Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 13:30, 21 September 2013

The contentious topics procedure applies to this page. This page is related to the English Misplaced Pages article titles policy and Manual of Style, which has been designated as a contentious topic. Editors who repeatedly or seriously fail to adhere to the purpose of Misplaced Pages, any expected standards of behaviour, or any normal editorial process may be blocked or restricted by an administrator. Editors are advised to familiarise themselves with the contentious topics procedures before editing this page.

Manual of Style

This page falls within the scope of the Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style, a collaborative effort focused on enhancing clarity, consistency, and cohesiveness across the Manual of Style (MoS) guidelines by addressing inconsistencies, refining language, and integrating guidance effectively.Manual of StyleWikipedia:WikiProject Manual of StyleTemplate:WikiProject Manual of StyleManual of Style This page falls under the contentious topics procedure and is given additional attention, as it closely associated to the English Misplaced Pages Manual of Style, and the article titles policy. Both areas are subjects of debate. Contributors are urged to review the awareness criteria carefully and exercise caution when editing. For information on Misplaced Pages's approach to the establishment of new policies and guidelines, refer to WP:PROPOSAL. Additionally, guidance on how to contribute to the development and revision of Misplaced Pages policies of Misplaced Pages's policy and guideline documents is available, offering valuable insights and recommendations.

Archives

General 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, vote, 6, 7, 8, 9 (AD/CE), 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 14a, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 49a, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161 Binary prefixes B0, B1, B2, B3, B4, B5, B6, B7, B8, B9, B10, B11, B12, B13, B14, B15, B16, B17 Years and dates D1, D2, D3, D4, D5, D6, D7, D8, D9, D10, D11, D12, D13, D14 See also Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Dates Misplaced Pages talk:Date debate Misplaced Pages talk:Naming conventions (calendar dates) Misplaced Pages talk:Timeline standards Misplaced Pages:Measurements Debate Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)/Date autoformatting Complete rewrite of Units of Measurements (June 2008) Dec. 2008 RfC on Date linking/autoformatting (three proposals) Dec. 2008 RfC on Date linking/autoformatting (detailed)

This page has archives. Sections older than 20 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 3 sections are present.

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Manual of Style/Dates and numbers page.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic. New to Misplaced Pages? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help. Assume good faith Be polite and avoid personal attacks Be welcoming to newcomers Seek dispute resolution if needed

Archives: Index, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163Auto-archiving period: 20 days

Imperial measurements

why are we still using archaic empiric measurements? only US and Burma are using them. How is it justified? thx 50.9.97.53 (talk) 21:15, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

You mean "imperial" units, although some US units are different (e.g. gallons). The answer is because the US uses them and the US has by the far the largest number of native English speakers, so of course the English Misplaced Pages should provide both systems of measurement. By the way, the UK still uses miles. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:44, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

see CIA factbook: only US, Burma and Liberia are officially using them. Is there any source for your claim? some statistics?

India would be the largest native English speaking country 50.9.97.53 (talk) 22:24, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

What proportion of Indians have English as their mother tongue? Peter coxhead (talk) 22:37, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

According to List of countries by English-speaking population, a little over 10%. India has about 125 million English speakers, compared to US at about 267 million. No other country comes close as far as total English speaking population. --RacerX Talk to me 23:24, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

And the additional figure has only 226,449 Indians with English "as first language". Is that the same thing as "native English speakers"? If that's the criteria then it appears the majority of native English speaking people use imperial units. --RacerX Talk to me 23:40, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

your explanation of statistics has some serious flaws. India, unlike US, has English as one of the two official languages.

We are referring to internet users only. there is about 250 000 internet users in US.that is not majority of English speaking users worldwide. Also keep in mind that you dont have to be "native " English speaking to use wiki in English language 50.9.97.53 (talk) 23:55, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

250,000 internet users in US?? Where on Earth did you get that figure from? Try more like 200,000,000+. --RacerX Talk to me 00:07, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

sorry I clearly missed some zeroes. it is, of course estimated 250 million internet users (2012). 50.9.97.53 (talk) 14:38, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Also using internet users only isn't going to help you much I'm afraid. US - 80% of population. India - 10%. --RacerX Talk to me 00:19, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

According to Misplaced Pages:Wikipedians: "Most editors (20%) reside in the United States, followed by Germany (12%) and Russia (7%). The only country not in Europe or North America in the top 10, is India (3%)." —sroc 💬 00:44, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

I think you'll find that's for all Wikipedias. I think it's almost certain that the second largest number of Wikipedians on English Misplaced Pages reside in the United Kingdom, where we also commonly use and understand Imperial measurements (no matter what our official units may be). -- Necrothesp (talk) 11:00, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

50.9.97.53. This is the best I could come up with. 2.4 billion internet users worldwide. Of which, 27% use English (not native speakers, this is first, second and third language English users and those who simply use the language on the internet). So that's 648 million English using, internet users. There are 267 million English speaking people in the US. Of which, 81% use the internet. That's about 216 million English speaking internet users in the US. So subtracting US from World (and ignoring the relatively few English speaking internet users in Burma and Liberia) we get: 432 million metric using, English using, internet users vs. 216 million imperial using, English speaking, internet users worldwide. After rounding it worked out to exactly a two to one ratio; or in other words, one third of the total English using internet users, also use imperial (if my calculations and sources are correct). I can't think of any way to skew it in your favor any more than that. --RacerX Talk to me 01:17, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

keep in mind, that English wiki editors does not have to be native English speaker. for our purpose we are looking for en:wiki editors. They are global editors, not just US, UK, Australia, India etc. I am pretty sure there must me some wiki statistics as mentioned here by someone. btw I agree with your calculations (2:1) 50.9.97.53 (talk) 14:38, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

As I mentioned above, the 27% includes all English language users. Not just native speakers. That figure includes all first, second, third, etc. speakers and additionally anyone who can communicate with English on the Internet. The US figure of total English speakers in the US is however only including first and second language speakers because that was the only source I had at the time. Like I said, the above data is skewed, but mostly in the favor of the metric using, English using, internet using population. RacerX Talk to me 16:24, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

In any case, note that imperial units are only preferred in "non-science US-related articles" (WP:UNITS), otherwise they are only given as a conversion, which is not unreasonable for the 20% or more of Wikipedians from countries that still use them. —sroc 💬 01:31, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes sroc, but to clarify, I think that 20% is US editors within the entirety of Misplaced Pages. Only English Misplaced Pages uses those conversions. I am sure the percentage of English Misplaced Pages editors who are from the US is much higher. --RacerX Talk to me 01:57, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. I thought there were statistics somewhere on the "typical" user on the English WP, but I can't find it now. —sroc 💬 02:21, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

To answer your question 50.9.97.53, it's a compromise. If you want the justifications, feel free to search the archives. SchreiberBike talk 02:13, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

thank you guys.can you point me to the right direction,to the archives of previous discussions about imperial units usage please?

You might start with this search which looks for the phrase "imperial units" in the archives of this talk page. Further searches for "units" or "SI units" would give more background. SchreiberBike talk 06:39, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

@50.9.97.53, referring to your recent comment placed a few posts above about Wiki statistics on usage. You expressed interest in refining the sample group from internet users to WP editors. I think it would make more sense to refine the stats to include WP readers (and editors), rather than only WP editors, but if you're still interested I found this chart at the article English Misplaced Pages for en:WP edits by country and this chart for en:WP page views by country. --RacerX Talk to me 01:39, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

The page views of English Misplaced Pages show that 39.9% of readers come from the United States and a further 16.7% come from the UK. (UK usage is a mixture of metric and Imperial.) This means that roughly half of our readers would be comfortable with Imperial/US Customary measures and about half would be comfortable with metric measures. The policy of providing both measures in general articles provides for all. Michael Glass (talk) 02:27, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Slight correction. 39.9% of edits come from the US. 42.9% of page views come from US. Lets be clear about what we are looking at. An individual edit is different than an editor or a reader. Same for a single page views. --RacerX Talk to me 02:34, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for that. It is interesting that the US has 42.9% of the page views but only 39.9% of the page edits while the UK has 11.2% of the page views but 16.7% of the page views. Australia also has 3.6% of the page views but 4.2% of the page edits and New Zealand has 0.7% of page views but 1% of edits but Canada has 6% of both views and edits to the English language Misplaced Pages. Overall, however, the split between imperial and metric usage would still be about 50-50 for both editors and readers. This reinforces the need to provide both metric and imperial measures for readers, even though this requires a lot more work. Michael Glass (talk) 03:46, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Agree. I think it would be safe to assume the percentage of readers and page views; editors and edits would be approximately the same. Then again, who would have guessed the statistical curiosities you have just pointed out? But overall, yes. The stats indeed support the consensus of display both units. It would be easier for uS editors (punny, yes even some American editors like myself wish that some things were simpler) to not ever have to worry about conversions and conversion templates and such if we went to metric units exclusively, but currently any serious attempt to rally the community in that direction would be WP:SNOWBALL --RacerX Talk to me 05:34, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps the missing American readers are reading Conservapedia? It's well-known that Misplaced Pages is a hotbed of dangerous un-American liberals. :-) Peter coxhead (talk) 10:33, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

The UK uses both. For example petrol is bought in litres but distances are measured in miles. Beer has to be sold in quantities based on an imperial pints while spirits and wine are sold in millilitres (both by law). So not only the US but the UK still use imperial weights and measures, its just that the UK manges to have both on the supermarket shelves at the same time. -- PBS (talk) 08:33, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Actually, note that the US doesn't use imperial measurements for volumes; US pints and gallons are different from imperial ones. So for volumes, at least three units are often needed: litres/liters, US gallons/pints, imperial gallons/pints. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:33, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

This can bite in reverse and mean that conversions can be next to impossible, a classic one is the bomb weights used during World War II as secondary sources often use tons for raids flown in the Combined Bomber Offensive but don't specify whether it is short ton or long ton (I suspect that in a number of sources the authors do not know as they themselves are quoting secondary sources and not the original RAF and USAAF primary sources (which may not be clear on their own without researching further primary sources to find out what weight the USAAF used when stationed in Britain)). Another one I was surprised to find,--it came to my attention via some obscure (to me) measurements in the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna (a Rhineland Ruthe)--that when reviewing old sources (particularly about international matters) there is no such thing as a standard mile, (or rod (unit), league (unit) etc) and that often like tons the secondary source reports the distance without noting a conversion to a standard contemporary unit, which makes including conversions in Misplaced Pages text a guess or original research. -- PBS (talk) 09:17, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

MilHist Coordinator says: The bomber offensive figures are in long tons; these were used by both the USAAF and RAF. The short ton was not used for this purpose. However, when dealing with logistics in World War II, you must always watch out for the more commonly used measurement ton, which was not a unit of weight at all. It is also worth noting that in SWPA US forces used imperial, not US gallons. I'm not sure if this was the case in the UK. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:52, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Also, we in the US manage to have both on the shelves at the same time as well. Soda, fizzy drinks, or whatever you want to call them, are sold in 1-, 2-, and 3-liter bottles (the latter is not terribly common) and in 20-ounce bottles and 12-ounce cans. Beer is sold in ounces, but wine and spirits are sold in liters. Most drugs, including the illegal ones, are measured in metric units, with the exception of marijuana. Just about all foods and drinks (but not medications) are labeled in both measurements, though. -Rrius (talk) 15:56, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

Funny I don't recall ever seeing a 3-liter bottle of soda. Must be very uncommon in my area. But yes, the liter is a fairly familiar unit in the US. Consider also its use in the US automobile industry (among the other metric uses and parts on US vehicles). My pickup truck was assembled 30 miles (48 km, heh:) from my house and it has a badge on the side displaying its engine displacement in liters; and the vast majority of Americans know exactly what a 5.7L engine is. Another example that comes to mind is the length of US cigarettes is given in millimeters: 72's, 100's etc. --RacerX Talk to me 23:41, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

May I put the Indian figures into perspective. About 250,000 Indians use English as their mother tongue, but the Times of India prints 7.6 million copies a day - more than double any UK or US newspaper. Martinvl (talk) 17:21, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

Policy implications

I think most editors accept the necessity of providing imperial/US customary measures along with metric measures for general articles, as usage varies across the English-speaking world. In most cases this is fairly clear-cut, with metric measures being given priority throughout most of the world and US customary measures being given priority in US based non-scientific articles. In the case of UK articles the situation is more complex, with metric units being used in some contexts and imperial units being used in others and where usage is both divided and hotly contested between the fans of both metric and imperial units. MOSNUM reflects this situation.

