[Wikipedia-l] Metric v. English

Fri Jan 3 16:17:32 UTC 2003

Erik Moeller wrote:

>>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.
>>    
>>
>
>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.
>
I tend to agree with that :-)

>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.
>
How about extending the variables?
{{10|m2}} would be 10 square meters
{{50|ft}} would be 50 feet
etc.

Display would be dependent on
* which wikipedia you're using: de has only metric units, en shows 
metric with us (like this)
* can be overridden by a user option

Should be easy to implement.

Magnus