User talk:Gene Nygaard

For older talk, see

• User talk:Gene Nygaard/2004Dec-2005Apr (Litre,Special Fraction Characters, Deletion, merge, do nothing?, Edit summary, Mass is not weight, Middot, Ansari X Prize, Unicode code pages, Welcome to the Wikipedia, Aquarium volume, Balsam poplar, Significand, Death Valley National Park FAC, Magnetar distance units, Bot to undo damage by bot putting in U.S. census places, Thank you!, Degrees symbol, cm for height of people, Continental United States, BC / BCE dating convention, Europa (moon) edit, Units and nbsp, mid dot, Cheddar, Villages in Hong Kong. The bot thing, Devil's Lake, helium nonbreaking spaces, template:Infobox_U.S._state, California State Route 57, SuperCroc revert, Second/seconds, what is the least ugly in-line math in Planck units?, mass flow meter, Sequoia, Specific impulse)
• User talk:Gene Nygaard/2005May-2005Jun (Sugar substitute, Trinity anniversary, Slrubenstein debate, USS Mississinewa (AO-59), Gustav II Adolf-vote, merge Tonne?, PA 103, lots of edits, not an admin, Pounds force, Aircraft loaded weights, Camel, Aluminium)

Major cities in North Dakota

I'd like it if you'd place a vote at CFD [1]. I've made significant improvements to the implementation of the category, and have incorporated the "Largest cities" section of Template:North Dakota as a guideline for what constitutes "Major". --Alexwcovington (talk) 05:42, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

• Just to point out... you've made a comment but haven't actually voted yet. It's important that you cast a vote to keep the debate open. --Alexwcovington (talk) 00:07, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Pluto question

Hi, sorry to bother you, but you seem like you might know this. I realize this might sound silly, but I am trying to find out what the sun might look like to an observer on Pluto. Bigger than the other stars, sure, but would there be "daylight" way out there? Would there be much difference between day and night there?

Any thoughts, if you don't mind? Thanks much in advance. Ensiform 04:52, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! Ensiform 01:03, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Null edits

Thanks! That had me very puzzled. I'd seen comments around about null edits but not understood what they were. I've fixed that CfD now. -Splash 00:11, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

AT rifle

In accordance with your recent vote on the AT gun, I encourage you to move your account to User:Gene Newtown. Or perhaps you could propose some other idea at the respective talk page? Cheers, Halibutt 13:06, July 20, 2005 (UTC)

My signature

You will immediately re-read Wikipedia:No personal attacks, and withdraw the one you made from my talk page. ~~~~ 18:41, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Edits at -Ril-

I noticed some of your comments on his page, and I decided to revert them. However, I do agree with you, the man needs to change his signature. He has been warned by several other users of this (including myself) but refuses to cooperate. He's just as wrong as you are - but I'd advise you not to vandalize other peoples pages in the future, please. Dbraceyrules 20:29, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

support of infobox format

I'm not clear on why you're supporting the clearly inferior infobox format. If we use a list-based specifications template, the whole point is that it can easily be expanded in the future without adversely affecting older articles - in fact, they'd be updated to the new format.

What is your concern with our current implementation of the list format, and why have you not actually raised any of them with the project? Instead of supporting the infobox and keeping them to yourself, why not support the list, explain your current issues, and get those changes considered and quite probably implemented? eric ✈ 04:05, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

1. I don't see why you think there'd be any more difficulty in expanding an infobox than in expanding a list.
2. You don't use the advantages lists might have.
3. I like my information in columns. I don't care if it is an infobox covering part of the right of the page at the top, one going across the whole page at the bottom, with lines or without lines, with colors or without colors. I mostly just like the columns. Gene Nygaard 14:24, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

I'm awaiting your reply at the wikiproject talk page. In particular, you still haven't addressed what the 'advantages' are of a list. eric ✈ 17:38, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Why replace - (hyphen) with mdash ?

I was just wondering why ?

It seems like - is much easier to read while editing pages than mdash, which takes up far more space.

Let me know if there is some kind of method to this.

Re: AT-3 Sagger, AT-6 Spiral

Thanks.

Megapixie 13:07, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

There is some guidance on em dashes and en dashes at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dashes) and at the dash article. Then if you want to discuss particular examples, I'll try to explain how it looks to me. I imagine there will always be some cases where there is disagreement about what is the best way to do it. In those particular articles, I think dashes were overdone in any case. In some cases, it is better to replace them with a comma or semicolon or to make two sentences. Gene Nygaard 13:15, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

You live, you learn. Some days you learn more than others. Though I still think the choice of markup is terrible. -- and --- make much better choices for en and em. Anyway — be seeing you. Megapixie 14:16, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Hawker-Siddeley Hawk

In an editorial comment, you wondered if Hawker-Siddeley Hawk shouldn't be just Hawk. A little thought about the fact that initial letter capitalization is turned on in these English Wikipedia titles should tell you one primary reason why this wouldn't work, without even looking at the Hawk article. Gene Nygaard 12:23, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

I didn't like the patronising tone, but you're a non-native English speaker, so I'll let that go. When you leave school you'll find a hard and harsh world out there, and you can't go around throwing up temper tantrums; unless you're independently wealthy or expect to never depend on anyone else, ever.

Hawker-Siddeley Hawk is an anachronism. The article is about all models of what is now the BAE Systems Hawk. [2] BAE Systems refers to it as the 'Hawk'. [3]

The article itself initially describes the aircraft as the BAE Hawk, which is neither fish nor flesh; it should either be BAe Hawk or BAE Systems Hawk. I can understand the Hawker Hunter and so forth being so-called, but the Hawk is an ongoing product. Compare also with the articles on A4 Skyhawk and F-16 Fighting Falcon, which avoid this problem.

Similarly, the Harrier is problematic. Currently Wikipedia has articles on the BAE Sea Harrier, which is identified in its text as the BAE Systems Harrier FA2, the RAF Harrier II and AV-8 Harrier II, which are identified in their texts as the Harrier GR and Harrier II respectively.-Ashley Pomeroy 13:19, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Didn't even look at the Hawk article, did you, since you didn't even address the issue I raised?

I don't much care about your other arguments, unless and until you propose a name change I which case I may enter the fray. I was merely addressing the point you made in your edit summary.

BTW, I am a "native English speaker" and I "left school" when you were a baby. Gene Nygaard 15:09, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Talk:Kuril Islands dispute

Thanks for your interest in the ongoing discussion and voting. Due to the ongoing discussion, several other changes were also proposed. Your current oppose vote will be construed as opposing all suggested proposals. —Tokek 20:58, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

kb ppanc

Dear Gene, please be so kind as to finally reply to my questions and provide sources for your statements. Erasing the dispute tag will not end the dispute itself. Revert wars lead to nowhere and I really believe that there are some arguments behind your statements. However, so far you provided none... Halibutt 22:21, July 30, 2005 (UTC)

Also, please be so kind as to assume good faith. I'm not disputing the factual accuracy of your statements to make you nervous, you know. Halibutt

Gene, please, I beg you. Can't you simply stop this revert war and at least try to address my questions and plea for sources? I always thought you're a sensible contributor and a person able to discuss things rather than violate the rules of wikipedia and childishly and blindly revert pages to prove some point. Don't tell me I was wrong... Halibutt 14:45, July 31, 2005 (UTC)

Replacing templates with links

I noticed that every single article in the category had the same table it in, which doesn't make much sense to me since most of the time it wasn't even applicable. I put the table on its own page and had not seen it discussed, though one of the articles did have an attention tag on it. You can change it back to the way it was, I don't mind that much. A tiny amount of text followed by an enormous, nearly irrelevant table didn't seem very fitting, and the table itself was formatted in an unintuitive way.

Stone (weight)

Thanks for your attention to this article, Gene. I would maintain, though, that the "inconsistency" was in the wording rather than the facts, insomuch as the Imperial system of weights and measures is "former" (i.e. no longer official in the UK, Ireland, and Commonwealth), even though the stone remains in popular use. I hope my rewording of the article will have made this a little clearer. -- Picapica 00:35, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

How to handle contributions by user:69.164.70.243

I really have a hard time following up his contributions. I'm sure there may be much of value there, but I have a really hard time filtering out what is valuable, and what is, at best, original research. So I guess the easiest thing is simply to revert everything. But it is a lot of work. How do you suggest one handles this? -- Egil 14:21, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

I take it this has to do with ancient weights and measures and the pages split off from it and medieval weights and measures. Any others? I haven't really followed that, just noticed some activity with the vague idea that eventually we'd have to go in and do some cleanup work on it. I think you hit the nail on the head, but I haven't looked in detail at many of these changes. Are most of the recent ones by this contributor? I'll watch it for a while now, and take a look at hte pages as they stand now.and see if I have any better ideas. Gene Nygaard 15:39, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

I've given up, and posted this request: Wikipedia:AMA_Requests_for_Assistance#Pseudoscientific_attack. -- Egil 14:47, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

I noticed your removal of some of this at mile, and hadn't noticed any subsequent change back. I'll look at that and see if I can help out. Gene Nygaard 15:00, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Burninate

Dear Gene,

I am a reasonable man. If presented with a well thought argument as to why burninate does not belong in the "Fire and Culture" section of the Fire article, I will allow its permanent excision. However, if you simply remove it without discussion and explanation, then I have no choice but to return it to the article.

