User talk:Bobblewik

ISO 31 and commas

I have a question for you. ISO 31 mandates spaces as digit grouping symbols for SI units but the Wikipedia manual of style mandates commas. My resolution of this conflict is to use spaces for SI units but commas elsewhere. Is this acceptable? What do others do? It seems to me unacceptable to use commas in SI units. That way you would have a Wikipedia variant of an international standard, which is exactly what you're not supposed to do with an international standard, otherwise it's not a standard. What's your opinion? Blaise 14:06, 19 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am aware of the space versus comma inconsistency and the ISO guidance. I am also aware that the comma is worse because it is a decimal indicator in much of the world. If Wikipedia were to mandate spaces, I would welcome it. But I don't think it is likely and I don't think you will get very far in persuading others to accept it (unfortunately). I use the comma by default just to avoid debating the issue with non-believers. I don't generally convert from space to comma when I see it.

In summary, my opinion is that in terms of simplicity/winnability, it ranks lower than other issues. Please try using the unit formatting tool that I mentioned. I will help you get it going. bobblewik 14:29, 19 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am not unwilling to use it, but I am baffled by your instructions. What's a monobook? You mention my having a monobook, but Opera Help Search lists no such term. (My browser is Opera.) Is it a browser thing or a Wiki thing? If you point me at somewhere I can read about it I'll do so. Regards, Blaise 21:59, 23 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The monobook allows you to run commands. You have not created yours yet.

Just copy the entire User:Bobblewik/monobook.js to User:BlaiseFEgan/monobook.js. Save it. Press F5 to clear your cache.

When you next edit a page, you will see the 'units' tab. You can test it on User:Bobblewik/sandbox

Regards bobblewik 06:24, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It works great! Thanks. The only thing I would change is the symbol for the litre. As you probably know, both the lower case and the upper case L are allowed, but the US prefers the upper case L, for the very good reason that it avoids any confusion with the number 1. I agree with that reasoning. But that's just me being picky :). Thanks. I'll keep using it. Blaise 19:31, 29 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Can you give me an example edit? bobblewik 19:40, 29 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I used it on photography and digital camera. Blaise 09:20, 31 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks but I meant an example edit relating to your comment about the litre symbol. bobblewik 18:26, 31 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Er, I've been looking over my past edits and I can't find an example. Sorry! :) Blaise 15:19, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK. So how are you getting on with the tab functions? bobblewik 15:30, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am using it. I use it first of all, and then I tweak a few things by hand. It's very helpful. Thanks. Blaise 11:26, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You are welcome. If you want, you can try the dates tab. You can use google to search for unit errors. For example:

site:en.wikipedia.org -user -talk kms
site:en.wikipedia.org -user -talk lbs

You can also try on other wikipedias (but you may need to set up an account):

site:fr.wikipedia.org -user -talk kms

Keep up the good work. bobblewik 11:40, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

ft/lbf

I note a change from ft/lbs (foot pounds) in my Daimler Conquest article. I have no doubt that myself and many other car enthusiasts have never heard of ft/lbf. According to Google it is a US measurement, and isn't a Conquest a British car? Unless you can show that it is somehow Wikipedia policy that car articles are to conform to this measurement standard, I would like to revert it. As far as I am concerned, it makes it look like I cannot spell. (Unsigned comment by User:Seasalt)

Thanks for the feedback. You may wish to look at:

Feel free to comment in their talk pages.

I use a 'unitformatter' tool. If you would like to use it, let me know.

Incidentally, the '/' symbol is misleading because it looks like division. The article looks great otherwise, keep up the good work. bobblewik 10:40, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have difficulties with an American system of notation being imposed that is not used in the automotive industry, and was not used for those vehicles. The talk pages look useless. One would never be heard above the typewriting of others thoughts. (Sheer volume of discussion) Have already searched those pages, and see no discussion whatsoever of adopting ft whatever lbf, just a declaration that that it is the standard. I know not entirely why it bothers me that much but it does. I am not going to bother bleating about it on the talk pages, as I suspect no one there would be bothered about such a detail. Pedantic scientific notation enforcement outside of scientific documentation is a deterrent to an antipodean automotive notation convention pedant. Seasalt 11:21, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You sound frustrated. Make it easy for yourself. Just copy this discussion to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers).

bobblewik 11:48, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That page says it is already too big, and may be cut off in some browsers. Seasalt 12:05, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. I assume that means you did not try. I am disappointed because it sounds like you had something interesting to say about the guidelines.

