Talk:Metric time
Archived of this talk page restored at Talk:Metric_time/archive1
note to contributers in the USA:
the use of non ISO standard seperators in articles should be avoided.
96% of the world uses a comma (,) as a decimal seperator ex: (0,864) and a period (.) as a thousands seperator, ex: (1.000.000 = 1 million) the ISO standard is to leave a space between thousands, and to use a comma as a decimal point.
American date format (MM DD, YYYY) is also unique in the world (used only in the USA) and should also be avoided. the world standard date format being: (DD MM YYYY), and the ISO standard (YYYY-MM-DD). ISO standard time format: (00:00:00)
the term Billion also causes problems when used in the American definition (1.000.000.000) since the rest of the world uses the chuquet system where 1.000.000.000 is a Milliard (1000 million) and 1.000.000.000.000 is a billion.
American Standard measures, based on obsolete English Imperial Units, should also be avoided, since the USA is the only remaining country still using this system.
you will cause a great deal of confusion to those outside the USA (which accounts for only 4% of the world's population) by using standards unique to the USA.
- Please see Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_dates_and_numbers for the current en: wikipedia policy on this. If you feel that this is incorrect, or should be changed, please discuss it there. Specifically, dates should follow the guide lines in that document, (i.e. <no wiki>Month-name-in-full Day-Number Year--number</no wiki>) as this allows local user cutomisation.
Iainscott 13:13, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I am delighted by the (apparently) sudden and passionate interest in decimal and metric time, since the posting of the articles, and more than happy to discuss the subject/s, and additions to the articles here..The Author
- This is not an addition. It is a reversion to material that is formatted incorrectly as per the Manual of Style, not to mention grammatically incorrect and HTML-using. If you wish to make actual useful edits, please do, but don't continue your crank-like obsessions with keeping your version of the article. -- Grunt (talk) 14:37, 2004 Aug 20 (UTC)
make whatever corrections you feel are needed, however any US standard formatting will be reverted to international formatting
- If you would like to change formatting, please do so without reverting everything else too. -- Grunt (talk) 15:03, 2004 Aug 20 (UTC)
sorry, next time I will only edit the formatting, many of your links were not active Wiki links, were you planning on writing articles for these?
Your statistic of 96% is patently false, and irrelevant to the English Wikipedia. Our conventions are based on what is most agreeable to the majority of the English-speaking world, which almost universally uses periods and commas to delimit decimals and thousands, respectively. On the French Wiki, Continental punctuation conventions are observed, as this is what the majority of French speakers expect. This is as it should be.
The so-called "American" convention for millions and billions is that used throughout the scientific community, and commonly avoided by enumerating such large numbers anyway. As for your apparent hatred of dual-standard measurement systems, I invite you to peruse, at your leisure, our manual of style, in addition to our excellent article on metrication.
Hope this helps.
this time I have only edited the formatting and not the text, shall we agree to leave it as it is, until more useful material can be added? :-)
btw. The current world population is 6400 Million - the current US Population is 4,6% of the world total (300 Million) - the Population of the EU is 450 Million - which includes Great Britain (an English speaking state) - English is not defined as "American".
- I'm English. Here we use a period as a decimal seperator and a space as a thousands seperator. [[User:Theresa knott|
]] 15:34, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)
here in Germany (and the rest of the continent), we use komma (,) as a decimal seperator, and punkt (.) as a thousands seperator, which makes reading English sites quite confusing %-(
- Well I find reading french or german websites quite confuseing... I dont, however, go to the french or german wikipedias and insist that they change their style conventions. Perhaps you could extend the same curtosy to the english wikipedia? Iainscott 16:17, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I would first like to apologise for my persistant reverts and header removal, I give you my word as a gentleman that no such edits will occur again. it was not my intention to be disrepectful, nor uncooperative. I would prefer to work with all of you in working out an positive solution which is acceptable to everyone.
in reply to Iainscott - I understand, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with american standards, I am simply suggesting that ISO formatting (which is a global standard, comprehensible to anyone - americans, europeans, asians, etc..) would be a practicle compromise solution. do you agree?
- While I can't speak for Iainscott, I certainly do not agree. The ISO convention is perfectly suitable for ISO standards, but encyclopedias are written in common language using common conventions. The English-speaking world, and for that matter the entire Western Hemisphere, is accustomed to seeing the period used as a decimal point; to suddenly usurp this in the name of "Internationalism" is unacceptable. One of the first things learned in the course of studying another language is its punctuation conventions, and swapping around the marks we use to delimit numbers would serve only to confuse, not disambiguate. (At any rate, you're on the wrong page for this discussion—if you want to effect policy change, take it up at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style.) Austin Hair 02:33, Aug 22, 2004 (UTC)
Yes, I see that the English-speaking world is quite unified in this standard, however The Entire Western Hemisphere is not, since I also live in the Western Hemisphere, along with those in other non English speaking European countries, all of which use a comma to signify a decimal place, and a period to signify thousands.Metrische Zeit 31 August 2004 - 16:00 (UTC)
Asimov units
The Asimov proposal had names fot the units. I don't remember them, and anyway the essay was translated. Probably one of them was the while or something like that.
metric v. decimal
This article seems to be more about Decimal time of day than about the metric system.
There seems to seems to be some confusion here between metric and decimal, and between time interval and time of day. The modern metric system (SI) defines units of time interval, while the time of day is defined by various time scales, some of which are based upon the metric base unit of time interval. Time of day is like, "We will strike the enemy at 0800 hours." Time interval is like, "The battle lasted 8 hours." You measure time of day with a clock or watch, and time interval with a stop watch. The stuff about French clocks and Swiss watches should probably be moved to the Decimal time article.
But then, if this article was really about the metric system's definitions of time, then perhaps it should just redirect to the existing article on the Second. The only reason I can think to keep it would be if there were other metric time units in use or seriously proposed. Although "millidays" sound intriguing, does anyone actually use them? I see that there are a lot of web sites about individual proposals for "metric time," but most of them are really about decimal time of day, and many seem to have little to do with the metric system. -- Nike 07:00, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)
-- Now the Decimal and Metric articles point back and forth to each other. The historic version of this page was better in that respect.
Someone has added a heading "Alternate Meanings" which repeats information already in "Alternate Units". I don't object in principle to this section, but the two sections should be distinct from each other if they are going to both be there. -- Nike 07:55, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)