I believe the present policy could be improved with some copy editing. For example, "imperial units are still used in some contexts" is clearer and shorter than "imperial units are still used as the main units in some contexts". Are there any comments or suggestions about this proposed change? Michael Glass (talk) 14:54, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

I think the current wording is more correct. Older people in the UK still use imperial units in their personal life, e.g. feet and inches during DIY, or stones and pounds for their weight (I still do this!). But the "main" units in each case, in these cases the ones used by shops and by the medical profession, are metric. This is different from driving distances or beer glasses where the "main" units are imperial. So I would expect the order in which the units are given in a UK-based article would be different. For lengths of wood, say, it should be metric with an imperial conversion; for distance between towns, say, it should be imperial with a metric conversion. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:22, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

I do not assume good faith in the case of Michael Glass due to previous editing history. If the word "main" is removed Glass will use the new policy to present ONLY metric units and not give conversions to customary units at all. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:46, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

I don't edit to remove customary units and have only metric units. I have argued consistently for the need to provide both measurements, and my editing history is consistent with this belief. Michael Glass (talk) 01:07, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. Or he might use it as an excuse to argue that the policy doesn't say that they should be the main units, and that therefore that metric units should be the main units instead. We certainly cannot assume that this is a mere copy-edit as suggested. Kahastok talk 17:06, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

You're wrong. It was just a suggested copy edit. The expression "main unit" would still be in the policy. However, as you object, I won't push it any further. Michael Glass (talk) 01:07, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

I'd like to propose a clarification of an ambiguity (potential clash between two points of guidance relating to units): the section relating to British articles states that "in some contexts" it is appropriate to give primacy to imperial units, e.g. miles, miles per hour, and fuel consumption in miles per imperial gallon (although it does not stipulate exactly what these contexts are, I assume the advice relates primarily to road transport). Shortly afterwards, the stlye guide states that "Nominal and defined quantities should be given in the original units first" (which I do not contest). In my experience (I am British), the UK has very mixed measurement traditions on some of these points (many distances are typically given in metric, often with no imperial equivalent, in daily British life, e.g. on OS maps, athletic events, hiking trails, and engineering/construction projects such as Crossrail) and I propose that the official policy on units in articles relating to Britain should be clarified to the following: Given the mixture of different measurement systems in use in contemporary British society, the main unit used in a given context should be the unit which is given primacy in the relevant primary sources. I view this as merely placing more emphasis on the second point that I quote above, namely that precedence should always be given to the original units, with any conversions clearly displayed as such, i.e. secondary or supplementary pieces of information. To extend the argument: if I were important enough to deserve my own Misplaced Pages page, and I gave information on my own height/weight in metric units (because that's what I prefer), would these figures need to be amended to prioritise Imperial, just because I'm British? Would changing my nationality exempt me from this rule? My point is that, given the confusing mess of units in use in the UK today, it's impossible to say in such a broad-brushed way that "when talking about subject X (distances, body dimensions, etc.) always use Imperial" - British people will use both, inconsistently. My proposed amendment is the only way I can see to steer clear of conflicts like the one on (for example) Talk:Edinburgh_Trams, where some editors understood the standing policy to mean that imperial units are always correct for distances, regardless of primary sources. In this case the primary source gave a metric distance with a very approximate imperial equivalent, because British construction and engineering use the metric system exclusively, whereas the editors flipped the unit conversion so that the Wiki page showed the converted value first, with the source value displayed alongside it as though it were a conversion. My disagreement with this was that it was misleading to readers about which was the primary value and which was the conversion, and it's not appropriate for editors of a neutral reference work to "interpret" its sources in such a way, by deciding that they know better than the source what the appropriate units are. Their counterargument centred on the wording of the style guide as it stands, rather than on the substance of my argument, which they didn't care to contest, so for that reason I think this is quite an uncontroversial proposal (i.e. source units determine Misplaced Pages units). If there are no strenuous objections to it, I'll add the wording in bold above as a caveat in the section on units for British articles. Archon 2488 (talk) 11:51, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

I agree that we need something like this. Although miles are still used on road signs, most measurements are in metric as archon as explained. Even our highways have metric measures on them although not on the road signs. Petrol at the petrol pump is only in litres, so why would we give primacy to gallons? I know that Google search results are dicy, but p petrol "miles per liter" gives about 1,430,000 results while we get about half that when we search for "miles" per gallon. Dougweller (talk) 12:37, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, gallons are long-due for retirement - they've not been used for fuel in the UK since the early '90s (I think only a tiny number of Caribbean islands still sell fuel by the Imperial gallon, and maybe Liberia). Fuel economy/consumption units are already a real mess on Misplaced Pages because there are so many competing conventions, including miles per US gallon (which is not directly comparable to the Imperial measurement because the US gallon is much smaller). I'd be against introducing "miles per litre" measurements because it's a very nonstandard unit (mixing metric/imperial in a unit is bad practice) and it's not used in car adverts/dealerships in the UK (which is to my knowledge the only country that has this particular measurement confusion of selling fuel in metric and measuring driving distances in imperial), and adding one more measurement convention is just to contribute so much more clutter to an article. The legal measurement in the UK is actually the metric one, which by law must be given in the standard international form of L/100 km or km/L (the former is used almost universally outside the UK and USA; India prefers the latter). The imperial MPG value is actually considered supplementary information. My (British) car manual uses L/100 km exclusively for describing fuel consumption. Given all this, I'm not sure how useful it actually is for Misplaced Pages to retain the MPG(imp) measurements, when the metric ones are at least as meaningful to British people (it's at least as easy to relate 100 km to your typical driving distances as it is to relate the imperial gallon to the amount of fuel you buy at the pump, arguably more so since most British people under 30 have minimal experience of Imperial volume measures). Anyway, we are a confused society slowly migrating towards the metric system, so it makes sense for articles about us to reflect this fact, even if this means they can't be 100% consistent in their preference of units (because we, as a country, are not). Archon 2488 (talk) 13:13, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

I think there is a serious problem with the wording of the passage:

• In non-science UK-related articles: the main quantity is generally expressed in metric units (44 kilograms (97 lb)), but imperial units are still used as the main units in some contexts, including
  • miles, miles per hour, and fuel consumption in miles per imperial gallon;
  • feet/inches and stones/pounds for personal height and weight;
  • imperial pints for draught beer/cider and bottled milk.
  • hands for horses and most other equines

Perhaps something got accidentally edited out somewhere between "miles" and "fuel consumption"?

As it is, it seems to say that miles, miles per hour, and fuel consumption should be measured in miles per imperial gallon, which is obvious nonsense and clearly not intended. The main reason for the linguistic problem is that the introduction to the list talks of the use of units in some contexts but while the other UK exceptions to metric give the unit and the context, no context is given for "miles" and "miles per hour", making it somewhat useless. "Miles are used in some contexts" is not very helpful. We know that miles are not used in all contexts; so we want to know what context calls for the use of miles.

This is what I mean:

So it looks as if

• for miles per hour we should add something like " for road vehicle speeds", and
• for miles we should add something like "for road distances (but not in a scientific, civil-engineering or similar context)".

Perhaps the information should actually be presented as a table.--Boson (talk) 13:47, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, this is a very good suggestion. Looking back over the passage I agree that it is far too ambiguous about which contexts to use Imperial units in, and this has clearly resulted in confusion and unnecessary "unit wars". I'd also preface the table with the general proviso that, in cases of ambiguity or confusion, the primary source should determine the preference that is given to the unit, and that a conversion should not be presented as if it were a primary value, because this is disingenuous and a violation of common sense editorial policy. I don't think a general piece of advice to prefer Imperial in certain British contexts over-rules something as basic as that. My own preference for metric would not lead me to write something like "The maximum speed limit on British motorways is 110 kilometres per hour (70 mph)" because this is obviously silly; it's no less silly to do it the other way around in an article that relates to something in Britain which is metric (such as modern tramways). So if, per my example, I gave my weight in kg (or quoted the weight of another British person from a source which gave kg), a conversion into st/lb might be appropriate, but it should certainly not be given primacy over the initial value. Misplaced Pages is not the British tabloid press, slavishly converting metric to Imperial, to the ludicrous extent of writing things like "1100 yards" instead of "1 km" - it's not unreasonable for us to hold ourselves to a higher standard than that. MPG is officially deprecated in the UK as I described above, so I don't see why it should ever be given primacy over metric; the relevant official/legal figures are all in metric anyway, and if a conversion is strongly desired then it can be provided as supplementary information. Articles such as List_of_UK_fuel_economy_ratings give L/100 km precedence over MPG, presumably for this reason. Archon 2488 (talk) 14:22, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

The concept of listing the unit from the source first, followed by any necessary conversions, has been repeatedly rejected in discussions on this talk page. An encyclopedia assembles information from diverse sources to produce a coherent, easy-to-read article. Changing style from sentence to sentence, or word to word, is for ransom notes, not encyclopedias. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:39, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Obviously I am not suggesting anything so silly as changing units repeatedly within an article. I am saying that the context is framed largely by primary sources: in the case of the tramline, the Edinburgh Council website gave priority to metric, with a very rough imperial equivalent - I don't understand why this was acceptable for Edinburgh Council but not a Misplaced Pages article. If the policy is designed to reflect the units that are used in real-life Britain then that is what it should do, and in this case the unit that was used was metric. What I am saying is that, in cases such as this, where the primary unit is metric, in the context of an area of British society where metric units predominate, that should be reflected in the choice of the primary unit to be used consistently within the article. A 10 km race is a 10 km race, not a "6.2 mile race", even if it is run in Britain. Presenting a conversion as if it were a source value is dishonest, and bad academic practice, because a conversion and a quoted (nominal) value are not the same thing. The existing version of the style guide says as much: Nominal and defined quantities should be given in the original units first, even if this makes the article inconsistent (in the case of the tram, 14 km was the nominal length given by the Council). Archon 2488 (talk) 15:14, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

I agree that - though consistency may occasionally be more important - the primary source is very often the most important consideration (and sometimes outweighs all other considerations). For instance

• when quoting a person's statement or legislation verbatim, it is essential to use the original units; other units may be inserted in square brackets (indicating that they are not in the original source).
• when paraphrasing a person's statement or legislation or referring to it directly (e.g. "according to . . .") the same should apply, though parentheses may be used, rather than square brackets.
• Even within an article, mixed usage may sometimes be necessary in order to correctly document the facts. This may appear inconsistent, but is actually consistent application of a slightly more complex (or less oversimplified) rule. For instance, in an article on transport in the UK, there might be a (direct or indirect) reference to an EU regulation (which has direct effect) that specifies a minimum length of 100 km or or a maximum speed of 50 km/h . The primary unit in this case should be metric. The same article might also refer to a UK act of parliament that uses miles, in which case miles would be the primary unit.

On the other hand, Misplaced Pages style should not depend on which (non-primary) source happens to be used to support a particular statement, which might lead to stating that one county council built 50 kilometres (31 mi) of new road while another council built (only) 30 miles (48 km).--Boson (talk) 19:25, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

It should be miles per hour for all speeds and miles for all geographical distance. Otherwise we end up in the absurd position where two towns are 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) away, but 8 miles (13 km) away by road, or comparing a 200 km/h (120 mph) train with a 70 mph (110 km/h) car.

We don't need to worry about engineering in that case because it refers to geographical distances.

We should not be just following sources in all circumstances for all the reasons provided on innumerable occasions in the past (as the same editor has proposed it repeatedly).

In all cases, regardless of circumstances, directly or indirectly quoted units, nominal units or defined units, should respect the original versions. That means that a 10km race is a 10km race. If a regulation is in metric units, we give it in metric units, and if it is imperial units, we give it in imperial units. That's standard anyway and is not affected by this rule. But simply using a source for a measurement that is not nominal or defined, does not qualify.

I would dispute Archon's assertions about miles per gallon, which remain overwhelmingly more common in normal usage, despite the fact that fuel is sold in litres.

I'd add that the current wording is based on the style guide for the Times - chosen as the UK's newspaper of record. Unfortunately, it has been moved behind the paywall, but the most recent version before the paywall went up is available through the Wayback Machine here Kahastok talk 19:44, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

"We should not be just following sources in all circumstances" yes, I agree, but if the source is the primary one, containing the original measurement which secondary sources like newspapers then quote (with or without conversion), then it makes sense to follow that source unless there is a very good reason not to. Perhaps I should not have put so much emphasis on slavishly following sources; in particular, the example I gave (Edinburgh trams) relates to something in Britain which is already metric (modern light railways). If roads are to be described in Imperial units, it is not obvious why this rule applies to railways, which are governed by different regulations. The Misplaced Pages pages on Crossrail correctly give precedence to the 42 km figure for tunnel lengths (for example), because this is the figure that has been given by Crossrail itself (I have read some of the press releases from Crossrail, and they seem to use metric units exclusively, which reinforces my point; this category of thing is metric in real-life Britain, so I don't understand why Misplaced Pages should be expected to Bowdlerise this by putting Imperial first).

I'm not convinced how appropriate it is to tie Misplaced Pages's style to the style of one particular newspaper. I have noticed that the British media have lately got much better at quoting metric units without insisting on Imperial conversions everywhere: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-24133410 is an example (supplementary use of Imperial speed in the accompanying text but not in video).

I didn't say MPG wasn't used informally, I said it was legally quite deprecated. The law says: "Fuel consumption shall be expressed either in litres per 100 kilometres (1/100km) or kilometres per litre (km/l), and quoted to one decimal place, or, to the extent compatible with the provisions of Council Directive 80/181/EEC(1) in miles per gallon." (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2001/3523/schedule/1/made) - the effect of the cited piece of EEC legislation is to relegate Imperial measures to supplementary status. Given that the Imperial gallon has not been authorised for use in commerce since 1995, it's something of an anomaly that MPG is still used at all.

