^2" or "Europe added almost 9,000,000 mi^2"
are both approximate statements.  An automatic conversion would give
an unwarranted impression of precision in this case.

It's easy enough for people from around the world to work together on
the articles to make sure that local idiosyncracies are observed,
_and_ that the degree of precision and grammatical context are
respected.

Never send a computer program to do a human's job.

--Jimbo