The course of action to be taken by both of us is entirely in your command.--ttogreh 18:05, August 8, 2005 (UTC)

Ancient weights and measures

rktect8/8/05

I'm curious Gene, why are you reverting the addition of references

to ancient weights and measures?

I'll ask you the same question as Egil

What's wrong with discussing things on the discussion page?

If you don't understand why I'm doing something why not ask?

"Sjømil" -- I beg to differ

In Norwegian, "sjømil" is always an Ole Rømer mile. "Kvartmil" is 1/4 sjømil, i.e. for practical purposes the same as a British (and later, international) Nautical mile. A "nautisk mil" is a Nautical mile. Talk to any sailor born in the first half of the 20th century - he will use the term "kvartmil", not "nautisk mil". See http://www.baatplassen.no/i/lofiversion/index.php/t14210.html (contains a quote on the subject from "Båtførerprøven", I'm sure I can dig up more refs if you like). If someone uses "sjømil" for a nautical mile, that would be wrong usage (probably by a landcrab). -- Egil 11:39, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Does this boat really go 120 knots or so? [4]

Is Lofoten over 400 1,600 nautical miles from the Arctic Circle? [5]

Altavista search "sjømil"[6] 8760 hits

nn:Mil: [[Sjømil]] (nautisk mil)

nn:1941: * 27. mai - Det tyske slagskipet Bismarck vert senka av engelske styrkar 500 sjømil vest av Brest i Frankrike.

• here under German battleship Bismarck: Bismarck rests at a depth of approximately 4,700 m (15,500 ft) about 650 kilometres west of Brest, France.

Einar Haugen, Norwegian-English Dictionary, 2nd printing 1967:

• sjø/mil ~et, pl - geographical mile, nautical mile.

You can tweak it, but any claim that "sjømil" is not used for the international nautical mile is nonsense. The term may not be used much in current usage, but when it is used in any nonhistorical context, it is not likely any of the four-minute-of-arc varieties of a mile.

BTW, those geographical miles were not strictly limited to nautical contexts. Somewhere, I have a copy of a map of the Randsfjord area that someone sent me from a book published in the 1930s, in which the scale in th elegend is or at least includes the "geografisk mil". Gene Nygaard 12:40, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Is this one correct in English? M/S Estonia

• "The location of the hull is at 59°23′N 21°42′E, about 22 nautical miles (41 km) on bearing 157° from Utö island, Finland."

compare no:MF Estonia

• "Den 28. september 1994 mellom kl. 00.55 og 01.50 (UTC+2) havarerte skipet med 989 mennesker ombord på posisjonen 59°23'N 21°42'E, 22 sjømil i 157° sørsørøst for den lille finske øya Utö."

Gene Nygaard 13:17, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Looks fine. I would have written "from the island of Utö", since "ö" in fact means island (so at least for a Scandinavian, the above would read island-island). And perhaps indicated the direction as "SSE"?

Anyway, thanks for the above marvelous example: If you follow the above link of "no:sjømil" in the Norwegian Wikipedia, you'll notice it says:

En sjømil er en måleenhet for lengde som er lik fire nautiske mil, altså 7 408 meter. Tidligere ble nautisk mil også kalt kvartmil fordi en nautisk mil er en kvart av en sjømil.

This is my point exactly. (It says a sjømil is exactly the same as four nautical miles). The usage in the article no:M/S Estonia is wholly incorrect (albeit regretfully common), it should have been no:nautisk mil.

Another thing, the article in question is about historic units. A century ago, or more, the current sjømil confusion was not there.

With regards to the "geografisk mil", it is interesting that you mention it. In Norway, "geografisk mil" for distances over land is now totally extinct, but it was obviously more commonly used before. But not that common, an unqualified "mil", and also "landmil", would always be 10km (or the pre-metric version). -- Egil 15:34, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

PS: In fixing the error in the no:M/S Estonia article, I noticed only one other wrong usage of sjømil. All other references I could find in the Norwegian (bokmål) Wikipedia was to no:nautisk mil. -- Egil¨

No, it's not "wrong". It's just wishful thinking on your part, to think that it wouldn't be used for a sea mile. It often is. Change it because sjømil is ambiguous in Norwegian, while nautisk mil is a neologism always applying to a one-minute-of-arc mile, usually the 1.852 km variety.

Of course, the sea mile as a geographical mile usually wasn't "exactly four nautical miles". That's a bigger error in the no: encyclopedia, and one that had the correct information in medieval weights and measures—it was usually based on the equatorial circumference—though I had to correct the number there, since that makes it about 7.421 km, rather than the 7.408 km exactly (the number contained in the bokmål entry too) for 4 international nautical miles, or about 7.412 km for the British Admiralty miles, or 7.4130 km for 4 of the old U.S. nautical miles, etc. Gene Nygaard 23:11, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

I believe we are probably in agreement, but we talk about different things. You claim that sjømil is being used for nautical mil. I don't dispute that, but what I say is that this usage is incorrect. Surely, an encyclopedia should describe correct usage. There is nothing wrong with mentioning the incorrect usage, especially if it is common, as long as it is labelled as such.

Wrt: references: I would not claim an English/Norwegian dictionary as a reference. What I dug up:

a. The text for "Båtførerprøven" (an official license, currently not compulsory, for driving a pleasure boat), 7422 m, ref above.

b. The online encyclopedia Caplex, says 4 nautical miles, 7408 m, http://www.caplex.net/web/artikkel/artliste.asp?funk=SOK&soketekst=sj%F8mil&S%F8k.x=0&S%F8k.y=0&S%F8k=S%F8k

c. The encyclopedia Aschehoug og Gyldendal, Store norske leksikon, 1983, says 4 kvartmil, 7408 m.

d. The encyclopedia Norsk Konversasjonsleksikon, Kringla Heimsins, 1933, says just 4 kvartmil = 4 nautiske mil, and referred to nautiske mil.

e. Interestingly, looking up nautiske mil, Kringla Heimsins of course says it is 1852 m. But, it also mentions that by a law of June 29, 1923, the term nautiske mil is the only legal unit for allowed for a ship's journal and other nautical documents, making the previously used kvartmil illegal.

My conclusion so far, is that most probably the sjømil was a geographic mile to begin with. It would seem highly probable that it was by the definition of the Ole Rømer mile, since Norway is in a union with Denmark at the time, but I would have to dig further to find good references. Anyway, it gradually was replaced by the nautical mile, which was called kvartmil (quarter mile). Perhaps, as a consequence, the sjømil became redefined as 4 nautical mile. Anyway, confusion could easily arise in this important area, hence the law that fixed the term nautisk mil, for which there is no confusion.

What I do know, is that houndred years ago the commonly used term was kvartmil, identical to a nautical mile.

What I also know, is that in 2005, the only correct term (even by law) is nautisk mil. I also know that there is much incorrect usage of sjømil around. This may be influenced by the Danish sømil and the German Seemeile, which both mean nautical mile, as far as I can tell. So if you want to add a sentence about this incorrect usage, thats fine. But the word sjømil in Norwegian certainly is obsolete. -- Egil 08:37, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

The encyclopedia www.storenorskeleksikon.no (subscription only) has 1875 as the cutoff. From that year, sjømil was 7408 m, and kvartmil was 1852 m. Before this, sjømil was 7420 m, and exactly the same as a geografisk mil. -- Egil 13:20, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Again, that backs up what I said; sjømil is ambiguous, without an official definition. Nautisk mil is a precisely defined neologism. The term "sea mile" is also used in English, like the Danish and German terms. The use of sjømil in Norwegian may be deprecated by some, but not pushed by anybody with enough authority to eliminate its use; and the modern as opposed to historical use is that synonym of nautisk mil.

That last bit doesn't seem credible to me. It may have become 4 nautical miles of some variety shorter than one-fourth of the equatorial geographical mile, but I'd be surprised if it were defined as 1852 m before the First International Extraordinary Hydrographic Conference of 1929. It is possible, but it doesn't seem likely. Gene Nygaard 13:34, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Your point about the defintion of the nautical mile is taken, and very interesting. In fact, once one goes into details, things get more complex. Note that since Norway was one of the pioneers of the international metric system, you should not rule out that Norway would work towards, and adopt as national standard, a meter based definition before it became internationaly adopted. This obviously needs to be pursued further. Trying to go beyond the simplified explanations in the encyclopedias, at this point, for the Norwegian sjømil, I have:

• Between 1683 untill 1824, it was defined as 12,000 (Danish) alen, i.e. an Ole Rømer geographic mile.
  • I think the relationship between that mile and the alen was always a measured quantity, though at some time the sea mile might have been redefined as slightly different from the equatorial geographic mile, to become 12,000 alen exactly. That's more like the fairly common use of the "2,000 yard" approximation of an English nautical mile. It didn't go the other way; the alen was never defined in terms of the geographical mile. Gene Nygaard 14:21, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
• In 1824, Norway made their own standard measure of length, defining a Norwegian fot as 12/38 of the length of a pendulum of a period of 1 second. What the practical implications for the sjømil were, I do not yet know.