The "absurd position" you refer to is exactly the absurd position we're in in modern Britain; if Misplaced Pages reflects this, its only crime is being true to reality. Archon 2488 (talk) 20:37, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

No, modern usage would not normally put the distance between two settlements in kilometres in any circumstance. And if someone did, they wouldn't switch to miles depending on whether it measured was along a road or a footpath, or depending on whether it measured was along a road or a the crow flies. Whether it is along roads or not makes no difference. Britain uses a mixture of unit systems, but I can't think of a context where the distinctions are that fine.

If the source is primary, and the original measurement is nominal or defined, or quoted (either directly or indirectly), then we should respect the original measurement. I have not seen the Edinburgh trams article and don't intend to look, but it is difficult to imagine that it was designed deliberately to be exactly 12 kilometres long (for the sake of argument). At that stage, we are no longer dealing with a nominal or defined unit but can make our own choice. Your own suggestion seems to be that it is 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) long, all 7.5 miles (12 km) of which is along roads.

Trying to determine BBC usage is not really useful, since they tend to be entirely inconsistent. For every usage of kilometres you can cite, others can cite miles. Unless you can actually cite a BBC style guide, there's not a lot we can reasonably deduce.

In terms of miles per gallon, the standard means of doing this is based on usage, not legislation. This is as applied all over Misplaced Pages. There are several newspapers out there, some primarily using metric, others primarily using imperial. The Times is most appropriate because it is newspaper of record. It is also a useful source (so we're not basing this on our own opinions and prejudices) that actively tries to document modern usage rather than dogmatically insisting upon one system or the other. Kahastok talk 20:52, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

"We don't need to worry about engineering in that case because it refers to geographical distances"

That's OK if everybody makes the same distinction between civil engineering and geography. It's one thing to talk about the distance between two locations in miles; that's the sort of thing you expect on road signs for the public. Similarly, you might talk about a river being a mile wide. However, once you start building bridges and railways, or even roads, you are talking civil engineering. So you expect the longest span of a bridge, the length of a bridge, the cost per unit of building a railway, distances along a motorway for maintenance purposes, and other civil engineering entities to be measured using metric units, rather than yards or miles. To me, this appears unclear in the current wording of the guideline. --Boson (talk) 22:30, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, this is exactly what I am suggesting. With British civil engineering projects such as Crossrail, which are entirely metric, it's jarring to start talking about miles and yards, simply because these are the units that, in their wisdom, the DfT has decreed that we shall see on our national road system. I question the rationale behind preferring a certain unit because it "sounds" more British - this is like Americans talking about engine displacement in the "all-American" unit of cu. in., when the reality is that their car industry metricated in the 1980s and uses cm like everywhere else. Archon 2488 (talk) 22:46, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Once again, you pull out the "sounds more British" nonsense. No one here or anywhere else has said any such nationalist tosh. Nevertheless, I don't give a damn if metric takes priority, as long as an Imperial conversion is given. RGloucester — 📬 23:28, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Archon and Boson are putting sensible arguments for updating. WP should not be behind the changing usage in the UK, nor in front of it. And what elderly people do is really a weak argument—many elderly people will never change, and that's too bad. We have a conversion article, don't we? I don't see temperatures mentioned in this thread. Tony (talk) 23:40, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Archon may have plenty of sense, but he also has plenty of nonsense. I don't disagree with his argument, other than his repeated assertions about "sounds more British" and "ye olde englyshe units" (this was at the Edinburgh Trams article). It hurts his position, and I don't know why he insists on repeating it. Metric can take priority, except for road speeds, road distances, personal heights and personal weights, and I doubt anyone would care. But some people prefer Imperial, so an Imperial conversion should always be given alongside metric units. As long are both are there consistently, I'm sure there will not be a problem. All the MOS needs to do is clarify when to use miles. That's easy: road speeds and road distances. RGloucester — 📬 00:02, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I was trying to give an idea of the impression that Imperial units create when they intrude in contexts where they are simply not appropriate (like modern civil engineering in the UK). If it's in the USA and the original units are actually pound-feet per second and whatnot, then fair enough. My point was that translating primary measurements into a language you think is more "contextually appropriate" is pretentious in the specific sense that it tries to emulate a certain perception of "standard practice" within a culture, without actually reflecting what that practice is, in the real world (e.g. maintaining the pretense that Americans will always describe things in US Customary units, even if the American industry in question is actually metric). I am sorry for paraphrasing like this, but I'm trying to convey a rather abstract point; it's the disparity between real-world use and descriptions on e.g. Misplaced Pages that I am calling pretentious (for want of a better word, and I understand that my choice of word is open to objection). This is also what I call trying to "sound" British (again, for want of a better way of putting it), because it's the way a hypothetical British person would presumably express it. RGloucester also said (again, on the Edinburgh tram page) that a reason to prefer the converted Imperial was that "it reads better to the ear" - this is a prime example of what I am rightly or wrongly calling "pretentious" and "trying to sound British". I don't understand why a converted value in decimal miles "reads better to the ear" than a round number in kilometres.

Why should Imperial always take priority for personal heights and weights (this is what I understand you to mean)? Like I say, I've always measured my own body using the metric system, and this is what any healthcare professional in modern Britain will do (try to calculate your BMI directly from Imperial height/weight if you want to see why). Do I fail to meet the arbitrary criteria of Britishness set by the Misplaced Pages manual of style? If I became a naturalised Australian citizen (for the sake of example) would I then be entitled to have my weight and bodily dimensions expressed primarily in the units that are most meaningful to me? I'm trying to illustrate the shortcomings of such a blunt policy.

I'm not sure what Tony1 expects us to discuss about temperature; it's one of the less controversial cases. In my experience, everyone in the UK talks about the weather in Celsius, and any modern British oven will use Celsius temperature markings. Fahrenheit is extremely deprecated in modern British life, and in the world today it's used near-exclusively by Americans. Archon 2488 (talk) 01:05, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

"Sounds better to the ear" merely means that it will automatically register more clearly in the mind. That is because road distances are primary use of long distance measurements for a layman, and for those we use Imperial. So, to a layman, wouldn't it make more sense to use Imperial, wouldn't they be more familiar? Never once would I question your Britishness, whatever that may mean. I don't even consider myself British, but that's another story entirely.

As far as weights are concerned, we need some kind of standard to hold to for sake encyclopedic consistency. I don't think you can doubt that personal weights are usually done in stone/pounds. We can't bend to desires of everyone who happens to be described in article, one which way, and then have a mess all over the place. You'd choose to list your weight in kilos, and I'd choose 斤 (Kin). That's not how it works. We have to have a standard, whether it be metric or imperial. That standard needs to be understandable and familiar to Joe Bloggs, as I said before. Not the elite up in an ivory tower. I don't care, to be honest, which one it is. But you're not making sense, and you are being bombastic. RGloucester — 📬 01:34, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

I think the basic reasoning for using non-metric units first on topics that have strong ties to certain English-speaking countries is that residents of those countries are presumed to be more likely to read the articles than other people. So the hypothesis is that a story about Catherine Ashton or Samuel Pepys is more likely to be read by British people than others, so if the height or weight of these subjects is mentioned, the first units should be those that British people most often use for personal heights and weights. The preferences of the subject of the article are irrelevant. Jc3s5h (talk) 01:16, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm happy for it to be geographic distances excluding articles related to civil engineering FWIW.

I was otherwise just going to point out that we don't need to deal with the whole "sounds more British" bit because we have the Times style guide, which we can base this on, and that while distance along roads may be "primary use of long distance measurements for a layman", it's not the primary use of long distance measurements in Misplaced Pages, and we're better dealing with the latter. People don't change systems depending on whether the distance is measured along a road or not - it's miles regardless. Kahastok talk 06:40, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

If we are to refer to the Times Guide we should bear in mind this quotation from it:

"The Times should keep abreast of the trend in the UK to move gradually towards all-metric use, but given the wide age range and geographical distribution of our readers, some continuing use of imperial measurements is necessary."

It is all very well to quote the letter of the Times guide to say we shouldn't put metric measures for this or that while ignoring the spirit of the Times, which is to keep abreast with the gradual change towards metric use in the UK. I believe that it is a mistake to use the Times Guide as a diktat to tell editors what they should and shouldn't do. Other style guides are both more metric and less than the Times, so using the Times guide to forbid other usages that are accepted by these other bodies, is, frankly, a nonsense. No-one is making a fuss because an area of land is described in acres or hectares so why not allow the same freedom with regard to people's heights and weights, especially when the BBC and many sporting organisations give metric heights and weights for their players? This could be achieved by simply changing a few words in the present policy from this:

• imperial units are still used as the main units in some contexts, including....

to this:

• imperial units can still be used as the main units in some contexts, including....

I believe that this small change in wording would address the concerns that have been raised by Archon 2488 and Boson here. It would not stop editors from putting consistency first in cases where different sources use different units. Michael Glass (talk) 09:23, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, this is my point exactly. Given that British people are not consistent in the real world, I question the wisdom of a Misplaced Pages policy that would lead us to Bowdlerise this fact by imposing a facade of Imperial use to cover up the creeping advance of metrication. As Michael Glass points out, heights and weights are consistently given in metric by the BBC in relation to sport - does this fall foul of our hypothetical "British style"? I fear that imposing a hard Imperial-always-first rule will actually lead to Misplaced Pages falling behind the trend towards increasing metric use in British society; in such a case, where the real world is not consistent, I don't see how an encyclopedia can easily reconcile the objectives of being true to real life and being internally consistent; my argument is that the former objective should generally trump the latter, within reason (internal consistency is hardly irrelevant and I am not trying to imply that).

As for mph vs. km/h, it's not "miles regardless" because there are cases of inconsistent use in the UK such as this beautiful example: http://citytransport.info/Digi/P1020084.jpg - this is a sign from the Tyne & Wear Metro, where it shares track with mainline trains. The speed limit signs in the circle are mph for mainline trains, whereas the metric speed limit in the hexagonal lozenge is for the metro trains (because, like other modern rail projects in the UK such as Crossrail, it's metric through and through). Insisting on Imperial-first would create a veneer of uniform and consistent Imperial use at the expense of fidelity to the real world; I am unconvinced that this is a price worth paying in any work of reference.

Regarding distances, it's not about "the distance between A and B" expressed variously in miles or km depending on how you travel; the total length of track in a rail system is a fact about a civil engineering project, not a distance between two points in Britain. The total length of London Underground track, as well as Tyne & Wear Metro track, is given in metric first for exactly this reason. Archon 2488 (talk) 12:01, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

The BBC is far more complicated than that. When was the last time you heard a sports commentator give a player's dimensions in metric units? They don't. It's always in imperial.

My point about distances is that a lot of our distances are not measured along roads, they're measured point to point. Nothing to do with engineering at all. The distance from London to Edinburgh is 330 miles - as the crow flies. The distance from Scotland to Northern Ireland is 13 miles - there's no road. The Isle of Wight is about 25 miles from east to west. You would not expect these measurements to be in kilometres in normal usage. You would not drive 405 miles to cover the 535 kilometres from London to Edinburgh. Kahastok talk 17:10, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

The idea of using "source based units" as an idea has been rejected out of hand for as long as I've been a wikipedia editor. There is a very good reason why we don't use it, it leads to an inconsistent article. A rather obvious example for some time was Munro, specifically this earlier draft . If we take the earlier draft as an example, it shows all of the worst excesses that such a policy would result in. First of all it starts by giving the definition of a Munro as a Scottish mountain with a height greater than 3000 ft (914.4 m). It then switched half way through to for example "Ben Lomond, 974 m (3,196 ft)" and then switched back to 449,000 ft (137,000 m). There are also other problems with the earlier version for example the excessive precision in some of the conversions. We have had a policy for sometime on UK specific articles reflecting local usage. The majority of measurements given the metric system preference, with the exception of a few common measures that are still predominantly in imperial first. We ask editors to edit to this style guide so there is a consistent look and feel to wikipedia's articles. However, there are a number of editors who simply don't like this policy and have consistently edited counter to it and have exploited any ambiguity in the policy to justify their edits. Hence, specifically I would oppose this change in wording, because long and bitter experience of clearing up edits like Munro leads me to conclude that those editors would exploit any such flexibility in wording in a disruptive manner. Often it seems that people forget why wikipedia exists, it exists to present information to our readers in a clear and consistent manner (which is why we have a style guide). And hence the community decided sometime ago the units policy would be to follow local usage. We also give a unit conversion so that the data is also relevant to non-natives. I personally believe this to be a more than reasonable compromise and I can fully understand the community's impatience when the subject of a policy suggestion repeatedly rejected is raised yet again. If there is to be an exception for say civil engineering, then I am quite happy for the guidelines to add this to the list of exceptions rather than watering down the guideline as suggested. Simply because where consistency is key requirement for a policy such ambiguity is unhelpful. Wee Curry Monster talk 12:18, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

"The idea of using "source based units" as an idea has been rejected out of hand" - yes, my position has evolved a lot on this, as you can see if you follow the thread above. I now understand that I should not have put so much emphasis on sources when there are other important considerations, especially the subject matter of the article. Your example illustrates this very well: in an article on Munros it is desirable to emphasise feet for elevation measure, because the current definition of a Munro (3000 ft) dates from a time when elevations of terrain in Britain were measured in feet. In this case it's less important that modern British sources will reflect the current practice of measuring elevations in metres. I certainly have no intention of disrupting articles by starting "unit wars" and the like, and I stopped editing as soon as I became aware that this touched on a controversial point. My only proposal is that the wording be clarified in some way (the suggestion of a table is a good one, I feel), so that confusions like this over the interpretation of the style guide are less likely to arise. The volume of comments here is a testament to how controversial and confusing the standing version is.