If you want to try, then go ahead. If you don't, then that is fine too. Either way, keep up the good work improving Wikipedia. bobblewik 12:18, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I only leave the four tildes off if too hasty. I was wrong. I learnt something. I accept all lbf. OK please tell me how do i obtain/use a 'unitformatter' tool? (converted wants converter....)

Seasalt 11:33, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You expressed your view and engaged well in the debate. To get my tool working:

1. Copy User:Bobblewik/monobook.js to User:Seasalt/monobook.js.

2. If you use Firefox press Ctrl-Shift-R. If you use Internet Explorer press Ctrl-F5.

3. Go to an article such as Royal Enfield and select the 'Edit' tab as usual. When it appears in edit mode, you will see new tabs marked 'units' and 'dates'. Press the 'units' tab and accept or cancel the changes.

4. Let me know how you get on.

bobblewik 17:44, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Only one question: do I need to substitute user seasalt in the code for user bobblewick? Seasalt 02:09, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I see I don't. It works.Seasalt 02:32, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Congratulations on getting it working. I welcome feedback about how the tabs work for you. bobblewik 08:05, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Infobox City

Presumably, your automated script made this change to Template:Infobox City. Why did it unlink metre? --MattWright (talk) 16:57, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I responded in the article talk page. bobblewik 19:45, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hectares

Bobblewik, hectares are the usual unit of area in agriculture, city planning, etc., in most of the world. No, they are not SI units, and no, they are not used in theoretical physics. But I think you will find if you look at the relevant technical literature that they are more widely used than km2 in those areas. For example, go to [scholar.google.com Google Scholar] and query on some agricultural term (say maize) and look for "square kilometer | km2 | "km 2" vs. "hectare" (not even including ha). You will see immediately that hectares are widely used, more than square kilometers. Same thing for city planning, etc. Please stop trying to impose SI where it is in fact not used in practice. --Macrakis 23:12, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I know that they are familiar to many people in agriculture and city planning. However Wikipedia is not an in-house publication for farmers and city planners. Furthermore, square kilometres are also used and familiar to those in agriculture and city planning so are certainly a valid unit for those purposes. Wikipedia is inconsistent in describing areas as sometimes '100 hectares' and sometimes '1 square kilometre' and I am trying to reduce inconsistency in many unit presentations. This will aid ordinary non-specialist Wikipedia readers.

Ordinary people find hectares more difficult to understand than square kilometres. If '1 square kilometre' is familiar *and* understandable for the reader and specialist alike, there is no benefit in using '100 hectares' when that is less good for the reader. Consider the following 'understandability' test for ordinary Wikipedia readers:

Area-to-value test: Ask somebody to look at an area of land from on top of a hill and tell you how many hectares it is. Try the same with square kilometres.
Value-to-area test: Give somebody a value in hectares and ask somebody to point out an area of land of that size from on top of a hill. Try the same with square kilometres.

Thanks for your feedback. Regards bobblewik 06:43, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was mentioning the technical usage of 'hectare' because replacing it with square meters or square kilometers is a pedantic, technical approach to the issue; so I was countering with the technical usage. As far as common usage goes, 'hectare' wins hands down over square meters or square kilometers for things like the area of fields, of cities, of lakes, etc. Your archive page is full of evidence for this. You are running a one-person crusade. Wikipedia is not the place to do that. If you want to convince people to use square meters and square kilometers rather than hectares, first do it in the real world, and then change Wikipedia. --Macrakis 13:21, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I know that hectares are familiar to many people working in certain domains. Your position appears to be that Wikipedia should match domain usage. My position is that Wikipedia should be easy to understand.

What do you think would happen if ordinary readers did the Area-to-value test and Value-to-area test?

bobblewik 18:58, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We agree that hectares are familiar to people working in certain domains. So the question becomes: are they familiar to the public at large (outside the US, of course, where the metric system isn't widely used). I would claim yes, and that indeed hectares are easier to understand than m2 or km2.