[7]

• • At some point the conventional, and at least quasi-official definitions if not the primary standards, became 627.7 mm for the Danish alen and 627.48 mm for the Norwegian alen. This could have happened before adoption of the metric system (1907 in Denmark, much earlier in Norway); the U.S. yard has been defined in terms of the meter since 1893 (definition modified to worldwide standard in 1959), for example, 14 years before Denmark went metric. Gene Nygaard 14:21, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
• At some stage, after Norway had adopted the meter convention in 1875 (they were in fact one of the 12 members of the comittee), and had become fully metric in 1887, the sjømil was instead defined by a multiple of the meter. Again, exact details need to be investigated.
• The sjømil became obsolete as an official measure, and was replaced by nautisk mil, from June 29, 1923.

A redefinition in terms of meters before 1929 would not surprise me at all; it is only the choice of the exact number 1852 m which would surprise me. Note that the most logical redefinition would coordinate the different Earth-based measurements, by making both of them bear the same relationship to the actual dimensions of the Earth. To accomplish that, the nautical mile would be defined so that 1 km = 0.54 nmi. The reciprocal of that is 1 nmi = 1.851851851851... km. Gene Nygaard 14:05, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Relevant to the pre-1929 definition, see da:Dansk sømil (separate from da:sømil):

• Dansk sømil var i søfarten en længdeenhed på 1.851,11 m.
• En dansk sømil skal ikke forveksles med en International sømil på 1.852 m, selvom forskellen er på under 1 meter.

Gene Nygaard 14:37, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

With regards to the liguistic issue, and the authority of the Norwegian language, may I remind you that although any person, journalist or whatever, is of course totally free to adopt anything he likes and call it Norwegian language, the language has indeed an official definition. This definition must be followed in all schools, and in all official documents. The institution governing this is Norsk Språkråd. The Bokmålsordliste, which follow this official standard, has in the 2001 edition the following definition for sjømil:

sjømil -a el -en - -ene 4 nautiske mil, 7408 m

It really does not get more official that that. -- Egil 09:12, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

That is official enough to establish the existence of one definition, in one of the two Norwegian languages which spell it that way. Without any explicit statement, it is not in any way official enough to rule out any other definitions. After all, the purpose of this word list is to standardize spelling, not to define words. They don't need to list all the variants in meaning for that purpose. Gene Nygaard 13:32, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

This now seems to have ended up in a discussion just for the sake of the discussion. Undoubtedly, nynorsk has the same definition. I can look up the exact wording for you, if you promise it will help.

But secondly, I have gone to the trouble of looking up a good number of different, proper, reliable sources that says a Norwegian sjømil today is 7408 m. I have found no reliable source whatsoever claiming something else. (I would have told you if I did). So which is it:

1. All these sources are spreading misinformation, they do not know what they are talking about, and a Norwegian sjømil is 1852 m.
2. A Norwegian sjømil is by definition 7408 m. Using it for 1852 m is wrong. (And not that common: We have reviewed wikipeda.no and found 2 cases. Going through aftenposten.no I could only find 2, perhaps 3 cases. In one, they claimed the ship "John R" had drifted 11 sjømil. There were 101 hits for nautisk[e] mil.)
3. The Norwegian unit of measure sjømil can mean either 1852 m or 7408 m. (In which case most people would claim it was worthless as a unit of measure).
4. Something else.

-- Egil 14:21, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Re checking Wikipedia—I think you said you checked only no: and not nn:. See, for example, nn:Hav (compare HMS Challenger (1858)). Also, I'd guess that no:Radar is another, but vague enough it might be hard to prove. Gene Nygaard 15:12, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Don't get me wrong. I'm not claiming that you cannot find wrong usage of sjømil. You can find that by the bucket. My claim is that this is plain wrong (and misleading) usage of the word. Just like spelling: Even if you can find ten thousand cases of a particular misspelling of a word on Google, this does not make that particular misspelling correct. It just makes it common. -- Egil 15:22, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

The Nynorsk ordliste from 2002 does not have sjømil at all. It mentions nautisk mil. -- Egil 20:17, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

See the ordbøker search here [8]

Note specifically the listing of both the 7420 m and 7408 m, but especially the second definition in the nynorsk listing:

• 2 nautisk mil

Gene Nygaard 21:06, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

The exact definition of the sjømil

I'll continue here, the indentation above gets a bit complicated.

Wrt the Danish sømil, do keep in mind that after 1824, the Norwegian system of measurement went seperate ways from Danmark. (There were of course political reasons behind this). So after 1824, I'm pretty sure Norway would not adopt any changes that came from Denmark, but instead participate in international efforts. (Sweden tried to persuade Norway to adopt the Swedish system, but in vain. Which was just as well, the Swedish decimal inch was not a brilliant idea at all).

But I have noted your skepticism wrt. the sjømil at various stages, which seems well founded, and I will try to find time to locate sources that go beyond the simple explanation offered by the encyclopedias. -- Egil 15:22, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

---

Comma or Apostrphe as thousands separator?

In the article gold as an investment, you have changed the thousands separator from an apostrophe to a comma. Within Europe this will create confusion, because some countries us the comma instead of the decimal point. France is one culprit. Is there any guidance from Wikipedia itself?

Watercolour 20:44, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

---

Getting pissed off

I answered your question at User talk:Robbot - Andre Engels 08:50, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

WikiProject on North Dakota?

Would you be interested in a WikiProject on North Dakota? --AlexWCovington (talk) 13:58, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Bees as livestock?

I my county they are not technically livestock, which is generally prohibited in suburban environments. Note also that one does not raise bees on a ranch (even if that is the only economic activity), but rather on a farm. Just some trivia that I thought you might find amusing. Best wishes, Leonard G. 21:26, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Not sure what you are talking about. Maybe Category:Beekeeping being in Category:Livestock? It wasn't me who put it there. Gene Nygaard 21:43, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

I was going by the edit tag on the edit of 17:02, 8 August 2005 in the history - Leonard G. 01:43, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

What I did there, of course, was to remove Livestock from the Africanized bee article; and I agree, that category shouldn't be reinstated even if the Beekeeping category is moved from being a subcategory of Livestock into the parent categories of Livestock, Agriculture and Domestic animals. Maybe you should make those moves? Gene Nygaard 01:52, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Category name changes

Just to let you know that you are on my list for screwing up the name changes a while ago, when Category:Schools established in the 1600s were changed to things like Category:Schools established in the 20th century. I have just fixed your screwup on one of them at Carnegie Mellon University. Gene Nygaard 01:11, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

First off, I would like to ask you to please re-read WP:CIVIL. I am one of the very few people who do all the grunt work of moving the categories, especially the large ones, and I would like you to know, I did remember your comment on that particular discussion. As such I researched what was considered the 19th century and 20th century, and it clearly states on 20th century that the dates are from 1901-2000. On that particular article it had two dates, 1900 and 1912, which clearly wasn't 1600. Some of them were not founded as schools, and I did my best to categorize them appropriately. Rather than leaving me a rude comment about me being on your list, you could have just corrected the error, and informed me nicely about the mistake. Thank you for pointing out my error, and I invite you to participate in such mass moves in the future. ∞Who?¿? 01:22, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

I didn't favor that silliness, precisely because of that offset and because of the incongruity between century names and the first two digits of 99 of the 100 years in that century. That's why I didn't participate in the move, but specifically pointed out the problem, something which you admit you were in fact made aware of. That, of course, is but one of several. I never looked at all of them, and never intended to do so. Instead, I found some of them by searching by the years. And neither you nor anybody else caught any of them that I noticed (you might have found some that I hadn't checked). I changed Middlebury College a while ago, for example. Gene Nygaard 01:32, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Correction. Somebody else did catch one. You (Who) got Downing College, Cambridge wrong on 6 July, but Splash (probably not a participant at CfD) fixed it on 23 July. Gene Nygaard 01:48, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

For the record, in addition to those mentioned above, I have now also changed University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Takushoku University, Montana Tech of The University of Montana, and Asheville School. I have also added the appropriate category to previously uncategorized University of Birmingham. You should have solicited help from those who favored the change. Gene Nygaard 01:54, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

It might help you both to know that, a while ago I started at the earliest dates checking this problem (as I said I would) but forgot to carry on once I got to 'E' in the 19th Century. (And yes, I do play over at CfD.) -Splash 02:14, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Although it may not seem like it, I remember checking quite a few of them, trying to get the correct year. IT is just difficult when there are so many. I try to fix errors and add cat's to orphaned ones, if I can find them. I would expect mistakes from anyone doing these, when there are so many. I do try my best to not make any mistakes and proper categorize them. Thanks again. ∞Who?¿? 02:29, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Category: Chicken breeds and category:Junglefowls

I created category: category:Junglefowls as is instead of Gallus because it is the common english names for most species of the genus, the chicken being an exception. Its true scope is still to include all species of genus Gallus, as per the whiole structure of category:Birds by classification, which is meant to remove individual bird articles and bird groups from the overly large category:birds.