For the exact same reason as one would talk about Munros in feet, however, it follows that in the context of a modern civil engineering project which is metric (as, I daresay, all modern British engineering projects are), it makes sense to emphasise metric units to be consistent with the subject matter of the article, even if this departs from a more general provision that miles be preferred for measurement of long distances (such as geographical distances) in British contexts. If we're talking about a modern road bridge designed in metric units, I am saying that it makes sense to give its length and main span firstly in metres or km rather than decimal miles, yards or feet (this is the convention correctly used at, for example, Forth_Road_Bridge and Queensferry_Crossing). Likewise track lengths in metres or kilometres, rather than miles or feet - I think that measuring track length is much more analogous with measuring a bridge's length (or the dimensions of any other engineering project - Superconducting_supercollider gives the planned tunnel dimensions in metric first, even though it was an American project, because the metric value was the design specification) than with measuring, say, the distance between Glasgow and Edinburgh. Archon 2488 (talk) 13:16, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

I am glad that We Curry Monster has raised the issue of the Munro article. Yes, his edits have attempted to remedy the issue of having different units in different places. However, his efforts have created their own problems. One sentence contained this before WCM worked on it:

Beinn a' Chlaidheimh was found to be 914 metres (2,998 ft 8.3 in), 40 centimetres (1 ft 4 in) short of the Munro mark.

WCM flipped the display and lessened the precision of the conversion, so we got this:

Beinn a' Chlaidheimh was found to be 2,999 feet (914 m), 1 foot (40 cm) short of the Munro mark.

Then another editor, annoyed at the obvious mismatch between 40cm and 1 foot, amended this so it read:

Beinn a' Chlaidheimh was found to be 2,999 feet (914 m), 1 foot (30 cm) short of the Munro mark.

Perhaps the first version was over-precise, but the other versions became less and less true to the source. In this case the measuring was done in metric terms and it would make more sense to base the text on the actual measures that were made.

WCM says that style should be clear and consistent, yet WCM's edits to Munro make that article less compliant with MOSNUM, for feet for heights are not amongst the exceptions to the metric general rule. My point is that if MOSNUM is to be used as a straitjacket, it applies in both directions. So if all UK heights and weights must be Imperial first because MOSNUM says so, then UK acres and square miles must take second place to hectares and square kilometres, because neither are mentioned in MOSNUM as exceptions. I believe that we would be better to leave it to the good sense of editors to decide when the units should be put first, because UK usage is divided.

Once again, my proposal is to change the wording so that it reads:

• imperial units can still be used as the main units in some contexts, including....

This is not source based units. It's just a way of getting a policy straitjacket off the backs of editors like - dare I say it - WCM? Michael Glass (talk) 14:10, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

I am simply going to make the generic comment that focusing on individual editors and personalising matters is deepy unhelpful. A matter of a few inches may mean a lot in some circumstances but in the context of a 3000 ft mountain the obsession with such precision is perhaps misplaced.

Returning to the matter at hand, the volume of comment is not indicative of the controversy over the policy but perhaps more indicative of a certain zealotry in the advocacy of the metric system. I remain bemused by the obsession about unit order that leads some editors to return time and again with the same suggestion. Such persistence is not helpful and it has entrenched attitudes, which probably goes further in explaining the volume of comment. Hence, for some time I've avoided WT:MOSNUM as the heat and light simply isn't worth it.

As a professional enginer, my personal preference would be to favour the metric system in engineering articles. I tend to agree with the suggestion that engineering articles should follow the lines suggested; especially in a modern context. However, as with all guidelines the devil will be in the detail. For example Brunel worked in the imperial system, so for examples such as the Clifton Suspension Bridge the guidance suggested may be inappropriate. Wee Curry Monster talk 14:38, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

To add, if Archon could suggest some improvements to policy I think some fresh input would valuable but having said my piece my intention is to step aside and allow others to comment. Wee Curry Monster talk 14:40, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

That's just going for the "can is not must" argument again. That as the rule would say that imperial units can be the main units rather than that they are the main units you can then go around mass-metricating.

As to the point at hand, need we point out that 3000 feet in Munro falls under nominal or defined units (in that a Munro is defined as a mountain taller than 3000 feet in Scotland), and therefore that this rule does not apply at all? Practically else in the article is being compared with that height - 3000 feet. Kahastok talk 16:52, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

So, if I'm to understand this correctly...it is proposed that for modern civil engineering projects which were drawn up in metric, these should always display metric units as primary. However, for historical projects done in Imperial, those should display Imperial as primary. In other words, the style guide should have an addendum to its existing policy with regards to civil engineering in the UK. I would not be opposed to this. RGloucester — 📬 15:21, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, we shouldn't single out individual editors and edits, especially since the existing policy has managed to cause a considerable amount of confusion across the board. A high volume of comments is par for the course in any discussion of metrication in Britian (in my own experience), maybe because of "zealotry", but also in no small measure because of frustration at the absolutely glacial pace of our country's metrication, which leads to unnecessary silliness like the railway speed limit signs I posted above, as well as absurd road signs like http://www.bwmaonline.com/383%20yards.jpg which exist because the outdated DfT regulations consider that to be more meaningful to the UK public than the equivalent "350 m" sign you would see almost anywhere else on Earth. It is precisely this "measurement muddle" that makes it so hard for us to agree on a coherent units policy for British articles.

This is also the country where, as recently as ten years ago, the Active Resistance to Metrication folks were going around vandalising public signs that they deemed to be "un-British" because they displayed metres instead of yards, so they put up extremely unhelpful signs in their place which gave distances (at least occasionally) in furlongs. Clearly there is no small amount of "zealotry" among those who favour the status quo, to say nothing of journalists who are content to cause further mischief by misinforming the public about the metric system, like "we'll be forced to ask for 0.568 litres of beer", "Shylock didn't ask for 454 grams of flesh" and "the EU is forcing it on us" (all in recent history, but the hysteria seems to have died down a lot now, except perhaps in the minds of certain sectors of the British tabloid press, who remain convinced that centimetres cause cancer). My point is that, in this cultural climate, it's unsurprising that any discussion about metrication can quickly become heated. I wish we could have transitioned quickly and painlessly in the '70s like Australia, SA and NZ, but that sadly never happened.

Regarding older engineering projects, I agree that the primary dimensions can be given in Imperial if the original design was Imperial; this is in keeping with the theme and feel of the article (e.g. talking about pre-1960s British trams primarily in feet, inches, miles, long tons and so on, is acceptable by my proposed criterion). My main concern was with articles that relate to things in contemporary Britain, where metric units predominate for virtually all engineering purposes (including, in this case, modern tramways and light railways). I would also like to emphasise that I have withdrawn my support for "source based units" as such; my concern with the source in the case I cited was secondary, because the source reflected the custom, in this part of British life, of using metric units (this was actually my primary concern, and I realise that I have not always explained it very well). So if we were to clarify the existing list by making a table, it might say something like "miles, mph - for geographical distances, road journeys and road vehicle speeds; other vehicle speeds where contextually appropriate (e.g. an older train system which uses imperial speed limits)". Archon 2488 (talk) 15:35, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

If we are making proposals, I would suggest that the first bullet point be changed to:

• Miles for geographic distance, miles per hour for speed, and fuel consumption in miles per imperial gallon; articles on civil engineering projects that were conceived in metric should use metric units

Alternatively to replace with table format (with context first):

with a footnote appended to the first two: "except in articles concerning civil engineering projects conceived in metric units". Kahastok talk 17:10, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

I'd add that if the agreement above is that we're doing miles for all appropriate distances (i.e. without the "geographical" qualifier) that aren't in civil engineering articles, that's fine with me. Kahastok talk 17:40, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

I have no problem with the tabular format. The problem lies with wording for UK articles that can be read as a diktat to use this unit or that, regardless of context. Because UK usage is mixed, orders to use this unit or that are simply unworkable. The discussion above concentrated on exceptions to a proposed rule about engineering articles. We need wording that can not be read as an order to use a particular unit. There will always be exceptions. Simply changing the wording from "are still used" to "can still be used" or "can be used" would achieve this aim. With a tabular form it would look like this:

• In non-science UK-related articles: the main quantity is generally expressed in metric units (44 kilograms (97 lb)), but imperial units can still be used as the main units in some contexts, including:

I believe that this wording would work for all, whatever their views on units of measure. Michael Glass (talk) 22:26, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Now, as I said, I don't care myself. But that won't work it all, because it gives justification for someone with metric tendencies to go around and make everything metric. I think we should leave the existing wording, merely adding a civil engineering caveat, whereby those projects done in metric are given in metric. This makes the most sense given the complaints here. Of course, we should also make clear that there are exceptions to rules, and that is not a hard and fast rule in every case. RGloucester — 📬 22:34, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Metric tendencies? I love it! But never fear: Misplaced Pages also has those with Imperial tendencies, who go round disp flipping displays so that their beloved measures come first. The present wording plays into the hands of those who want to force Imperial units on articles even when all the sources use metric measures. It is also open to being used to force the use of metric units despite Imperial sources of information. There is, however, a provision in the present wording to stop these silly games. It's a footnote that says:

If there is disagreement about the main units used in a UK-related article, discuss the matter on the article talk-page, at MOSNUM talk, or both. If consensus cannot be reached, refer to historically stable versions of the article and retain the units used in these as the main units. Note the style guides of British publications such as Times Online (under "Metric")

Perhaps this should be given more prominence instead of being confined to a footnote. However, what we don't need is a diktat to force metric (or Imperial) measures to go first when they are not appropriate. Michael Glass (talk) 04:05, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Oh, come off it Michael. Let's remember which editor it was here who is responsible for these particular metric POV pushes: . And you're still going through article converting imperial units to metric - this was three days ago (albeit in a context where metric is accepted by MOSNUM).

When it comes down to it, when you say "this wording would work for all", what you mean is that it would work for you, in that it would allow you to insist "can is not must" and continue your campaign of mass-metrication. If there are people wanting to "force" any kind of units, it's generally you forcing metric. There is a reason why we've already got people saying they "do not assume good faith in the case of Michael Glass due to previous editing history", a sentiment I endorse.

There is nothing wrong with flipping units as WP:UNITS requires. We don't have source-based units - as you well know - so the fact that the system chosen in the sources don't always match the units in the articles is entirely irrelevant. I oppose your proposal entirely. Kahastok talk 07:48, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Kahastok, Even when I put cited information into Misplaced Pages in a context when metric is accepted by MOSNUM you still attack me for doing so. Other editors here will note what this reveals about you. Michael Glass (talk) 11:49, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

I would suggest that said other editors look at all the diffs as provided, compare the changes made with WP:UNITS (which I note was has not substantively changed in the intervening period) and come to their own conclusions. Kahastok talk 12:12, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

In general I have to say I would be willing to see the original proposal broadened significantly. In the UK, modern engineering uses SI units and has for some time. Hence, in a modern context I would suggest a broader definition to cover engineering in general; provided there was a caveat to cover the historical context identified earlier. Noting the science exemption, engineering is in the same context.

That said, any amendment loosening the language where the refrain "can is not must" can be used I would oppose. Sadly I have to observe that experience has demonstrated that any such loosening of the wording would be exploited by editors to edit in a manner inconsistent with the spirit of the policy. Wee Curry Monster talk 08:56, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

IIRC there always used to be a separate rule saying that articles on science and engineering would use the units prevalent in those fields. That would put Spitfire design in imperial and modern British engineering in metric. To be clear I remain happy with my original proposal or similar, without Michael's rewording, and with RGloucester's proposal to simply add the engineering caveat.

We could resolve this by simply adding engineering related topics, and saying to use the units of original design (where known). This is as recommended for example by WikiProject Aviation.

It should be restricted to articles rather than contexts, the same as the rule on scientific topics. This avoids the faff of people turning up on topics not about engineering at all and insisting that anything that was originally engineered must be metric (the geography-is-a-science-so-miles-are-banned argument). Kahastok talk 09:38, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Since geography is science and in many UK-oriented geographical-type articles use metric units followed by imperial units in brackets, the use of the word "geographical" should be used with extreme caution. Martinvl (talk) 12:25, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

I believe that a "modern engineering in general" caveat is in order, just as it already is for science. As long as Imperial is used for historical projects done in Imperial, this should be the way it is set up. With regards to "geographic distances", I think we should leave the present exceptions alone, except for to add the engineering caveat. That gives us more flexibility. I also suggest moving the footnote about consensus, which should instead be placed right next to these guidelines. RGloucester — ☎ 13:30, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Does DATERET apply to body copy only or reference dates as well?

