>> IMHO it would make sense to use the [[International System of Units]] for >> internal storage. It is not consequently used in other realms, not even in >> the German spoken countries (PS vs. kW for cars). Maybe it would be possible >> to use small scripts (such as WP-templates) to transcalc values, which can >> easily be developed by the community. >> > > Internally we would translate it, yes, otherwise the numbers would not be > comparable. But for editing we need to keep the unit of the source / of the > editor, or else we will loose precision.
I propose to use a system which allow to store an SI prefix separatedly from the number and unit. Else we would have to express the proton (proton is about 1.6–1.7 fm) as 0.0000000000000016-0.0000000000000017 m and a fungus (2.8 km) as 2800 m. Especially the small values would be very error prone. Allowing fixed order-of-magnitude prefixes would ease both error control and presentation. (ASIDE: Regarding presentation: it is not always algorthmically eay whether to present 0.00000000000001 m as 1 * 10e-14 or a 10 fm = 10 * 10-15. In a scientific context, only the SI steps should be used, in another context the closest decimal may be appropriate.) Gregor _______________________________________________ Wikidata-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l