If ordinary readers did the area-to-value test, I think they would fail regardless of the units. On the other hand, if you asked them how big the local park was, I think they'd be far more likely to know in hectares than in m2 or km2.

Finally, as a matter of WP etiquette, it seems to me that your talk page demonstrates amply that many users object to changing hectares to m2 or km2. Your reply "well, change it back in that case" is unconstructive. If you feel that hectares should be eliminated from the WP, run a survey of some kind and get support for your position. --Macrakis 19:54, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You say people would fail regardless of the units. That avoids the answer. The question was which is worse. Can 100 ordinary people estimate 100 or 200 hectares better than they can estimate 1 or 2 square kilometres?

Your park example is not a test of understanding, or a test of bidirectional ability to estimate areas. It merely tests the ability to read, remember, and speak.

bobblewik 20:15, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Although hectares are not strictly an SI unit, they are officially accepted to be used with the SI for an unlimited time. As some Google scans can easily demonstrate, hectares are the common unit for expressing land areas (outside the USA) in agriculture and city planning (more common than square kilometres). So hectares should stay and not be replaced by other units. Although I generally appreciate the work done by Bobblewik, in this case I need to disagree. −Woodstone 20:27, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the respect, it is mutual. I know of their status with the BIPM. I agree that hectares are used agriculture and city planning. If Wikipedia were a specialist publication for agriculture and city planning then I would also agree that hectares would be entirely appropriate. But Wikipedia is for non-specialists. Understandability for non-specialists ranks higher than domain convention. What do you think of the understandability argument and the two tests, Woodstone? bobblewik 20:38, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You would need a fairly high hilltop to be able to actually see a square kilometre, whereas if you are on the ground, you can easily oversee one hectare. Think of it as a football field (nominal about 0.75 ha, within stands about 1 ha). It's also not too far away from what is often colloquially called a "city block". In short, I do not really think a km² is easier to envisage than a ha. −Woodstone 21:04, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I tend to agree more with Bobblewik, and I think you're missing his point. The fact that you're trying to give him an easy way to visualize a hectare is kind of proof of his point: it's common for people to have no idea how big one is. Though there's no doubt that the hectare is the most common unit in certain fields, a wider range of people understand square kilometers. Everyone who knows what a hectare is also knows what a square kilometer is, while many people who are familiar with square kilometers have no idea how big a hectare is. TomTheHand 21:11, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That last point is a very dangerous reasoning. Would it not plead for using inches throughout? Almost everyone who knows how big a cm is, would also know the size of an inch. Whereas quite many people familiar with inches, have no clue about centimetres. I do not think that those people who do not know hectares have a clear view on a square km. It may sound more familiar, but does it evoke a clear mental image? Sticking to commonly used and published measures is more useful. And do not forget the educational value. −Woodstone 21:33, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I wish that Bobblewik would spend some time actually writing articles, instead of continually ressurrecting the same battles over units. This is at least the fourth time this has come up. Hectares are a widely used measure - there is no reason not to use them here as well -especially when they are the units in the original sources. Rmhermen 22:00, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Canolfan Tryweryn

I noticed that you have been involved in creating the Afon Tryweryn article, and would like to inform you that I intend to merge the article with my newly created Canolfan Tryweryn article, unless you have any objections. DevAnubis 12:48, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please post replies in the Talk:Afon Tryweryn page, to save me having to search through all the user's talk pages to find any suggestions. DevAnubis 12:57, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Pennsylvania

Why unlink the units of length? ClairSamoht - Help make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world 12:14, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for raising this. Please join in the discussion on this topic at: Do_we_need_to_link_really_common_units_in_each_article.

bobblewik 13:23, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

List of historic fires

Regarding your recent edit to the list of historic fires [1], you have removed a lot of the square brackets and broken some links as a result. I think I managed to fix it, but as it appears to be a script-assisted edit with a bug in the script, I thought you might want to know? Hemmingsen 15:43, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yikes. I did use a script and it worked correctly. It is designed to be conservative so it left some details unedited. It was the human (me) that thought I knew better. Mea culpa, my mistake.