An editor has decided to apply DATERET to references. In October 2012, I applied User:Ohconfucius/script/MOSNUM dates' script to and article and applied Month dd, YYYY. No other editors complained. A few weeks ago, the editor removed the formatting for references and changed the references dates back to ISO 8601 format claiming that an edit made on March 21, 2009 set the precedent for all of the article's references. I opened a discussion after a brief interchange today. The editor claims that this guideline, WP:DATERET, along with MOS:DATEUNIFY and WP:STRONGNAT make it mandatory to retain the first reference date format. The way I read them, it applies only to dates in the body copy. The only unrelated editor to the discussion indicates that keeping a date format uniform in the article and the references makes more sense and finds the Month dd, YYYY more readable. Could we clarify the guideline to confirm one of these opinions? Walter Görlitz (talk) 07:19, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Does DATERET apply to body copy only or reference dates as well? It would be good to get an answer to this. Walter Görlitz (talk) 17:04, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

It seems impossible to form a consensus about whether citations are controlled by WP:MOS or by WP:CITE. But in this case, it doesn't matter; WP:CITEVAR also says to retain the existing citation style. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:14, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

CITEVAR is about styles. Are you suggesting that date is just a style? Walter Görlitz (talk) 20:25, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

The way a date is set out is clearly a style which is part of the citation. If e.g. the accessdates use a particular style they should be left that way, or made consistent with the first established style if not consistent. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:12, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Peter coxhead; the way a date is written is a matter of style. And this guideline, "Manual of Style/Dates and numbers" is all about style. The other guideline, "Citing sources", is mostly about substance (when to cite and what information to include) with less emphasis on style. Jc3s5h (talk) 11:02, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

What if the first established format dates back to the time when the citation template required YYYY-MM-DD? Jimp 10:06, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

• That's quite possible because it was commonplace during the time of Date Autoformatting. Now, humans have to be able to parse those wretched machine-dates. -- Ohc _{¿que pasa?} 12:53, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

If one thinks the choice of date formats was not a true choice, because the cite templates once required or recommended the YYYY-MM-DD format, one should discuss what format to use on the talk page. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:54, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

I think WP:BRD would be much more practical and can surely be applied to such instances. -- Ohc _{¿que pasa?} 14:31, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

I also think that DATERET should not be applied to references if consensus for that article are to change. Walter Görlitz (talk) 19:27, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

The guideline indicates to discuss changes to date format first; WP:BRD does not apply. I suspect anyone who uses WP:BRD to justify large numbers of automated or semi-automated changes will be shown the door. If someone wants to claim the citation date format for a particular article is a legacy from the days when templates required all-numeric dates, the editor would be expected to explain on the talk page how they know when citation templates required all-numeric dates, and when the citation date format for the article was established.

If Walter Görlitz means that if a consensus is reached on the talk page to change the date format of the text, the citations could be changed to the agreed-upon format at the same time, that might be OK, although it would be better to mention explicitly if the citation date format differs from the text date format. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:54, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

I am seeking an explicit exclusion of citation date formats. Walter Görlitz (talk) 14:24, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Dates in citations can be different from the dates in the prose, though consistency within citations, and consistency within prose is expected to be there. Mind you, if use are using dmy or mdy dates in citations, this must be consistent with the body of the article's choie of dmy or mdy. But ISO dates can be used in citations against dmy/mdy in prose. Mind you, which date format to use in citations is one set by the first editor or through subsequent consensus to change. --MASEM (t) 14:31, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Walter Görlitz wrote "I am seeking an explicit exclusion of citation date formats." I don't understand? Exclusion of date formats from what? Who do you think can give you this exclusion, other than the editors active on the talk page of the article to be changed?

If you think you can obtain this exclusion (whatever that means) on this talk page, you are going about it the wrong way. First, there is no consensus about whether citation date style is governed by WP:MOSNUM or WP:CITE. Secondly, because of the past controversy, no change to either WP:MOSNUM or WP:CITE on this topic could be entertained without a well-advertised RFC. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:06, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Personally, I wish WP:STRONGNAT would die a violent death. As an American who lived overseas, who was raised with and likes the aesthetic of dmy (that comma needed in mdy is a wasted space), I get ticked when some drive-by editor decides to switch all the reference and dates on an article I've spent a lot of time on and still have a shitload of work to go. Some editors just like to break your stride...and I wish they could find something more productive than being a one man task force raiding the ghetto on a WP:STRONGNAT power trip (like Canuckian89) --ColonelHenry (talk) 21:54, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

• can we get a "this article is a WP:STRONGNAT-free zone" template. I'd love that. Thanks.--ColonelHenry (talk) 21:57, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

YYYY-MM-DD in tables and lists

What is the consensus regarding the use of the YYYY-MM-DD date format outside of references? Following the June discussion on YYYY-MM-DD the guideline was adjusted to reflect what appeared to be the general consensus that this format really had no place in tables.

Yesterday this was reverted with the claim that no consensus had been reached. Allowance for YYYY-MM-DD in tables and lists was reinstated along with the spurious claim that "they may be useful in long lists and tables for conciseness".

Rather than using a format which is quite unfamiliar we could use three-letter abbreviations for months. Dates written in dmy or mdy format with three-letter months are only slightly longer than the YYYY-MM-DD equivalents if they are any longer at all. This can easily be seen in examples such as the following.

The claim that YYYY-MM-DD may be useful for conciseness is false and the exception to the rule that this format has no place in the article body is unnecessary. I propose that the reversion in question be reversed. Jimp 09:58, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Where to use ISO dates has been discussed more than once, and I agree that no consensus for a change to the current guidelines was reached, so the status quo prevails. (The fact that "raw" ISO dates sort correctly is another point in their favour in tables.)

The problem with abbreviating month names is that if you review various style guides, you'll find that different systems are recommended, both as to the actual abbreviations and as to whether a full stop/period is needed. I haven't done a systematic check but I suspect we would end up with an ENGVAR difference: US English seems mainly to require a period, British English is less likely to require a full stop. The advantage of YYYY-MM-DD is that it is a single defined standard. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:19, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

To expand on Peter coxhead's comments, the subject of dates and date formats has been discussed several times, with no consensus reached. Therefore, Misplaced Pages allows several date formats; the only consensus I am aware of is that the date formats should not be mixed within an article; pick one format and use it consistently. YYYY-MM-DD can be useful for searching in tables, and therefore it's reasonable to allow it. In main body text, that format is more problematic, and day-month-year and month-day-year formats are preferred. I do not support Jimp's reversion request. Truthanado (talk) 13:41, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

I was pretty sure there was consensus for removing ISO dates from in-article tables and lists. The sorting issue is moot with templates like {{dtsa}} which formats right but includes the numerical codes to sort. --MASEM (t) 13:46, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

The YYYY-MM-DD discussion mentioned at the beginning of this thread was not a well-advertized RFC. Since date formats have been discussed extensively for years, I don't think that discussion was well-know enough to change consensus. Even then, the "in tables" subsection only contains two entries. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:39, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

My view is the same as Jc3s5h's. It might be that if there was a properly advertized RfC there would now be a consensus to change to not allowing ISO dates in tables (provided that templates like {{dtsa}} were well flagged in the MOS). On the other hand, there is always resistance to requiring the use of templates (just try adding a citation template to an article where the existing editors have a consensus not to use them!), so I'm not sure that the existence of "sortable date" templates would convince enough people. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:45, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

The issue of using templates for citations vs hardcoded cites is far far different from just using templates for other purposes. I would not take that as a sign of resistance for using templates. (Of course, the invis ISO date can be hard coded too and avoid templates, so really , this isn't an issue) --MASEM (t) 16:18, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

The input date in the dts template is not an ISO 8601 date. It must satisfy this format specification which has some overlap with ISO 8601 but is not identical with ISO 8601. The invisible output of the dts template is certainly not ISO 8601; the year portion is 5 characters with the leftmost character being either "0" or "-". Jc3s5h (talk) 11:07, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

{{dts}}'s output is not designed to print the ISO-like date to the reader, but the dmy or mdy version, with the hidden-text ISO-like date left in the front as allow the easy table sort (hence why the first digit is - or 0 for that, so that it also sorts on BC/AD years). --MASEM (t) 12:20, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

I don't believe that sortability is really an issue. Sort tables can now handle most dates and where they fail we have templates (such as the ones mentioned above) to fix the problem. That editors use templates is less of an ask than that readers be faced with YYYY-MM-DD. But, sure, if someone puts YYYY-MM-DD dates into a sortable table because they haven't got the time/skill/etc. to use the appropriate code, then let them, just don't disallow another editor from improving readability.

As for three-letter abbreviations possibly not being appropriate for certain dialects (e.g. US English), yes, okay I can accept this. In fact the MOS already allows for different styles. As far as I know, though, the longest abbreviation we'd be looking at would be "Sept.", thus the worst-case scenario would be something like "Sept. 30, 2020". Compare that to "2020-11-30" and, sure, you've saved a bit of space but it's hardly significant weighted against the cost to readability. Thus I still contend that YYYY-MM-DD are not useful in lists or tables for conciseness.

Nor do I believe that that argument from commonality holds any weight. Okay, yes, "The advantage of YYYY-MM-DD is that it is a single defined standard." as opposed to the various ways of abbreviating the month along with the question of whether to put the day or month first. We have one single defined standard which is equally difficult for us all to read verses a handful of different but easily recognisable options. I suggest that readability trumps commonality again.

Truthanado, you suggest that "YYYY-MM-DD can be useful for searching in tables, and therefore it's reasonable to allow it." I don't know how. Surely, the more readable the format, the easier it will be to search (if you're searching by eye, if, on the other hand, you're using +, the computer doesn't care).

Masem says that he thought that the consensus to remove this format from lists & tables was achieved. So did I. In fact the feeling I got was that it had been achieved some time back but the guideline hadn't fully caught up. (I still have that feeling.) But, no, the YYYY-MM-DD discussion mentioned above was not a well-advertised RFC and the discussion of YYYY-MM-DD in tables was only a small part of it. So, I'm bringing it up again to test the actual consensus. If we want to make an RFC out of it, let's go. Jimp 09:58, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

• I seem to be under the impression that there is consensus for yyyy-mm-dd dates to be isolated to the reference sections. I have never been faced with resistance or opposition when replacing yyyy-mm-dd dates inside tables, and I usually use a sort template for that. Of course, there are other ways. I would favour clarifying this in the guideline. -- Ohc _{¿que pasa?} 10:11, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
  • Is it just my quirk? I find it several levels easier to comprehend the abbreviations set out above than the phone-number ISO gobbledies. Tony (talk) 10:20, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

YYYY-MM-DD is the natural format when a table is arranged chronologically. I'd be surprised if there were consensus to ban it. — kwami (talk) 10:37, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

What people find easier to read and comprehend depends on their experience of different formats. I find the US-style "Sept. 11, 2011" harder to read and understand than either "11 Sep 2011" or "2011-09-11". But WP:IDONTLIKEIT isn't a good reason either way. The ISO style is (a) a standard style (b) preferred by some editors for some purposes. It would be unreasonable WP:CREEP to ban it. Just learn to live with it, if you don't like it, as I rightly have to with US-style dates. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:49, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

• @kwami: Your surprise or otherwise of the tolerance for the format's existence on WP has just about as much to do with as whether you like it or not. The fact of the matter is that, depending on which country you are in, human beings in the western world are brought up to parse "January 23, 2013" or "23 January 2013" easily to a greater or lesser extent. And most certainly parse these more easily than "2013-01-23". It's quite another thing if you're a computer or Asian, but this isn't machine Misplaced Pages nor is it Asian WP, so it should be ditched. -- Ohc _{¿que pasa?} 13:04, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
  • And to most Americans, 23 January 2013 is confusing to parse too, at first (and vice versa), but it is not an insurmountable difficulty so that argument doesn't apply. I do agree that in the prose body of an article, we should avoid it for either the dmy or mdy format as those are geared towards being visually and verbally structured right in the grammer of a sentence compared to ISO, but when used for date, which isn't read in sentences, it can be appropriate, though I will agree that in tables and lists in body there's no practical difference (when we have the ability to sort via templates/hidden text) and should prefer the dmy/mdy formats instead. --MASEM (t) 13:15, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

    "Prefer" is one thing; "impose" another. The proposal, as I understand it, is that the MOS should forbid the ISO date format other than in two places in citations. ("Forbid" because a revised MOS would allow any other editor to change ISO dates in tables to another format.) No good reason has been put forward for this instruction creep other than that some people don't like it and find it hard to parse because they aren't used to it. Particularly in an international encyclopaedia this is not a good reason. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:50, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

The English Misplaced Pages has never adopted ISO 8601 for use in articles (although it is available to logged-in users in "Preferences", under the "Date and Time" tab, for display of system timestamps). If you want to have an RfC about allowing ISO 8601 for tables, you should first have one about adopting ISO 8601 at all. 14:03, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Most likely because prior to the date delinking discussion, people used whatever they wanted; we never previously said that editors can't ues ISO for dates since we all worked on the assumption that magical linking would fix it. As a result of date delinking and subsequent date consistency discussions, there we said that ISO should never be used for prose text. Only recently, as best as I recall, we had a second discussion about discouraging ISO within tables, and a more recent discussion affirmed that ISO was okay to use in citations but pretty much the only place where its use was promoted. --MASEM (t) 14:11, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

I am not discussing when to use the YYYY-MM-DD format, only what to call it. If someone showed you a picture of a disassembled electrical outlet with voltmeters hooked up to it, and you saw the green wire read 0, the white wire read 0, and the black wire read 120, you would not be justified in saying that the jurisdiction where the outlet was located had adopted the National Electrical Code. Likewise, just because the correct all-numeric dates in Misplaced Pages articles look like a subset of the formats allowed in ISO 8601 does not mean Misplaced Pages has adopted ISO 8601. I see this as an issue because it may confuse software developers who want to reuse Misplaced Pages content, and if they see ISO 8601, they might think our dates comply with that standard to a greater extent than they actually do. Also, if we ever wanted to extend the way we write numeric dates beyond what is now allowed, for example by allowing years earlier than 1583, or allowing dates and times to be combined, it would be helpful to know if we had decided to be guided by ISO 8601 or not. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:41, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

WP:DATEFORMAT calls it ISO 8601, but I guess ISO 2014 (which is a subset of ISO 8601) would be more accurate as no-one has suggested including times. (If you want another name, how about "Canadian standard date format"? See Date and time notation in Canada#Date.) Peter coxhead (talk) 14:59, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

No, WP:DATEFORMAT does not call it ISO 8601. It says "Because year-initial dates might be assumed to follow the ISO 8601 standard...." Jc3s5h (talk) 15:16, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, my mis-reading. Given that it says "this format should only be used for dates expressed in the Gregorian calendar and for the years 1583 through 9999" then actually it will follow the date part of ISO 8601 or the whole of ISO 2014, so why not call it this? Peter coxhead (talk) 15:50, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Our format isn't ISO 8601, it seems to be a subset of ISO 8601. If you look at any of the other variant to ISO 8601 that other organizations have, such as RFC 3339, they take care to give a different name to their variant. So if we want to, we could define our own variant of ISO 8601 and give it a name. Or, we could find a variant that is identical to our variant, and adopt it (but that would cause problems if the other organization revised their standard in a way we don't like). Or we could continue to call it the YYYY-MM-DD format.