While it might not be ideal (I don't think there would have been objections if I had named the cat category:gallus), it still makes the most sense to move category:Chicken breeds down into the genus it belongs to rather than leaving it in category:Galliformes. Aditionnally, it follows the guidelines of Wikipedia:WikiProject Categories "use only the most specific category". Circeus 19:41, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

A major problem is that "fowl" is one of those collective nouns that is plural in construction and usually doesn't add an "s" in English. If a common name is used rather than a scientific name, it should be Category:Junglefowl (the same is true of your Category:Peafowls and Category:Spurfowls).

Of course, maybe I'm wrong about this and it really is like "fish" and "fishes" in English, with the "-es" form used when different species are involved.

The problem is that categories aren't as easy to rename as articles, an we might have to take it to CfD. Can you fix it without that, and if not will you take it to CfD, or do I have to?

Maybe continuing this on the cat:Junglefowls talk page where I've already mentioned this might get the opinions of other people on this point. Gene Nygaard 20:05, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

AFAIK, if it is truely a matter of grammar, than it falls under the premise of speedy renaming, though I have doubts. I can probably ask an admin directly to rename it to Gallus, since I'm the creator, if you'd prefer that for consistency? My rule of thumb is to use the english only if all species in the genus and none in other genera bear the name, though there are often exceptions or very troublesome families and orders. I had to do some heavy merging when wading through category:ardeidae. Circeus 20:22, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

I'm waiting for your answer on my proposal for category:gallus before I request a renaming. Circeus 15:41, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

Rktect's additions

Rktect has accused me of vandalizing his edits. So I've started collecting evidence that the consensus on his material is to be removed. Please see [9], I'd appreaciate feedback or information I'm missing. -- < drini | ∂drini > 21:53, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Would you consider Rktect's latest partial revert of Khet as a violation of the 3RR? Zoe 07:20, August 20, 2005 (UTC)

OK, after discussion with Drini, I have blocked Rktect for 24 hours for violating 3RR despite being warned. Zoe 07:45, August 20, 2005 (UTC)

RNEP

you should archive your talk page. second, removing the sentence explaining what a joule of energy is was harmful to the article. it's difficult to understand the energies involved, especially in that article, without "real world" correlaries. please come up with a way to make that content more clear, or replace the original content. kthx, Avriette 06:48, August 21, 2005 (UTC)

There may be room for some explanation that helps understanding. The one which was there did not. Some of the problems include

1. The one which drew my attention in the first place, unreasonable precision in expressing the energy with 8 apparently significant digits
2. A confusing and unexplained question about whether dropping these bombs has something to do with heating water
3. The starting point was not named for heating water to some ununderstandably high temperature.
4. The temperature give is ununderstandable, because most people do not have experience in distinguishing temperatures, even if half or double that on an absolute scale (e.g. kelvins or degrees Rankine).
5. The choice of a "U.S. gallon" of water, units otherwise not relevant to this article, for explaining a calculation whose input parameters were metric.
6. The choice of those input numbers in the first place: while metric, they were overly precise conversions of English units. This problem still appears in the hypothetical. A more reasonable choice, such as 200 kg traveling at 500 m/s having a kinetic energy of 25 megajoules, would also have avoided that false precision problem in number 1 above.
7. An unexplained connection, whether the connnection was intended or not, between the high temperature given here, and the high temperature for the melting point of tungsten given shortly thereafter.

There are even more problems than that, but this ought to give you some idea. What was there was definitely worse than nothing along those lines. Gene Nygaard 15:09, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

SI versus other

In regard to you changing the numerical value of the unit eV. While the value from CODATA 2002 is newer than the value from CODATA 1986, the 2002 one is (as far as I have understood) not the one SI uses. Since eV has the special status within SI of "Non-SI units accepted for use with SI" and SI being the overwhelming system used, would it not perhaps be better to use the value from CODATA 1986 as SI does?

Also, since the value is listed under the section "SI and related units" in the Energy-article, it might be misleading to use CODATA 2002 if SI at the moment still prefer CODATA 1986 in regard to eV.

What do you think?

Martin Ulfvik 04:31, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Who is this SI? What makes you think he or she or it prefers an obsolete value? Gene Nygaard 05:03, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

SI is the abreviation for The International System of Units. It is the system determined by the organization BIPM. They officially determine such things as what a metre, second, kilogram etc. is. SI is the system more or less the whole world (especially science) adopt. Even countries such as USA and UK who still use some non SI units in the form of yard, mile, pound etc. still adopt SI because they have their units defined by SI-units, so if SI changes something, it automatically changes the non SI units.

As far as to why the value from CODATA 1986 is still used could only be a guess on my part. One reason could be that just because a value is listed as 1.60217653(14)×10⁻¹⁹ doesn't mean that the true value has that uncertainty. It just means that the uncertainty listed is in regard to the outcome of the experiment(s) performed. Maybe the result of CODATA 2002 is still under investigation as to whether it can be regarded as truth enough for world standard. Again, that's just me guessing though.

Martin Ulfvik 06:38, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I know what SI is. My point in asking about who it is was that it is a system of units, not a person or a collection of people who make decisions and who "prefer" anything.

Of course, SI is also a system which does not, and never will, include the electronvolt.

The BIPM doesn't "determine" SI, either. It is just the technical group, responsible for day to day operations, the keeping of the standards and handling orders for publications and the web pages and the like. What is in SI and acceptable for use with SI is handled by its sibling organizations, the CIPM with the theoreticians who recommend certain actions, etc., and the CGPM, the actual decision-making organization.

However, the CGPM does not define electronvolts.

The brochure put out by the technicians at BIPM was printed in 1993. NIST's Special Publication 811, containing the same value for the electron volt, was published in 1995. Much of the BIPM website is an html version of that 1993 document, also available in .pdf format, plus some in a later supplement.

The BIPM brochure cites CODATA as the source for the value it uses. That's because the current CODATA value is the value conventionally used for this purpose. Note that nobody defines the electronvolt in terms of joules; it remains a measured quantity. The generally recognized authority for what should be used for this is CODATA.

The CODATA values are not a publication of some individual's experiments subject to validation. They are a considered analysis by experts in the field of metrology of all the published data, to determine what is the best value at the times of the various publications of these values. Gene Nygaard 15:23, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Just thought I'd stop by and say thanks for setting me straight on the CODATA validity. Atleast the miss-change of the value made you update it to CODATA 2002 (was 1998 values before), so something good came out of it.

Martin Ulfvik 16:51, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

The pous (and other pages)

Despite your attempts at cleaning up, I definitely suggest these pages be redirected. Please see Talk:Pous. -- Egil 12:44, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Egil you are remarkably uniformed when it comes to standards of measure and come across as a bit silly raving about magic cubes and pyramidiots when trying to show there was no such thing as a range of values for the divisions of different Greek pous.

I have cited references to measures like the Persian and Egyptian artaba which you deny ever existed and expressed a desire that you should begin to cite sources rather than continue to sling mud and speculate.

Its up to you. You can make an effort to show me your scholarly erudition or you can make it dramatically clear that you have no ground to stand on. Rktect 16:34, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

Exact division of one Greek into other Greek units is unproblematic, but this subject is fully covered elsewhere already. -- Egil 18:59, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

• Just for the heck of it why not cite the source that you feel "fully covers" the subject? Rktect 18:22, August 31, 2005 (UTC)

Gabriel Mouton

In your edits of the above article, you specifically left the values 1 virga = 0.001 minutes of arc = 1.85 m etc intact, even though the article originally specified that the virga of Mouton was ~2.04 m. Is there a special reason for this? You also left intact the statement What's interesting about this is that Mouton was proposing that there be a relation between time and space.. Is there a special reason for this? Is this sentence in your opinion meaningfull and relevant? -- Egil 17:43, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

No. I ws going to mention the discrepancy, but didn't have time to figure out what was going on, and ask about it. Note that you also used the "minute of arc" as being decimally related to that 2.04 m unit, so either you or Rktect or both have some explaining to do. Was the "minute" defined differently? If you feel different numbers are appropriate, change them. The time and space applies to any use of a pendulum as both a time-keeper and a length standard; but the wording is clumsy, or trying to imply more than is actually there. A century later, Jefferson copied that idea for either of his proposals for revamping the English customary units, including the decimal system based on a foot. Gene Nygaard 02:43, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Please find "my explaining" at User_talk:Egil/Sandbox/Gabriel_Mouton. If anything is unclear, I would appreciate feedback. -- Egil 13:32, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

• The value for a minute of arc is 1/60 degree or 1/60 of 111 km or 1.85 km. Mouton derived this using a second pendulum at sea level so his value was very accurate. All Mouton’s units are decimal multiples and divisions of each other. Had Mouton used a value of 2.04 m for any of his units it would have implied a minute of arc was 2.04 km, which implies a degree of 122.4 km, he would have looked foolish. Rktect 18:27, August 31, 2005 (UTC)

You look foolish when you break up sentences with bullets. Try to make this comprehensible. Pay attention to spelling and possessives; the little things matter, nobody is going to treat you as anything other than a crackpot as long as you don't change your ways. You know you are a bad speller, and prone to typos. Invest in a spell-checker. Gene Nygaard 17:00, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

That's better. He wouldn't necessarily "look foolish" unless he claimed a unit about 2.04 m long to be a decimal fraction of the 10⁻ⁿ (where n is an integer) of a minute of arc, in the meaning of 1/(360×60) circle. I don't yet know the details myself, so any specific references on that particular point would be welcome.