I went a step further and copied it over to MS Word. Then I did a global search and replace. But as you saw, I made some errors and did not notice them because I was too busy concentrating on hyphens and dashes. Thanks for fixing the error and bringing it to my attention. I appreciate it. bobblewik 17:09, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Date links

Good work removing date links where they do not apply. Keep it up! HighInBC 17:39, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! One positive comment like that is worth a thousand negatives. If you want to use my tool that does it in one click (it only goes as far as preview, you have to then click save), try this:

1. Copy User:Bobblewik/monobook.js to the bottom of User:HighInBC/monobook.js.

2. If you use Firefox press Ctrl-Shift-R. If you use Internet Explorer press Ctrl-F5.

3. Go to an article and select the 'Edit' tab as usual. When it appears in edit mode, you will see new tabs marked 'units' and 'dates'. Press the 'dates' tab and accept or cancel the changes.

Regards bobblewik 17:46, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I may look into that. HighInBC 18:47, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mistake

Discussion moved to Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)#Units_in_unremarkable_quotes

Move of 16"/50

I'm not sure that I agree with your move of 16"/50. The article was placed there because the official designation of the gun is the 16"/50 Mark 7; the move places it at an artificial construct of a name. Of course metric measurements should be given in the article, but the article title should be the gun's proper name, not a description of it. 16"/50 Mark 7 naval gun might work better, or a name which works the nationality in: United States 16"/50 Mark 7 naval gun, perhaps? Another example of an article named after the weapon's proper name is 40 cm/45 Type 94. Graeme Leggett noted that the title should probably include nationality and "naval gun", and I agree, but I believe using the gun's official name is important. If we applied your scheme, we'd have 460 mm (18.1 inch)/45 caliber Type 94 naval gun, which is a completely artificial construct that does not reflect the gun's actual name. TomTheHand 14:35, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK. I was not sure which name to use. I did look around online and within Wikipedia for some convention but did not find anything definitive. You make some good points, I also note [2], which makes me think of other issues. I am open to several options.

I would like to consider this in detail with you but I have to dash. Talk later. bobblewik 14:44, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, eager to hear from you later. TomTheHand 14:54, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have done some research. There is a lot of inconsistency out there. The 'name of gun' reasoning is valid but does always apply when it comes to units. It seems that where a name includes a unit of measurement, people frequently make understandable format variations related to that unit. For example, e.g. the same weapon may be described as 'fifty-cal' and 'half-inch'.

In text, the double quote (") for inch is clearly common when associated with the calibre, although the term 'inch' is frequently used when the caliber is absent (as in 'the 4.5 inch gun'). The term 'inch' is often used in speech. The abbreviation 'in' is also routinely used in text although probably never in speech. I also see that 'caliber' (US) and 'calibre' (UK etc) are sometimes given in full, sometimes abbreviated as 'cal', and sometimes absent.

I am persuaded by your 'name of gun' reasoning that conversions between non-metric and metric are not required unless it is part of the name. So that makes it simpler. Although I am only talking about article names here. Within the article, the millimetre values are needed for reader comprehension and for comparison with ships of other navies.

I think I prefer '16 in' and/or '16 inch' rather than '16"'. I am not sure what to think about '50' but it always seemed odd to me to have a number without a unit. If we used '50 cal', then that would mean we would not have to worry about US and UK spellings for the same thing. That would give me a preference for '16 inch/50 cal' or '16 in/50 cal'. However, I will back down if you insist that '16"/50' is how it should be. :(

Ratios don't have units. The 50 refers to the ratio of barrel length to bore diameter, which is the naval definition of "caliber". The guns in question are referred to as 16"/50 caliber at times. The .50 caliber heavy machine gun uses the other definition of caliber, meaning barrel bore inside diameter. In older US Army manuals, caliber implied the diameter in inches (e.g. TM 9-1005-211-34 Direct and General Support Maintenance Manual - Pistol, Caliber .45, Automatic, M1911A1).--J Clear 22:47, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would welcome it if you took this discussion to another talk page (Manual of Style or Ships project?) where some other people could discuss it. My initial reason for moving the pages is that I saw inconsistency. Furthermore, I have started work on a new monobook tool (User:Bobblewik/monobook.js/general.js) to tidy up the *huge* inconsistency within articles. I would welcome input from others. bobblewik 19:48, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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