I can't find a copy of ISO 2014, so I don't know if it the same as our usage or not.

So far I haven't expressed an opinion about whether we should adopt an ISO standard or not, just said we shouldn't say we have if we haven't. But I am actually opposed to adopting anything from ISO. In the August 2013 issue of IEEE Spectrum Andrew Russell claims that one of the reasons the Internet protocol suite won over Open Systems Interconnection was the high fees charged by ISO for copies of their standards. (p. 43.) If their fees are an obstacle for big business, they certainly aren't suitable for the (mostly) volunteers at Misplaced Pages. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:34, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

As someone who has been a member of two British national committees on standards, which like all such committees, ultimately input to ISO standards, I could say a lot about this. The problem has been that although many members of such committees are unpaid volunteers – like Misplaced Pages editors – and others are supported by their companies, there is a real cost to coordinating across many countries and agreeing standards. Previously governments gave financial support, but in the last 15 years or so this subsidy has increasingly been withdrawn as part of the current "neoliberal" consensus, so both national standards organizations and ISO have to charge more. I don't see this as a good reason not to support internationally agreed standards; at the base level, they are dependent on volunteers. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:40, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

For me, this isn't about philosophy, it's about practicality. Standards, and ISO 8601 is a superb example of this, often have gotchas that will ensnare those who do not have access to the standard, because examples they find in sources or popular summaries they come across only deal with common everyday situations; dates in the 20th or 21st centuries, minutes which contain 60 minutes rather than 61, etc. The unwary misuse the standard because they try to apply it to a case where a gotcha governs.

In my mind, standards committees should ask themselves who will need to read the standard. If the answer is megacorporations, go ahead with their normal pricing strategies. If the answer is everyone who writes, they need to either develop a way to distribute the standard for free on the internet, or disband the committee and let some organization that does have an appropriate price structure do it.

The National Fire Protection Association is an example of an organization that has finally made the National Electrical Code available for free on the internet. The free version is less convenient to use than the printed or CD-ROM versions, but at least people who can't afford to buy the printed version or hire an electrician will have a lower chance of burning to death or being electrocuted. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:02, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Hm, I don't think the ISO standards are more difficult to obtain or more expensive than f.e. ANSI, DIN, ETSI, or many other standards. I don't think we should avoid it simply because it isn't a free download (Google will still find many places, where you can download it inofficially) - our ISO 8601 article has all that is needed for our purposes. Also, we should not invent a new name for it, and just call the YYYY-MM-DD format an ISO 8601 format (because that's what it is) or simply the international date format. We don't have to allow all other format variations to call it an ISO 8601 format.

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 14:18, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

I must disagree with you, Peter. I suggest that people's finding YYYY-MM-DD hard to parse is a very good reason not to use it. This format is unfamiliar to most English speakers (i.e. enWP's audience) and, yes, this is exactly because we in general don't have much experience of the format. Thus it is in no way "natural" whether in a chronological table/list or elsewhere. Jimp 00:10, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

• Any date with the month spelt out (whether in full or abbreviated) is disambiguated, by definition. Even in cultures that follow year-month-day order when using Gregorian dates seem to necessarily specify which one is the year, month and day (e.g. 2001年9月11日). Clearly, as has been demonstrated by JC3, we have not adopted any ISO standard nor is it appropriate that we did. We should simply ditch this machine language that is confusing to ordinary folk. -- Ohc _{¿que pasa?} 01:35, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
  • I call bullshit on the confusion aspect, because, to someone that is used to mdy, dmy will be just as confusing at first, and same for a dmy experiencing mdy, and thus that should give us the reason to standardize on or the other (which of course is not a smart decision). The ISO-like format takes the same amount of minimal time to understand as learning the opposite prose-friendly date style. I do support removing ISO-like dates from the body of an article (unless of course it is the subject of discussion), including from lists and tables, since in reading prose, the ISO-like dates break up the flow significantly, and the issues of sorting are readily dealt with using templates or other coding schemes. I just can't support its removal on the aspect of reader confusion, since that reasoning suggests standardizing the MOS to one specific style for all other factors like dates, spelling, etc. for all others, and that is not a direction we're going. --MASEM (t) 02:09, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

I agree that any date format you're not familiar with is confusing. (I still get muddled by a few websites I have to use to buy things which use US date order.) But the yyyy-mm-dd order isn't inherently more difficult than any other system; travellers to Canada seem to cope with it ok – millions must fill in Canadian custom forms each year which require this format.

We all agree that it shouldn't be used in text. I personally wouldn't use it in a vertical list or a table, but I don't agree that the MOS should be changed to prevent editors doing this if they want to. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:32, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

At least we should be grateful that we haven't adopted one of the slash-separated dates. -- Ohc _{¿que pasa?} 15:51, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

For good reason, because that can be immediately confusing. "8/9/2013" can be read in two ways (unlike dmy, mdy, or ISO-like) and should be avoided at all costs (save when talking about the slash-date format itself). --MASEM (t) 16:01, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

My doctor recently wrote 9/12/2013 on an appointment slip; meaning neither "9th December" nor "12th September", but, it transpired, "the 9th month" of 2013. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:16, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

The Canadian customs forms (I'm sure ... it's been a while but ...) make it clear to the traveller what they have to put in which box. Suppose you're filling in your address on a form with boxes for country, state, city, suburb then street; I'm sure you'd manage though it's not a familiar way of writing your address in English. Whilst we're at it, let's stop to consider this Canadians-use-ymd notion, how true is it? Okay, you might see it on a few forms and on cheques but the most common format by far in Canada is mdy (sometimes you see dmy).

It's true that anything you're not used to can get you perplexed. Suppose mdy is what you're used to you may well be just as puzzled with your first experience of dmy as you would be with your first experience of ymd ... but if the month is spelt out (or abbreviated) the dmy date might be easier to figure out. Suppose dmy is what your used to, that'd be a similar story. What if ymd is what your used to? ... Hang on what country are we talking about now? How about we talk about this country (the English-speaking country I'm in right now)? I recall being completely familiar with both dmy and mdy (with the month spelt out) even as a kid; I'd never seen ymd before went oversees. I'm suggesting that English speakers are in general familiar with dmy and mdy but not so much ymd. Yes, a new format can be vexing at first, of these three formats, though, which is more likely to be presenting the reader with a new experience if used on a WP page?

With respect to changing the MOS to prevent people from using ymd, there is another way of looking at it. People might still use ymd even though the MOS disallows it, just as people might type in numerals where the MOS says to spell the number out or might use US units without converting them. Nobody is organising witch hunts for MOS rule breakers. I'm saying let us be allowed to go and improve the article by converting to dmy or mdy. Should I not be allowed to make a table more readable? The current guideline says I am not. Jimp 10:56, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

The MOS doesn't allow me to make all sorts of edits that I think would improve an article (using single quotes for scare quotes for example). But the point is that Misplaced Pages is an international cooperative enterprise, and so requires compromise and tolerance of variation. YYYY-MM-DD is a legitimate style and should be allowed in appropriate contexts. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:04, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

(Edit conflict)

While I do agree that we should avoid to use the YYYY-MM-DD format in normal prose in the article body (as it may still disturb some readers' flow), I do not agree with disallowing it in tables, lists and references.

First of all, there are many places in Misplaced Pages, where the YYYY-MM-DD format is presently used in tables, lists and references, so, obviously, many editors and readers are accustomed to it.

The format is not intrinsically more difficult to parse or spell than one of the other formats - that's just a matter of personal preferences and what someone is used to. As an European (being taught the "dmy" format), I have learnt to parse and spell both, the "US" format as well as the "ISO" format. Personally, I still find the "mdy" format totally illogical and impractial and always wonder how/why someone came up with it in the first place - but things happen and we get used to them. ;-) If I would have to ditch one date format from Misplaced Pages, it would certainly be "mdy" in all its forms. (No, I'm not proposing this - it's about tolerance - and as I wrote, one gets used to it.)

As for parsability, I think the ISO format is even easier to parse and understand for humans that other forms. Many people have some (mild) difficulties associating month names with their actual numbers (in particular for "May", "Jun" and "Jul"); there's always an extra step necessary to "translate" those mnemonics into the actual numerical dates, which can then be used for calculations. (What's the span between "Nov" and "Jun" or between "Sep" and "Jul"? versus: "11-6" or "9-7"?) Also, for people, who's first language isn't English, there's another "translation" process involved for text formats. Nothing difficult, but it's there and it presents a potential risk to mix up a date accidently - a risk we can reduce or even avoid. We all know, that this is not hypothetical, this was a real and quite common problem in international communications before the shift towards the ISO format.

That's why numerical date and time formats are much preferable over text formats in anything but prose, in particular in tables, lists and references. There's no translation needed. However, since the other two common numerical formats DD.MM.YYYY and MM/DD/YYYY are highly ambiguous in an international context, we have, for very good reasons, settled for the third one, YYYY-MM-DD, which is not some obscure format (as some try to put it), but follows a long established international standard (ISO 8601 and its predecessors) and, besides being per se unambiguous and easily understandable by both, machines and humans, it also has a number of other benefits: A compact and stringent format without any unnecessary syntactical clutter and with digits aligned as per their corresponding weights, it also has the inherent advantage that the digits are ordered as we write numbers naturally (useful for calculations and for possible expansion on both ends of the number/date), and that dates sorted alphabetically will be presented in chronological order automatically. This makes manual searching, comparing and sorting dates in lists and tables much more easy than using text formats, in particular, if full dates are mixed with incomplete dates (that is, dates with only the year, or only the year and month given - see example 2). As pointed out already, it also makes international communication and information exchange much easier and reduces the risk of errors in the transmission (Misplaced Pages is an international project).

• Example 1 (full dates, sorted):

2013-01-07				10 Aug 2013				Apr 3, 2013
2013-04-03				3 Apr 2013				Aug 10, 2013
2013-08-10				7 Jan 2013				Jan 7, 2013

• Example 2 (incomplete dates, sorted):

2012-01-07				10 Aug 2013				2013
2013				2013				Apr 2013
2013-04				3 Apr 2013				Apr 3, 2013
2013-04-03				7 Jan 2012				Aug 10, 2013
2013-08-10				Apr 2013				Jan 7, 2012

"Sortable tables" are a nice goodie, but they are no solution here, as they only work with JavaScript enabled. Many people have JavaScript disabled for security/privacy reasons, or simply because their browsers don't support it at all. Enforcing JavaScript on readers is considered "impolite" and "unprofessional", therefore Misplaced Pages shouldn't attempt it.

Regarding templates, it's good that we have them (for other purposes), but I don't consider them a solution here as well, unless the templates would support the YYYY-MM-DD format as *output* as well, and the users could define their desired output format in their preferences.