Of course, Mouton also did not use exactly 111 km for his minute of arc, nor did anybody before him. You still haven't explained what you think this value should be, if expressed more precisely today. What should it be, to 6 significant digits in meters or kilometers, in other words to the nearest meter? That is, not 111.000 but 111.xyz—what are those next three digits? Gene Nygaard 19:27, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

The Roman value for the pes is 296 mm. Mouton's value is within 1 mm of that. The stadium is 625 x 296 = 185 m. Mouton's value is within 1 m of that. There 8 stadiums of 625 pes to a mille passus. 5 pes x 1000 = 5000 pes = 8 x 185 = 1480 m. There are 75 Roman miles to a degree = 75 x 1480 =111 km.. Moutons value is within 1 km of that. If you try and play with 3 points of decimal on a mm. then you have to deal with things like the coefficient of expansion of the material you are measuring with.

The Great Circle Circumference (GCC) of the earth was divided into 360 degrees. Angular degrees were an invention of the Babylonian astronomers whose math skills were pretty decent. The Egyptians used Dekans and a year of 360 days to which they added 5 epagonmenal days each year. (Gardiner § 266)

The GCC of the earth is 24902.727 miles and the degree is 69.17 mi. A minute of arc is 1/60 of a degree or 1.153 mi = 6087.3 ft = 1.8554192 km. That is to say Moutons Milliare is close to the Roman value but the Roman value is even closer to our value. I would allow you to say that his value is within round off error, equal to the Roman value, egual to our value. His Centuria is 1/10 of that and consequently equal to both the Greek stadion and Roman stadium which are 1/8 the mille passus, milion or milliare.

[Gk. mile passus mia chilioi]

[websters mile 1911]

(Miles has spelling variations. mia, milla, mille, milli, mil, myl, myle, mylios, milli are)

Webster's English Dictionary

"mile \'mi-(*)l\ n [ME, fr. OE mi-l; akin to OHG mi-la mile; both fr. a prehisto]ric WGmc word borrowed fr. L milia miles, fr. milia passuum, lit., thousands of paces, fr. milia, pl. of mille thousand, perh. fr. a prehistoric compound whose constituents are akin to Gk mia (fem. of heis one) and to Gk chilioi thousand, Skt sahasra - more at SAME : any of various units of distance : as  : a unit equal to 5280 feet  : NAUTICAL MILE"

Supposedly that was one of the contributions of the Pythagoreans at Miletus. I wasn't there so I don't know for sure, but starting with Thales the Greeks began traveling to Egypt and talking to various groups of people whom they seem to have found interesting.

Plato tells us through Critias, and Solon, about how in the Reign of Neco I about 600 BC the Egyptians commisioned the Phoenicians to circumnavigate Libya and they returned through the Pillars of Hercules as a new ocean empire coming forth from the Atlantic in control of territory which was larger than Libya, Asia and Europe combined because it consisted of the waters that surounded them. Historians and Geographers began collecting the accounts of these and other voyages and putting them into documents like the Periplus of the Erythrian Sea.

Subsequently carograhers like Marinus and Ptolemy began inventing ways of displaying the surface of a sphere on a plane surface and Geographers begin getting serious about checking out the value of a degree. The Greeks, Persians, Arabs and Romans turned to Egypt and discovered that they worshipped measures the way the sons of Israel worshipped the Law. (The philosophy was called living the Life in Ma3't and was all about doing what was right and proper, emphasising accuracy in measure and craftsmanship in keeping things straight and square and on the level)The Greeks began noticing that the Egyptian measures were a pretty good system so they adopted them. Herodotus mentions the itrw being the same as the schoenus and gardiner explains that the aroura was the same as the st3t.

Request for arbitration, rktect

For your information, I have now submitted a request for arbitration: User:rktect -- Egil 11:33, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

sos

I have edited sos as you suggested, checking and replacing the links and rewording the content. Rktect 02:02, August 30, 2005 (UTC) sos ended up a good page, I was sad to see it go. Rktect 18:30, August 31, 2005 (UTC)

A good page? You are weird. In your latest efforts, you described it as a piece of land, or a unit of measure of area, or something along those lines. But from your earlier attempted explanations, I had a vague idea that it dealt with some concept of sociology or political science, but I didn't have the foggiest idea of the details. It was, and remained, incomprehensible gibberish, with even more incomprehensible section headers in the last incarnation. Gene Nygaard 18:56, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

• Sos was a page that examined Wikipedia in the analagous context of the transition from nomadic pastorialist internet hunting and gathering to settled agricultural social stratification based on contribution to the community. A consideration of the positive and negative sanctions of land tenure and sustenance. The choices between Security in adherence to Laws and Freedom as a state of Being without Limits. A choice to join the covenant to be law abiding and do what is right and propery over outlawry and being placed under the ban. Using the code of Hammurabi it looked at things like the limits on royal encroachment and the rights and obligations of land ownership. The development of community looked at through the development of consensus on common law norms, nores, attitudes, and values. The protection of written law codes and the standards by which they are measured weighed and judged. Land is property, turf, your area that you irrigate, weed, fertilize, tend and harvest. The form of contracts, the assessment of value, blessings and curses to bind the deal and boundary markers and milestones. Rktect 23:53, August 31, 2005 (UTC)

Rajgir

Have tried to edit Rajgir. Would like you to comment if it is okay now since I am quite new to Wiki edit.

TV 15:23, August 31, 2005 (UTC)

Ceiling Balloon

Hi, I noticed that you changed the order of the imperial/metric on this page with the note that the "originals first, to SI". The SI were the originals and I converted them to imperial as I'm in Canada and the manual was new enough to have the metric info. The SI weight is now incorrect as the manual says 63.5 Kg with no imperial given. By the way what is the term you would use for imperial? Thanks CambridgeBayWeather 03:39, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

The manual may be "new enough to have the metric info" but that info is not "new" with that manual; it is a conversion of the English units in an earlier manual or some other source, even if the original wasn't stated there. (Nor was any source credited in the article.) The fact that both the volume and the pressure, as well as the mass, turn out to be such round numbers in English units are a dead giveaway. This isn't a precise measurement of some particular object; it isn't a definition of anything. The numbers are just a rough description of what these cylinders "typically" are. I have merely restored the numbers from which those metric numbers came, and have converted them more reasonably based on the obvious imprecision of the measurements. There is nothing whatsoever "incorrect" about the current values. FYI, the use of "Kg" rather than the only correct symbol, "kg", is also a pet peeve. Gene Nygaard 03:57, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Nitric acid vandalism

The person who edited the Nitric acid page after you (most recently as of now) gave what look to me like instructions for procedures which could seriously injure someone. Since you're likely more competent than me in determining such matters, could you double check the changes to make sure I'm wrong? —Firespeaker 08:30, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm no expert in lab safety. The whole recipe bothers me; I don't think it should be there. It looks better to me after Slavakion's edits than it did before. Maybe you should just delete it and discuss it on the talk page there? Gene Nygaard 08:43, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Manual of Style

Please expand your most recent answer at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style, otherwise we cannot fully include your concerns in the discussion. Your simple one word "No" answer to a complex question, while it is to be admired for its brevity, is not helpful in first finding common ground and then consensus. Thanks. Unfocused 06:52, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

acre width and breadth

I saw where you reverted another poster unless s/he could justify the units s/he used as descriptions of the width and length of the acre. The definitions of acre width and breadth can be found in Klein Chapter 4 10 Greek orquia (fathoms) = 1 amma (chain). Chapter 5.p65-73 Rood/rute/rod at 16.5 to 24 feet in length with the rute at 12.36 to 12.47 feet. gYRdan/Yerde/yardarm/yard. In France 22 pieds to a pole. Belgic chain 661 feet. Chapter 6 p 76 cite of Bodelian manuscript "Sixteybe foote and a half maky a perche and in sum countre a perche ys 13 ffot. Fourty perchys in lengyth makyth a rode of lande, put 4 thereto to brede and that makyth an acre." The square rode is thus 10 acres, the yerde is 14 acres, the hide is 70 acres, the knights fee is 560 and the square mile is 640. Rktect 10:18, September 7, 2005 (UTC)

What's your point? Can't you ever write intelligibly? None of this has to do with my reversion. Gene Nygaard 11:00, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Efficiency v efficacy

The word efficiency is incorrect when used with devices converting one form of energy to another. Please look on talk page where ~I have explained --Light current 04:33, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

I replied to your comments at Talk:Electrical efficiency. Gene Nygaard 12:31, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Conversion

I messed up the temperature conversion on Glacier National Park (US). Do you have a link to an accurate converter, as I used Google, but it didn't look right when I did it.--MONGO 07:09, September 9, 2005 (UTC)

Your conversion would have worked, had it been a temperature reading. That's where the problem lies, and no converter is going to be of much help there. It's just something you need to recognize.

