I know all that. But thats really a minor software issue. We could for example allow IP's to set such preferences. Or display a default dating format based on the IP. If the IP is from the US, display the US dating format, else display international standard. It could be as simple as putting a link on every page (for IPs) asking the user to click if he or she wants to see the data in imperial or metric style. The point is we should promote the ability to customize how people can see data in a way they are comfortable with. There is absolutely no reason to force me to learn an archaic and useless format such as inches, fahrenheits, ounces and etc. For similar reasons no reason to force a fahrenheit person to learn celsius. The conversion rate of celsius to fahrenheit is well known. Software can compute this effortlessly. Even if the reader has an account he or she cannot set a fixed metric for stuff like date, temperature, length, weight and etc.
The complaint against standardization mentioned here is against the forced non-customizable formats. This complaint wants to see all dates (and other metrcis) to be inputed in a machine readable way. On Sun, Feb 8, 2009 at 3:58 AM, Carcharoth <carcharot...@googlemail.com>wrote: > Trouble with that is that the vast majority of readers do not have > accounts with user preferences to set. They are "unregistered" readers > (some people create accounts purely to be able to set these > preferences). What unregistered readers see is a mish-mash of > different date formats, sometimes in the same article. Log out > occasionally and see what the majority of our readers see. It can be > quite a shock to have all the customised skins and user preferences > taken away. Ditto for DVD and print versions of articles. > > Carcharoth > > On Sun, Feb 8, 2009 at 1:47 AM, White Cat > <wikipedia.kawaii.n...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Hard coded in the context of my message is when dates are typed out. Like > > January, 20 1956 rather than soft coded [[1956-01-20]]. > > Ideally all dates should always be soft coded and be modified by users > > preferences. In reality the exact opposite of this is done. > > > > On Fri, Feb 6, 2009 at 1:37 PM, Andrew Gray <andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk > >wrote: > > > >> 2009/2/6 White Cat <wikipedia.kawaii.n...@gmail.com>: > >> > >> > We are now forced to use US style dates... Thus it is the American > >> > Encyclopedia internationals (non USians) should feel uncomfortable in > >> > visiting let alone editing. > >> > >> (...) > >> > >> > In the past we had multiple correct ways. For example the use of ISO > >> dates > >> > (aka [[yyyy-mm-dd]] dates) were encouraged. Users could alter their > >> settings > >> > to display the dates in any way they please. The ISO dates were > drafted > >> as a > >> > compromise to the international versus US date war. Now US dates are > hard > >> > coded. You do not get to alter it. > >> > >> "hard coded"? This is news to me and news to the Manual of Style. > >> > >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOSNUM#Full_date_formatting > >> > >> Perhaps you could provide some evidence to back up this assertion? > >> > >> -- > >> - Andrew Gray > >> andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk > >> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> WikiEN-l mailing list > >> WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org > >> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: > >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > >> > > _______________________________________________ > > WikiEN-l mailing list > > WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