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 14:18, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

In South Africa YYYY-MM-DD is widely used. In accordance with WP:ENGVAR any prohibition of the use of YYYY-MM-DD comes into conflict with WP:ENGVAR. Martinvl (talk) 09:17, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes, according to our Date format by country article yyyy/mm/dd is common in South Africa. Note, however, the slashes as opposed to hyphens making it not quite yyyy-mm-dd. Also, there is a bit of a problem with this: the refs for this are broken external links. On the other hand, Date and time notation in South Africa claims that South Africa signed up to use ISO 8601 but being one of the original seventeen signatory nations to the Metre Convention the United States has technically adopted the metric system. I wonder whether South Africans really do use ymd in everyday life. Note also that the 2011 census found that English was spoken at home by only 9.6% of South Africans. So I wonder whether YYYY-MM-DD is widely used amongst South African speakers of English. Jimp 09:38, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Date format is unrelated to the metric system (unless Jimp just means that government endorsement of a standard or system does not necessarily mean it will be used in everyday life). I note that the Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg, online version) uses the format "02 Sep 2013". Jc3s5h (talk) 12:14, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that is what I meant. Jimp 03:53, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Spelling

I've noticed that the words metre/meter and kilometre/kilometer are spelt both ways in the policy. Should we make the spelling consistent or let sleeping dogs lie? Michael Glass (talk) 15:07, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

The find function reveals the following:

• metre, 12 matches; meter, 5 matches
• kilometre, 4 matches; kilometer 1 match Michael Glass (talk) 15:14, 17 August 2013 (UTC)
• favour 1 match

As "consistency should be maintained within an article unless there is a good reason to do otherwise" I propose to change the other spellings to metre and kilometre. Please let me know if this raises any concern. Michael Glass (talk) 07:08, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure AmEng was the traditional variety for MOSNUM. -re might have crept in. I do think it should be regularised to -er. A note about the different spellings would be in order at the top of the units section, yes? Tony (talk) 08:05, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

I checked the earliest versions of MOSNUM - the American spelling "meter" was used. However care should be taken in making a blanket conversion to US spelling-

• The text "the Murray River is 2,375 kilometres (1,476 mi) long" should remain as it is because it is an Australian example
• The text "the Moon is 380,000 kilometres (240,000 mi) from Earth" should use the spelling of the article and if it is agreed that the default spelling should be American, then this item should be changed.

However before making any changes, lets see what the consensus is and once that consensus has been reached, write it to the Talk Page and, as suggested by Tony, a note at the top of the page. For my part, I am not going to oppose this page using US spelling as the default, but I am not going to do any of the work of the conversion. Martinvl (talk) 09:01, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

I have no problem in principle if we regularise the spelling one way or the other. However, Martin has pointed out one case where there would be a break in style if we regularise on US spellings. I know that the manual of style uses mainly US spellings and I don't see any harm in MOS having US spellings and MOSNUM with the alternative. In fact it would demonstrate that Misplaced Pages does not take sides in matters of spelling. I think we need to get consensus before making a change. If consensus cannot be reached, then I guess we would have to let sleeping dogs lie. Michael Glass (talk) 09:45, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

"the Murray River is 2,375 kilometres (1,476 mi) long"—I'd choose another example if it grates. But the clause could come from an article written in AmEng on river lengths worldwide. Tony (talk) 09:53, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

This guide covers an encyclopedia that accepts various national varieties of English on an article-by-article basis. So we could decide upon American or British spelling. But even if we did, any example, even a made-up example, could be imagined as an example from an American English article, or a British English article. So if we decide on a variety of English for this article, I think we should leave all examples as they are. Jc3s5h (talk) 09:55, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

The idea that this guideline should be "consistent" in its selection of ENGVAR seems to hinge on viewing it as an "article", which it clearly is not. There might be an case for explicitly noting which ENGVAR is illustrated in each example used. I notice also that template:convert/doc indicates that both variants are supported by that template. LeadSongDog come howl! 12:35, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Murray River ... rethink ... it's a quote, isn't it. So there's no need for it to be in any other variety than AusEng. Tony (talk) 14:04, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

As far as I can see, there appears to be no consensus on what to do about the inconsistency in spelling I've pointed out. I've suggested British spelling, two others have suggested American spelling, one has said that the examples of usage can use any spelling and one has argued that the policy on consistency doesn't apply as this isn't an article. (I think that was the intended meaning.) At this point I'm not sure what to do. I don't feel that it's appropriate to leave the article as it is but I certainly don't feel that if I regularised it to either British or American spelling that this would satisfy all. Perhaps someone else could come up with a proposal that might gain support. Michael Glass (talk) 02:50, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

I think the body text should be consistent with the rest of the MoS, but I‘d just as soon leave the heterogenous examples; for one thing, they serve as a reminder that the guidance is applicable to both/all varieties of English.—Odysseus1479 07:23, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

That sounds like an opinion in support of applying American spelling. Is that right? Michael Glass (talk) 12:30, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes concerning the body text, presuming that’s normal for MoS pages in general and despite my personal preference; not necessarily in examples, especially if they’re drawn from Br/Can/AusE articles, as if they were quotations; No in the table where SI unit names are presented in both international and US spellings.—Odysseus1479 01:57, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Request for rule interpretation: WP:ERA

The guidelines at WP:ERA were rewritten last year following lengthy discussions on this page that wrapped up in mid-June 2012. The aims of the project included reducing the amount of edit warring occurring over era-dating style and discouraging casual changes from being made unilaterally, by requiring consensus. An anonymous editor, using two IP addresses, recently forced an era-dating style change into the article Judea—see edit history for 5-6 August 2013—on the basis that the article’s original 2002 style was changed in 2006 without consensus. I argued that a new consensus would be needed based on the current guideline. Any reference at WP:ERA to retaining the adopted style of an article’s original editor was dropped years ago. The style in this article (BCE/CE) had been stable for seven years. No content-related justification was given for changing it now. I called in vain for consensus to be sought through discussion. After two rounds of reverting I stepped aside lest I be accused of edit warring.

I should think that seven years is long enough for the style in the article to become "established". Consistent with the present text and meaning of WP:ERA, who is correct, and what should be done? If enforcement should be necessary, what is the proper channel? Hertz1888 (talk) 03:47, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

I agree completely that we need more specific guidance. I've reverted back. With the IP's interpretation and article could have been created in 2002 with BC or BCE, changed the next day with a 2nd edit, but reverted today on the grounds there was no discussion over the 2nd edit. With an IP hopper you can only semi-protect. With others, it would depend partially on their edit pattern. Dougweller (talk) 07:05, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

No diff provided? Tony (talk) 07:52, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Looks more like 2004. A quick check shows a couple of BC's or AD's in later versions and one edit that made it all AD/BC but this randomly chosen edit it late 2006 is all CE/BCE. Dougweller (talk) 09:47, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

The reversion on 22 August didn't last long before IP attack resumed. Consequently, the article was semi-protected for two weeks (expiring 5 Sept.). Continued vigilance will be needed for that particular article; perhaps renewed protection. For general purposes, I would like to see that "more specific guidance" written into WP:ERA. The present text there is skimpy and leaves too much unsaid and ambiguous. Putting more substance into it would provide much-needed clarity usable in resolving (or avoiding) disputes. Hertz1888 (talk) 01:17, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Please take the foregoing as an invitation to discuss enhancements of the stated policy. How should such additions or changes be worded? Hertz1888 (talk) 06:44, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

numbers as figures

Could someone give an example of this problem? I assume that in this context "since" means "because". But it is not obvious ho this ambiguity could arise. For example, if I write There were 1200. 700 would have been sufficient., how could this be misread as There were 1200.700 would have been sufficient.? 75.210.21.191 (talk) 04:45, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Most people in developed countries educated after about 1990 do not put two spaces after periods. Even if they do, Misplaced Pages presents it as a single space. People have several windows open on a typical computer screen, and a few moments ago may have been looking at a monospaced font that doesn't do a particularly good job of centering periods between the adjacent characters. So I do believe there is a potential for ambiguity. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:02, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

I think it’s worth pointing out that the risk of ambiguity should be considered broadly in this context, meaning anything that might cause a reader to stumble, however briefly. That a careful parsing of the sentence(s) allows for only one sensible interpretation is no excuse for leaving potential obstacles or ‘red herrings’ in the path; the best style is transparent, minimizing the effort required to extract the sense of the writing. If the spelled-out number is unwieldy (“Seven hundred“ being less so than e.g. “Seven hundred and forty-six“), there’s always the option to recast such that the figure appears elsewhere than the beginning of the sentence.—Odysseus1479 20:06, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

This is addressed in just about any style guide you care to name (Chicago, Strunk & White, etc.). It's usually awkward to have a number as the subject of the sentence anyway. Re-cast the sentence if necessary. Kortoso (talk) 23:31, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

YYYY-MM-DD (ISO 8601) in All Scopes

I'd like to suggest allowing this date format in all scopes, rather than limiting it to "references, tables, lists or areas where conciseness is needed."

• It's arguably the most unambiguous format (by virtue of starting with the year, it can't be misread as "American" MM-DD-YYYY when it's actually "European" DD-MM-YYYY, or vice versa).
• Its big-endian format mirrors decimal numbering.
• Its worldwide adoption keeps increasing, thanks perhaps to its use by computers, the military, and the ISO.

I'm not suggesting it be listed as preferred, only as acceptable. Thank you. Startswithj (talk) 01:52, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

There has been no end of discussion on the matter. Please check talk archives. -- Ohc _{¿que pasa?} 02:35, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

When Startswithj wrote "'American' MM-DD-YYYY when it's actually 'European' DD-MM-YYYY" I wonder if the editor meant all numeric dates, for example, 9-5-2013 or 5-9-2013. If so, these are already forbidden, so the reason for the change does not exist. Jc3s5h (talk) 04:02, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Can you give some examples of adoption increasing? I'd love to see it happen, as I'm a big supporter – I just haven't seen any increase in usage. —— 07:27, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

MusicBrainz use YYYY-MM-DD see (top right in desktop mode) . Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:51, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

The simplest reasons to avoid ISO dates in running prose is that it breaks the reading process with an unnatural format. I realize not everyone reads "verbally", but even having the ISO date requires one to pause to flip around. There are times where dates are being presented inter-sentence as data, but more often than not, dates as process lead off a sentence ("On January 1, 2013, this happened...") or used in other adverb-like phrasing, and there just make the ISO inclusion needlessly complicating the sentence. Hence why preferable to avoid the format in running process. --MASEM (t) 13:00, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

I wouldn't disagree that the majority of English speakers read and speak dates primarily as either "on January one, twenty thirteen" or "on one January twenty thirteen" (perhaps swap "first" for "one," and/or add "the" and/or "of" around the day). But I have heard (and I personally read and speak) "on twenty thirteen January one" (or "…first"). Being US-born, the little-endian model gives the slightest pause to my reading…and being a traveler and sometime programmer, the middle-endian ("American") model gives the slightest confusion to my comprehension.

I realize no single person's preference nor any anecdote counts for much, and we can't serve every reader perfectly. The manual does say "acceptable" however, not "preferable." Startswithj (talk) 18:31, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

• Too much choice is dangerous. It's like the proverbial genie. Let it out of the bottle, and although most people will not use it, it will end up running our lives. Once it's made optional, it's one more format to manage and maintain. There will always be those who insist it is de rigeur on articles they work on. Then will begin the edit warring and never-ending jostling for the validity of the format. -- Ohc _{¿que pasa?} 18:51, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

The problem with this argument is that it ends up with "only those choices preferred by ". However, I do agree that the best compromise is the current one: allow its use in tables and "bare" lists but not in running text. However, this is a compromise that needs to be respected by both "sides" (am I ever hopeful!). Peter coxhead (talk) 08:45, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

May I add URL access-dates to that list. Using YYYY-MM-DD consistently in an article allows the reader to quickly differentiate between access-dates and publication dates. Martinvl (talk) 11:35, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Being a proponent of YMD everywhere, I for one obviously would not object to what I think you propose. Startswithj (talk) 01:11, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

It's not a natural format for most English speakers. I'd rather it not be used at all on WP. Jimp 10:57, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Being a proponent of the ISO 8601 format as well, I would, of course, support a change to allow the yyyy-mm-dd format everywhere. However, previous discussions have shown that some people are attempting to overturn even the long established consensus which allows the yyyy-mm-dd format to be used in lists, tables and references. I don't think it would be a good idea trying to defeat one extreme position by another, therefore I think the current consensus to allow the yyyy-mm-dd format in list, tables and references, but not in prose (except for if the article must use this format for some reason), is a good and working consensus. The number of people accustomed to ISO 8601 is constantly increasing, and there will be no turning back the more we get interconnected, so, in the long run the English Misplaced Pages will have to allow the yyyy-mm-dd format in prose as well for simple reasons of practicability, but apparently it is still too early for this to happen now. I think, it will happen naturally and noone will have reasons to object any more in a couple of years, so there is no reason to push it, IMHO. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 12:16, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Script-assisted conversion of Retrieved YYYY-MM-DD

User:Ohconfucius converts YYYY-MM-DD to dmy or mdy without regard to previous usage and the Archived or Retrieved context. Yesterday I restored Black Ships Before Troy, Double Act (novel), and Elidor. Just now I restored Over Sea, Under Stone and Northern Lights (novel).

Judging by the current report of Ohconfucius contributions I suppose that the abuse is massive. Those five articles were 3 of 4 and 2 of 3 among (only) seven script-assisted conversions by Ohconfucius on my watchlist these two days.

2013-09-10. Today there were 12 script-assisted revisions by Ohconfucius on my watchlist, 9 including the abuse of MOS:NUM discussed here. (continued with repetition and outdent far below -P64)

I restored manually, rather than revert, because the new versions include other changes, some welcome and more important, such as undoing the mix of '-is-' and '-iz-' spellings is certainly welcome. But I am concerned by the massive unlinking of terms such as children's book and fantasy from {{infobox book}} or {{infobox writer}} and from lead sentences. This is now hotly debated at Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style/Linking#Overlinking overdone. (The five cases reported here are book articles on successful British children's novels and the last three named are fantasy.)