A temperature interval is different from a temperature reading. If you are talking about differences in temperatures, then the conversion factor is T_°F = 1.8 T_°C. Every change of 5 °C is a change of 9 °F. The different zero points don't matter when you are talking about differences in temperatures, so you don't add 32 as you would in for readings. Gene Nygaard 11:18, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

I understand...thanks.--MONGO 12:49, September 9, 2005 (UTC)

millibar

hi Gene,

we both did edit millibar and the text now published there is looking a little confuse:

The millibar is not an SI unit of measure; however, it is still used locally in meteorology when describing atmospheric pressure. The SI unit is the pascal (Pa), with 1 millibar = 100 (Pa) = 1 (hPa) = 0.1 (kPa). Meteorologists worldwide have long measured air pressure in millibars. After the introduction of SI units, many preferred to preserve the customary pressure figures. Therefore, some meteorologists use hectopascals (hPa) today worldwide for air pressure, which are equivalent to millibars. Others continue to use millibars under their own name, and in Canadian weather reports, the normal kilopascals are used. Similar pressures are given in kilopascals in practically all other fields where the hecto prefix is hardly ever used.

I don't want to open a big discussion there, therefore I come to you to talk about a possible better way to include all view's, how about:

The millibar is not an SI unit of measure; however, it is still used locally in meteorology when describing atmospheric pressure. The SI unit is the pascal (Pa), with 1 mbar = 100 (Pa) = 1 (hPa) = 0.1 (kPa). Meteorologists worldwide have long measured air pressure in millibars. After the introduction of SI units, many preferred to preserve the customary pressure figures. Therefore, some continue to use millibars under their own name, most others use hPa which are equivalent to millibars and they could stick to the same values. Similar pressures are given in kilopascals in practically all other fields where the hecto prefix is hardly ever used. In Canadian weather reports, the normal is kilopascals.

how do you feel about that? (Wilhelm.peter 08:40, 9 September 2005 (UTC))

That looks okay, but don't put the symbols in parentheses except the one following spelled out pascal. Otherwise, the remaining problems don't really have to do with any changes you are proposing here. My wording of the Canadian part was clumsy.

Before my last edit, your edits gave the misleading impression that hectopascals are now universally used in metrology. They are not.

BTW, I don't like the hanging on to obsolete units by cloaking them in marginally SI renamings. It's as silly as the dS/m used for electrical conductivity by soils scientists (can you figure out the ever-so-handy obsolete units they are hanging onto in this case?). As the NPL, the U.K. national standards laboratory, points out: " This choice was made, despite the fact that hecto (x 100) is not a preferred multiple in the SI system, to avoid having to change the numerical values on barometer scales."[10] (In most cases, they wouldn't have had to be changed anyway.)

The interdisciplinary nature of SI is as important as its international nature. Nobody should have to learn quirky units just to understand the measurements in the jargon of some particular field.

Nobody (well, almost nobody) used "hectopascals" before the 1990s.

The "After the introduction of SI" part remains misleading, because the SI unit of pressure wasn't even given the name "pascal" until 19 years after the SI was introduced, late in 1979, so nobody used either kilopascals or hectopascals before then. I've never seen anybody use hN/m² as a unit of pressure (N/m² were the SI pressure units in the 1960–1979 time period), either—maybe we'd all be better off if the pascal had never been given its own name! Gene Nygaard 11:59, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

partenses had been in the text, i must have overlooked it. will change as you proposed, nice to have that worked out with you Wilhelm.peter

Standard_conditions_for_temperature_and_pressure

hello Gene, i have updated our talk there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Standard_conditions_for_temperature_and_pressurea little, but i am no expert in that field, found also that Standard atmosphere got already a link in wikipedia, and I am not sure where such thing should be located... kindest regards Wilhelm.peter 17:05, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Standard atmosphere redirects to atmospheric pressure, and I agree with that choice; it seems to be a better redirect than one to standard conditions for temperature and pressure. There are, of course, also the technical atmosphere and the bar, a couple of different "atmospheres". Gene Nygaard 02:28, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

More on Gabriel Moutons virgula

For what its worth, the NASA document with John Quincy Adams on the history of measures has now been updated. -- Egil 23:09, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Tonnes

You said "Tonnes or metric tons are an unnecessary varieties of English issue". Bollocks. Everyone in the English-speaking world understands tons. Anyone familiar with metric (or who can appreciate that 'tonnes' and 'tons' are damn near the same thing) can appreciate tonnes. While megagrams is a perfectly workable construct, you're not going to find anybody who can relate to it without a whole lot of headscratching. Frankly, I'm at a loss to understand why it was that important to you that a revert was necessary. Please enlighten me. Denni☯ 01:13, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

In the United States, "tonnes" are every bit as unfamiliar as megagrams, or more so (megagrams are fairly common in technical journals in some fields, including soils science and agricultural science). They are just as likely to cause a whole lot of headscratching, with less assurance that it will be figured out correctly once the headscratching is done.

The other reason, of course, is that the official symbol for metric tons is "t", not "T". But, of course, either of them might be used for long tons or for short tons as well, so there is great ambiguity in the use of a symbol for any of these tons.

The many other problems with tonnes is that they are often pronounced the same as when spelled tons (except in Canada, where because of French being an official language as well, they are often pronounced the French way in English. In French, of course, tonnes are just as ambiguous as tons in English, even though if tonnes are used without other qualification, in today's world they are almost always metric tonnes. Other tonnes will be distinguished with an adjective, just as short tons usually are in some parts of the English world, and long tons usually are in other parts of the English world—but the biggest problem with any tons of any sort is that they are all too often not identified, and they are used for not only three different units of mass and three different units of force, but many other units of quantities such as energy and power and who knows what else. Megagrams, OTOH, are units of mass, not well enough established when grams force were legitimate units to even see any use of megagrams-force, as you do with the kilogram-force and even tonne force (used in some Wikipedia articles even). Gene Nygaard 18:40, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Headings in science articles

Hi,
Please take another look at your post to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Science. It looks as though you wrote "with" instead of "without". --Smack (talk) 03:46, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. I did mean "without". Gene Nygaard 06:30, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Your thoughts please

Can you look at Power plant GWh does not equal GW for me please? Wtshymanski drew my attention to something that appears to go on in the power industry, namely using watt hours per year. The phrase that was debated was The Kariba supplies 1320MW of electricity to parts of both Zambia (the Copperbelt) and Zimbabwe (6400GWh per annum).. I am happy to leave the article alone but I was wondering if you had come across a convention like this? Bobblewik 02:11, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Medical record

I see you reverted my edit on temperature, I thought orginal section in the Medical record article somewhat misleding, inappropriate content (for the article) and some inaccuracies. I wont immediately revert back, but raise the following points:

• Firstly thanks, 98.6F indeed not same as 36.8'C (strange I had always accepted this conversion at face value - and I'm a doctor !) - and so yes my edit was wrong  :-)
• The need to record temperature in the medical record is what is required in this article, not a full discussion on all different methods of measurement and their relative pros & cons. So I wanted to cut down on the fuller discussion (the article will get longer as other sections are completed).
• Likewise core temperature spent too much discussing other methods and so I simplified that too and place the additional info in a new article of Temperature examination
• Having the current blind links to oral temperature & rectal temperature is not, I think, appropriate as neither ever will need be a full article and both can be encompassed in a single page (hence Temperature examination)
• Thermosensative material skin measurement is not primarily used in operative measurements (but thermocouple sensing is), as the devices are sold in the tens of thousands as a simple children's thermometer
• Thermocouples need direct contact with what the are to measure the temperature of. Ear thermometers do not touch the ear drum, but rather measure the infrared heat emmission. Thermocouples are though indeed found in electronic thermometers, but of the types used for oral, armpit or rectal recording. Thermocouples therefore have replaced glass thermometes containing alcohol or mercury (latter now been banned from use in Europe due to toxicity if the thermometer breaks open).

I welcome your thoughts on re-reverting the entry (with the correction to the celcius/farenheit equivalence)... David Ruben^talk 00:43, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

The only reason 98.6 °F is considered "normal" anywhere is because it is a nice, round 37 °C on the Celsius scale—but even that information was missing before I edited it today.

So yes, your insistence on saying 36.8 °C = 98.6 °F was a major reason why I just reverted, rather than even attempting to figure out what else you were doing.

Of course, your same mistake needs to be fixed in your new temperature examination article.

Something of that information about why some people think of 98.6 °F as "normal", even though the experts are pretty unanimous that that is too high, belongs in the article.

I'll reserve judgment on the necessity for, and accuracy of, other changes. Gene Nygaard 03:30, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

comparative metrology

Your comment suggests I'm giving you too much information for you to process easily. Let's try it as a process of asking and answering questions. Put three questions at a time on my user page and I will give you whatever you require in the way of references and cites. Rktect 01:55, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

You are the one proposing changes in this article. Why don't you put forward three questions at a time? Include not only what you want to add, but also what you want to remove which is already there. The compare screens in Wikipedia editing don't work very well at all for total rewrites. Gene Nygaard 02:12, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Celsius

Not sure what you meant when you said that this sentence, "Beause of this Celsius is kept as a derived unit and is acceptable for use for measuring differenes." was, "probably inaccurate too, depending on what was meant." I'd agree that it was an, "unnecessary addition." At the spot where it was but I'm considering adding the thought back in at another spot; but first I wanted to talk to you to see if we agree on it's accuracy. The specific idea that I want to to include is that Celsius is acceptable for measuring temperature differences, but not temperatures, where it is marginal. I'm working off NIST SP 811 and an email conversation with NIST's Barry Taylor though I'll wait to dig out evidence until I see if we disagree on this part. Cheers, --Pdbailey 03:49, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Quite the contrary. It's acceptability for measuring temperatures was never in doubt, even before it was added to the SI. The clarification was that it is also acceptable for measuring temperature differences, where there is no difference between it and kelvins. It would be downright silly to declare it totally acceptable for that purpose and unacceptable for measuring temperatures. Gene Nygaard 04:01, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

I disagree with your conclusion. I'm basing my conclusion on an email conversation I had bith Dr. Taylor about a year ago. I'll try to dig it up. As I recall it (and it's been a year), Celsius is acceptable only for differences in temperature because it doesn't measure thermodynamic temperature. What it comes down to is that it is in SI because the Europeans can't kick this obviously traditional unit and want it in there as a crutch. It's not much different than including fahrenheit, which is also an [Affine transformation] of Kelvin.--Pdbailey 23:33, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

My conversation with Dr. Taylor was not illuminationg. However, in SP 330 it reads, "Because of the way temperature scales used to be defined, it remains common practice to express a thermodynamic temperature, symbol T, in terms of its difference from the reference temperature T0 = 273.15 K, the ice point. This temperature difference is called the Celsius temperature, symbol t, and is defined by the quantity equation t=T–T0. The unit of Celsius temperature is the degree Celsius." So it looks like to me that you are only explicitly allowed to use C for differences and none of the sections allow it for anything but temperature differences. That said, one could argue that C is inherently a temperature difference from 273.15 K, but that's shakey ground in my mind. --Pdbailey 02:41, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

As a person living in Bulgaria and travelling across Europe I can assure you that here the water still boils at 100 degrees Celsius and the ice melts at 0. In short, a whole continent is using degrees Celsius to measure absolute temperatures and not differences only. Even during my visits in U.S.A. I was watching BBC World as their weather forecast was much easier to comprehend (Texas getting 31°C instead of 88°F).

The current state of the article is simply wrong. Yes, I perfectly know that one step in Celsius scale is equivalent to one kelvin. However you might admit that expression 1°C typically is read as absolute value, and thus equals 274,15 K. Encyclopedia is created by people who know something for the people who do not know it. -- 193.68.0.204 16:39, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Short/Long tons

On Indiana Harbor... you claim that you guessed which kind and than added a metric conversion. Please no. Even an ambiguous "ton" is better than an actually incorrect link and conversion. In this case it was correct as short tons as I verified the original numbers. Rmhermen 12:57, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

It wasn't a wild-ass guess. It was based on the fact that short tons are usually used in U.S. reports of inland commerce. But in any case, I disagree that leaving them as ambiguous is better; identifying them spurs people like you, who know where to look, to check it out—and correct it if I guessed wrong. That's much better than leaving it ambiguous, and even if my guess is incorrect and unchanged, that's no worse than a multitude of readers making the same incorrect guess. Thanks for veryifying it. Gene Nygaard 13:16, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Units of mass in precious stones

Feel free to contribute at Talk:Diamond. Bobblewik 14:14, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Vacuum change noted to Tearlach

Gene, See: I was a bit slow here, thanks.... Glad you understand the field. Scott 13:30, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Church of Avaldsnes

I've removed the link you wanted to keep (you reverted the change to Church of Avaldsnes)

• Avaldsnes: Norway's oldest throne

I did that because it contains nothing useful except contact information and text about the earlyer throne at the location of the church, nothing about the church itself. Although there are a lot of contact information about a local museum, opening times, what it cost, etc. This is not about the medieval church, but could possibly be used in an article for that museum.

Is there any reason at all to keep this link?

Agtfjott 01:56, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Years standing alone - David Thompson (explorer)

I won't revert over it, but I strongly prefer all years wikilinked in an article when I read it. I very often want to open a second tab in my browser to check what else was going on in the world at the time of the year mentioned in order to gain context for what's being discussed. I won't link second occurences of the same year, but the first of each is, I think, an appropriate link point. Unfocused 05:59, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Aircraft specs policy

Several weeks ago, you voted in the WikiProject Aircraft Specifications Survey. One of the results of the survey was that the specifications for the various aircraft articles will now be displayed using a template. Ericg and I have just finished developing that template; a lengthier bulletin can be found on the WT:Air talkpage. Naturally, we will need to begin a drive to update the aircraft articles. However, several topics in the survey did reach establish consensus, and they need to be resolved before we implement the template. It is crticial that we make some conclusion, so that updating of the specs can resume as soon as possible. You can take part in the discussions here. Thanks, Ingoolemo ^talk 06:03, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

English Units

Re: your update "English units" is rarely limited to those common in the U.S., to the exclusion of those used by people who think hundred is written in digits as 112 and there are 160 fl oz in a gallon.

I'm not clear what the point of the reference to 'people who think hundred is written in digits as 112 and there are 160 fl oz in a gallon' was.

If you meant 'the English' or 'those who use Imperial units', say so. If you want to make a point, make it on the talk page and refer to that, not by making what appeared to be a half-baked and partisan sideswipe at whoever it was you were referring to. There's not enough room for this type of thing on the edit line without it coming across as some vague and undirected insult (and fudging the point of the edit).

If you think my edit was biased, or something, it wasn't meant to be. But your exact criticism isn't clear from some throwaway comment.

The sentence you altered wasn't meant to imply that Americans are the only people who use "English units" or that imperial units aren't English units; rather that people in England (or the rest of the UK) are more likely to refer to their units as "Imperial" and the people most likely to refer to "English units" are Americans, when discussing (by default) *their* system.

Is this incorrect? Please clarify this.

What is the Imperial System referred to as within the US (as your alteration of the sentence implies that it isn't known by that name there)?

Fourohfour 14:39, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

The point is that "English units" isn't "more commonly used by Americans to refer to their ... slightly different U.S. customary system"; it is used more generally to include not only the ones we use, but also the variants we don't use.

The term "imperial system" in the United States is used only to refer to the volume units based on the imperial gallon and imperial bushel as defined in the 1820s. A rod is never an "imperial unit". A foot-candle isn't an "imperial unit". Of course, a U.S. liquid gallon isn't an "imperial unit" either, though some people outside the U.S. would include it in their broad usage of "imperial units" to mean "English units".

In the United States, miles per hour are not "imperial units". Pounds-force are not "imperial units". Troy ounces are not "imperial units". Cords and acres and horsepower and British thermal units and inches of water are not "imperial units". They are, however, all "English units" or "British units" or "customary units" (often in conjunction with "U.S." or "English" or "British").

However, the stone and the long hundredweight (never used for measurements made in the United States) and long ton (which is used in the United States for some purposes) are "English units", just as the short hundredweight and short ton are.

We Americans seldom bother distinguishing our units from other English units; when we need to do so, something like "U.S. customary units" works fine; we don't refer to all that foreign stuff, other than the volume units mentioned above, as "imperial" to distinguish them from those customary in the United States.

Granted, we are more likely to be referring to the units we do use than the units we do not use, it's just that that is not due to a limitation inherent in the terminology we use. As such, it not of any real significance to this article. Gene Nygaard 16:04, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Maybe it could be reworded to distinguish your point about when the term "English units" is most commonly used, from what "English units" means when Americans use that term. It seems like you were reading what was written differently from what I was reading. Gene Nygaard 16:11, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Then it sounds as if either you would be more qualified to write something about this than me, or that such an edit would bloat the intro too much, and it should be left "as is".

Fourohfour 19:20, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Manual of Style 2

On your reversion of my edit of Manual of Style (mathematics), removing the {{style}}, you say "take it up on the main talk page".

1. Why? It doesn't look as if it was ever agreed to.
2. Which "main talk page"? Manual of Style or Category:Wikipedia style and how-to?