"Script-assisted fixes per WP:TIES, MOS:NUM, MOS:CAPS, MOS:LINK" is the Edit summary used by Ohconfucius, automatically, I infer. Evidently the four references cover what has been checked on every page of the run.

Initially I thought GoingBatty was the owner of a robot, or whatever, and the revision discussed below was fully automated. (Edit summary: "date formats per WP:MOSNUM by script"). In the diffs I saw nothing but 50-odd date-format conversions and the insertion of dated template {{mdy}} on line one.) --P64 (talk) 18:37, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

User:GoingBatty converted all YYYY-MM-DD to mdy in our biography Frederick Pohl (timely version) a few days ago, probably more than 50 including dozens of retrieved dates. I simply reverted with summary requesting restriction to publication and vital dates, not Retrieved/accessdate. I will notify that use because the edit summary was promptly buried and its content is important.

--P64 (talk) 16:31, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

An early (February 2007) version of the "Fredrik Pohl" article brings up an interesting question. Since the article had mixed usage in the citations when GoingBatty converted it to mdy, it makes sense to try to find the earliest established usage. The February 2007 version has one reference, dated October 2000. Is it appropriate to mix publication dates consisting of a spelled out month and a year with YYYY-MM-DD formatted publication dates? It looks uncouth to me. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:31, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

This would be the type of case where if one or more publication dates cannot be put into the YYYY-MM-DD format, then all other pub dates (NOT accessdates) should be converted to the mdy/dmy style that is being used otherwise. "October 2000" works in either of those systems, but there's no "iso-like" equivalent (one could argue that this would be "2000-10" but that's really vague comared to YYYY-MM-DD.) --MASEM (t) 19:50, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

The reference section of Frederik Pohl has dates in three different formats. If they were all consistent, I would not have edited the article at all. I hope you'll pick the format you like best for this article per MOS:DATEUNIFY and make the date formats consistent. Happy editing! GoingBatty (talk) 02:24, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

The publication dates are very much inconsistent (and missing in several cases) so that's a point to unify but it also appears you edited the accessdates which are universally YYYY-MM-DD here, and shouldn't have been touched. That's the danger with using scripts that don't distinguish between these two. --MASEM (t) 05:05, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

FYI, the accessdates on references 41-45 are in mdy format. GoingBatty (talk) 13:48, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

In fact there were not five in the timely version (which I now also link above), merely 2 of 30 retrieved dates, both one-day-old work by User:Drbogdan (diffs -09-03 18:07). Drbogdan returned some time after my restoration and converted five in the course of other "refs adjs" (diffs -09-05 16:43).

FWIW - please understand that, thanks to P64, I'm only now aware of this discussion - ie, I was not aware of the issue at the time of my referenced edits above in the Frederick Pohl article - please understand, as well, that I'm fully supportive of the present efforts to improve Misplaced Pages - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 16:47, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Last weekend there were perhaps 40 references and 25 retrieved dates, all YYYY-MM-DD.

Pohl died Monday -09-02, now five days ago, and much activity promptly followed here, including next day insertion of two references with "September 3, 2013" retrieved dates. Next day -09-04, the robot converted the other 30 to mdy.

After reverting the mass change, far too much to do manually, I provided an Edit summary suggesting that the robot re-consider the publication and vital dates alone, for I had reconciled the two new retrieved dates manually.

(As I have now reconciled the five manually.) --P64 (talk) 15:07, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

FYI, I'm not a robot. :-) GoingBatty (talk) 17:27, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Sorry about that. See you at the biography talk.

Thanks for the oily-on-troubled-waters words, Drbogdan. --P64 (talk) 18:37, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

I tried to be *entirely* ok in my post - I apologize if I inadvertently, perhaps by being very new to the issue discussed, presented something that could have been better - it was not at all intended - in any case - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 20:57, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Refer to my first two paragraphs at the top.

Today there were 12 script-assisted revisions by Ohconfucius on my watchlist, 9 including the abuse of MOS:NUM discussed here. I fixed seven manually (restored YMD) and reverted two that were massive in scale (The Dark is Rising Sequence, The Graveyard Book). It's a pace I can't maintain.

The other changes, associated with conversion of Retrieved dates are generally welcome of course, presuming that the script and its user are sound on Engvar details. --P64 (talk) 20:40, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

I wasn't going to bring this up, but it appears that if I don't, these MOS problems will persist. User:Ohconfucius and his edits, were the subject of a different discussion last week at Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Film. Although he began the thread, the problem was that he was changing the date formats and spellings of films made through US production companies to DMY dates and British spellings, based solely on the fact that the director happened to be British. See the edit history of A Chorus Line (film) for partial evidence. Although he never agreed to stop making the changes I made it clear that if he continued to change dates and spellings on articles against Misplaced Pages guidelines such as WP:RETAIN and WP:DATERET, I would make a report at WP:ANI and perhaps ask for a formal topic ban. He has made two such changes since then, that I am aware of. I think that with that problem plus this one, we may need to discuss this as an incident with administrators, since he is obviously unwilling to stop. JOJ 21:27, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

I will note that while this strictly does not fall into the context of Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Date delinking (which was about removing linking of dates), we are talking about similar behavior that OC was noted for in that case. And I know he's been warned before (I've done it once) about careless use of his script to convert dates claiming "normalization". ANI is possibly the right direction. --MASEM (t) 21:47, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Being a proponent of allowing wider YMD usage, I would support any effort to stop such date changes described above executed by the offending editor in question and/or their robot. Startswithj (talk) 01:16, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

YYYY-MMM-DD Format

I'd like to suggest adding year-month-day format—with the month spelled as its three-letter abbreviation—to the list of acceptable, non-prose usages. This option has an advantage of being even less ambiguous than using numbers for months. It also aligns well if listing dates, due to the uniform length of abbreviations and digits. Its listing might also prevent a confusion I myself had earlier in the conversation above.

Cursorily I can point to:

• Calendar_date's listing of the YYYY-MMM-D format and its partial use in Canada and Eastern Asia.
• A paper by Dr Markus Kuhn of Cambridge (http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html) citing partial usage in Eastern Asia and Northern Europe.
• A paper by Ian Galpin of MIT (http://web.mit.edu/jmorzins/www/iso8601/y2kiso.htm) citing usage by astronomers and occasionally other scientists.

Thank you, Startswithj (talk) 23:01, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

I do not support additional formats for dates that are not part of citations; we have enough, and the ones we have are the most natural for English-speaking people.

However, WP:CITE allows one to follow printed style guides, several of which are named. Some of these call for other date formats in particular situations, including APA Style's endorsement of "2013, September 7" for publication date; I am unaware of any citation style guide that would call for the format suggested by Startswithj. I believe following established style guides should be allowed to facilitate the use of citation management software that supports these styles. (An RfC trying to determine whether date format in citations is controlled by WP:CITE or WP:MOSDATE was inconclusive.) Jc3s5h (talk) 23:43, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Such a format would be very rare in Canada. East Asia is irrelevant. I would not support allowing this format. Jimp 10:52, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Falklands units

Kindly take note that there is currently a discussion at Misplaced Pages:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject South America/Falkland Islands work group/Units. -- Ohc _{¿que pasa?} 09:42, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

There is a similar discussion on the Falkland Islands talk page. Michael Glass (talk) 13:43, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

kB (or kbit/s) or KB is not ambigious

Please consider joining the feedback request service. An editor has requested comments from other editors for this discussion. This page has been added to the following lists: Misplaced Pages style and naming Maths, science, and technology When discussion has ended, remove this tag and it will be removed from the lists. If this page is on additional lists, they will be noted below.

For purposes of writing English Misplaced Pages articles, does ambiguity exist about whether kB means 1000 bytes and KB means 1024 bytes? 16:35, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

See recent revert of my edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Misplaced Pages%3AManual_of_Style%2FDates_and_numbers&diff=573344515&oldid=573336953 "BINARY PREFIXES ARE CONTROVERSIAL; I DEMAND RFC BEFORE THIS IS CHANGED"

I think I'm following protocol, not sure if there is another one for WP namespace. If he means RFC=Request for Comments then feel free to share your opinion. If people take a deep breath and read the section as I changed it, and Kilobyte and maybe the discussion on my talk-page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/User_talk:Comp.arch#kB_vs_KB

They will see that it is a good change. I know kilobyte is ambigious and megabyte, but written down, just as kbit/s = 1,000 b/s, and KB = 1024 B and the recent change to decimal kilobytes mandated kB=1000 B. The binary prefixes are only "controversial" for MB and up. comp.arch (talk) 16:30, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

I consider kB and KB to be ambiguous because the main standard that serious, academically-oriented organizations refer to, IEC 60027, has not been widely accepted by the popular media, popular software, or manufacturers. Thus there is a vacuum for authoritative statements on this matter.

Also, when statements are made concerning disk files, sometimes base 10 is used and other times binary-related sizes are used, making it hard to tell from context which is intended.

I have not found a quality source that has performed a survey of current use of these terms and can make a definite statement about how these terms are generally used. I must say I discount all positive statements made by editors who have not provided impressive sources to back them up. Measurements are fraught with ambiguity. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:01, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Considering kB to be ambiguous is rather contrived, but KB most definitely is ambiguous. So changing kB to KB where 1024 B is meant seems justified, but changing the MOS as proposed is not. −Woodstone (talk) 17:21, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

I didn't use a should and mentioned "They are however sometimes mixed up but need not be." But if I know 1000 bytes is meant or 1024 bytes is meant, what should I you do? I see nothing wrong with pointing people to kB and KB (or KiB, it's just not recommented) - if they are not ambigious, as I thought. I think all OSs have changed to kB and decimal now (or use KB for binary). No one officially mixes this up right? comp.arch (talk) 17:58, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

k/K is ambiguous. Enough said.Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 19:23, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

See, Kilobyte, I and DrSeehas (thanks) recently edited it, and I tried to make it clear that people mix it up (especially when it always meant KB (1024), but just as people mix up mHz and MHz and are wrong, we should not say that it is ambigious when people are just wrong (and the JEDEC standard and IEC never use k with binary or K with decimal). WP:COMPUNIT should use a should in my opinion, but I didn't even dare to go there only not mislead people into thinking they are ambigious, see the edit. comp.arch (talk) 22:00, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

"statements are made concerning disk files", I don't worry to much about accuracy there. I just hate seeing kB in hardware context, such as CPU cache sizes. It is just wrong there and nothing wrong with using kB only in decimal context. comp.arch (talk) 22:24, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

At present, the MOS explicitly recommends to use a capital "K" prefix for binary units (1024), as this is what is meant most of the time when someone writes "KB" (probably because this is what is typically used in operating system messages dealing with memory or file sizes rather than speeds). It is also standardized in JEDEC. (Alternatively, the IEC "Ki" prefix can be used for binary units, but since this form is not widely used outside sciences we allow it only in certain rather specific scenarios as detailed in the MOS.) So far, so good.

What is still missing - and we should therefore add it - is the opposite recommendation to use a lower-case "k" prefix when the decimal unit (1000) is meant. While this won't solve the potential ambiguity and we cannot enforce it, it would at least provide some guidance to editors running into the problem and having to make a decision. They may implicitly make this decision already given that we recommend a capital "K" for 1024, but I think it would be better, if we'd recommend it explicitly.

In the long run, this would help reduce the number of occurances where "kB" was used for binary units and "KB" for decimal units and the correct type cannot be determined out of the context of the article.

Such a recommendation wouldn't help the case for "M", "G", "T" etc (unless we would allow the IEC prefixes to be used for binary units more often), but since it wouldn't introduce any new inconsistencies either, let's at least improve the situation for "k"/"K" somewhat.

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 20:28, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

I am not advocationg changing anything about the other SI prefixes (binary prefixes in general), and agree to everything you say. I'm not sure what to do there or recommend. Maybe this is just a lost cause and I should not correct kB->KB where I think appropriate. People have reverted (or commented) and pointed to COMPUNITS. comp.arch (talk) 22:10, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

The MOS currently states:

Follow these recommendations when using these prefixes in Misplaced Pages articles:

• Specify if the binary or decimal meanings of K, M, G, etc. are intended as the primary meaning. Consistency within each article is desirable, but the need for consistency may be balanced with other considerations.

• A capital K can be used for "kilo-" when it means 1024 in computing contexts.

What, if we make this the first item in the list and change it as follows:

Follow these recommendations when using these prefixes in Misplaced Pages articles:

• Following the SI standard, a lower-case k should be used for "kilo-" whenever it means 1000 in computing contexts, whereas a capital K should be used instead to indicate the binary prefix for 1024 according to JEDEC. (If, under the exceptions detailed further below, the article otherwise uses IEC prefixes for binary units, use Ki instead).
• Do not assume that the binary or decimal meaning of prefixes will be obvious to everyone, therefore explicitly specify the meaning of k and K as well as the primary meaning of M, G, etc. in an article. Consistency within each article is desirable, but the need for consistency may be balanced with other considerations.

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 23:58, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

1. Some editors hold strong views for or against metrication in the UK. If there is disagreement about the main units used in a UK-related article, discuss the matter on the article talk-page, at MOSNUM talk, or both. If consensus cannot be reached, refer to historically stable versions of the article and retain the units used in these as the main units. Note the style guides of British publications such as Times Online (under "Metric").

• Misplaced Pages requests for comment