Arthur Rubin (talk) 21:02, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Hello? I'm trying to be WP:CIVIL, rather than engaging in a revert war, but I'm not getting any response here or on the talk page. Arthur Rubin (talk) 14:16, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Sorry about that; I thought I'd rsponded long ago. I'd say the Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style page. The other pages in that navigation box all have the box, don't they? Gene Nygaard 15:05, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the response, and sorry about my tone. There are two pages I've been involved with lately which have had probable violations of WP:CIVIL, at least in the talk pages and edit descriptions (RJII (revert to RJII. Reason: definition is original research. Fraudulent interpretation of sources.) ) Some of my frustration may have leaked into this comment. Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:33, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Units

Is that general Wikipedia policy? It's just that the other units in the article seem also not to be the original way around. Paul Beardsell 13:24, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

It's just good general conversion policy. The original measurement is often the best indication we have of the precision of the measurement, and by putting the original first, we can also guess at which one is most likely wrong if a conversion error has been made.

It isn't an absolute rule as stated in Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Measurements, but a default at least. It can be modified, for example, in tables with one column in metric units and the other in English units.

Another guideline is in Wikipedia:WikiProject Aircraft/page content, "It is a suggested project standard to have Imperial (English) units first for US and British aircraft and metric first for everyone else's." Of course, Canada is probably a Rodney Dangerfield ("gets no respect") in that discussion, and the De Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver built in 1947 was designed in English units. Gene Nygaard 13:37, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

The other reasons are good but the ones you give in the first paragraph are persuasive on their own. Indeed, if Wikipedia policy happened to contradicted your 1st para then the policy would have to be changed, IM(H)O. Paul Beardsell 17:16, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Pune

Thank you for your contribution at Pune.
Please keep it up!!! - P R A D E E P Somani (talk)
Feel free to send me e-mail.

MRAA

You may want to check my user-page, to find out who won the "Most Reverted Admin Award". Any objection is welcome. Most reverted admin award 09:53, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

torque and Newton-metres

I beg to differ about torque and Newton metres.

With torque, the force and the distance are at right angles (the x (cross) product).

With joules, the force and the distance are at zero angle (the . (dot) product).

Tabletop 09:29, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

It's newton-meters (or newton-metres), with a lowercase N in English (leaving out the hyphen is okay).

My candy bar weighs 40 g and has a food energy of 880 kilojoules. What force and what distance are we talking about?

A 12 gram bullet has a muzzle velocity of 900 m/s². That means it has a kinetic energy of 4.86 kilojoules when it leaves the gun. What force and what distance are we talking about? Why confuse things?

We don't need a poorly worded explanation in the units section.

• "The joule, the SI unit for energy or work, is also defined as 1 Nm, but the Force N and distance m are in the same direction ."

You changed the symbol from N·m to Nm. See NIST SP811, which actually uses this unit as its example.

The word "Force" shouldn't be capitalized.

The normal symbol for force is italic F, and for distance s or d, not N and m.

Your claim is somewhat understandable, if we are working with a formula for finding work done by an object exerting a certain force due to gravity lifted against that gravity. But it is only confusing if the examples such as I gave above come to mind when a person tries to figure out what a "joule" is.

Maybe there is some way that your point can be made clearly, so that it would belong near the top in the units section, or somewhere further down. I'm not convinced that is the case, so if you have any ideas about it you might bring it up on the talk page so that I and other editors who might be more receptive can comment on it. Maybe a link to dot product would be helpful (cross product is already linked in the introduction). Gene Nygaard 14:13, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Fractions and plurals

Gene, I'm sorry but you are wrong when you say that decimal fractions less than one take the singular. "0.6 watt per month" sounds extremely awkward - "0.6 watts per month" is correct. Similarly, 0.7 solar radius sounds wrong, This page has a paragraph describing why this is. Worldtraveller 11:06, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Your columnist seems rather innumerate to me. He or she didn't even mention the most interesting thing: the fact that in English, the number zero takes the plural form.

The rules may indeed vary somewhat, depending on the linguistics notion of countable (which is quite different from the mathematics notion of countable). What your columnist apparently fails to understand is that many experts put all units of measurement into the class which takes a singular if the absolute value of the number is greater than zero and less than or equal to one.

The CGPM official definition of the ampere and the mole (semiofficial English version), from the BIPM SI brochure [11] (also found in Wikipedia articles such as carbon-12 and SI)

• "The ampere is that constant current which, if maintained in two straight parallel conductors of infinite length, of negligible circular cross-section, and placed 1 m apart in vacuum, would produce between these conductors a force equal to 2 x 10^–7 newton per metre of length."
• "The mole is the amount of substance of a system which contains as many elementary entities as there are atoms in 0.012 kilogram of carbon 12."

NIST Special Publication 811, Guide for the Use of the International System of Units (SI), Section 9.7: [12]

• "If in such a single-unit case the number is less than one, the unit is always singular when spelled out; for example, 0.5 kPa is spelled out as 'five-tenths kilopascal.'"

NIST Letter Circular 1137, Metric Style Guide, [13]

• "Units: Names of units are made plural only when the numerical value that precedes them is more than one. For example, 0.25 liter or 1/4 liter, but 250 milliliters. Zero degrees Celsius is an exception to this rule."

This is another convention which basically serves the same purpose as the leading zero before a decimal fraction—only the singular form works with any kind of fraction. Sure, there are many people who fail to follow that rule, too, but just like this one that is the nearly universal rule (with some well-specified exceptions such as batting averages in baseball).

Just look throughout Wikipedia. You will find many, many examples of this singular form for numbers less than one. See, e.g., pound ("exactly 0.45359237 kilogram (or 453.59237 grams)"), space elevator ("about 0.2 kilogram per kilometer"),

To change the subject slightly, why are there so many style guides with rules like this?

• "fractions: Spell out amounts less than one, using hyphens between the words: one-half, two-thirds, four-fifths."

Are the authors of these guides too innumerate to realize that the numbers in $0.75 and 0.45359237 kg are fractions?

Are they too unimaginative to think that somebody might actually use common fractions more complicated than "four-fifths"? We never see them using something like their spelled out version of 175/192 as an example. Gene Nygaard 13:04, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Diamond

Are you kidding me? You're going to come in again and extend an utterly pointless edit war? I generally avoid the word troll to try not to escalate things, but coming in as this other user has and changing something as highly disputed as the date issue is classic disruption and trolling. Don't add to it please. - Taxman ^Talk 22:29, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

It was the longstanding, original usage in the article, and there never was any consensus to change it. Gene Nygaard 22:36, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

The editors that used the original usage stated their intent to change it. More importantly, continuuing a worthless edit war is a bigger problem than any of it. Again, don't add to it. - Taxman ^Talk 18:17, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

They're certainly entitled to have their say in it. Get over the notion that it's their call. It isn't. Gene Nygaard 20:14, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Gene, you are correct and based on the talk pages for the diamond section, the consensus is that the original authors are not following the will of the group. --Walter Görlitz 18:53, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Paris-Tours

Thanks for repeatedly removing the route map for the Paris-Tours bicycle race. People like you really get up my nose, you know nothing about pro cycling but you remove a useful map (which took ages to draw) because it has kms and not km on. People like you have nothing to contribute to Wikipedia, you are just a sad person who has nothing better to do except spoil a good article. Get a life. - Mick Knapton

It doesn't have "kms" on it, it has "KMS" which is even worse, with the capitalization error in addition to the adding s in plural error. I wouldn't think it would be any great problem for you to fix it in the program you used to create it in the first place, and upload the corrected version. But it might not look so good if I have to do it by using my crude graphics tools on the jpg image instead. Gene Nygaard 13:33, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

BTW, you pretty much blew any chance of getting any sympathy from either me or any other editor of that page by repeatedly reverting not only my deletion of the image, but also my change of "kms" to "km" within the text as well. Gene Nygaard 14:19, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Jguk 2 Arbitration request

Since you were involved / gave evidence in the first arbitration case involving User:Jguk and date notation, I thought you would be interested in a new arbitration request that has been lodged, again regarding User:Jguk and date notation. Please see WP:RFAr#jguk 2 if you would like to comment. Sortan 19:13, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks

...for calling me spiteful. Molotov (talk)
20:29, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

You're welcome.

The point I was making was that once you've made your contributions to Wikipedia, you lose control of it. If you don't like the way it ends up, that doesn't give you the right to blank a section of the article out of spite. In other words, if you don't think your teammates are giving you enough playing time, you can't just take your ball and go home. Gene Nygaard 20:51, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Don't talk to me like I am an idiot...and learn civility please. I do agree - I guess - that the article belongs to Wikipedia, but it does not excuse you personal attacks. Molotov (talk)
00:27, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Comma or Apostrophe as thousands separator?

- In the article gold as an investment, you have changed the thousands separator from an apostrophe to a comma. Within Europe this will create confusion, because some countries us the comma instead of the decimal point. France is one culprit. Is there any guidance from Wikipedia itself? + - + - Watercolour 20:44, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) for a discussion of this (Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) says use commas, and some would like to change that.) Note that the use of an apostrophe in this context is so very unusual in English that it hadn't been mentioned, until after I had edited this article and just mentioned it today or yesterday. Gene Nygaard 21:07, 21 October 2005 (UTC)