Talk:International System of Units/Archives/08/2012

Modern Metric System

According to USMA[1] the SI system is also called the Modern Metric System. Why do people keep removing that when I try to put it at the start of the page? MeasureIT (talk) 18:00, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

You added the capitals. That is not its official name. It is known international as SI not the "modern metric system". The latter is a local name not commonly used. Dger (talk) 18:11, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Local to where? If you think it is just in the U.S. we could put known in the U.S. as the modern metric system. MeasureIT (talk) 18:18, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

For the same reason as on United States customary units this, I'm reworking the intro to clear up potential confusion. People who are unfamiliar with which countries have adopted the metric system would likely find that sentence misleading. --Carbon Rodney 07:15, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

USMA say the US has officially adopted it

USMA state specifically that "Even the question of whether a country is “officially” metric is harder to answer than you'd think. For example, officially, the U.S. has been metric since 1866, 1893, 1975, or 1988, depending on which official declaration you prefer to cite, and similar uncertainties apply to other countries." on this webpage. We need to discuss that and not try to kid ourselves it never happened. MeasureIT (talk) 06:42, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

You are taking sentences out of context. On the same page I read "For example, it's often stated that the U.S. is a non-metric country. But while the U.S. is non-metric in some areas, such as road signs, speedometers, and weather reports, it's metric in many other areas, such as food quantity and nutrition labels, and car and machinery manufacturing, and athletes run 100-meter races." The USMA is a pressure group so it is likely that what they write in biased.

The page WP:RELIABLE has the following advice: "Care should be taken with journals that exist mainly to promote a particular point of view. A claim of peer review is not an indication that the journal is respected, or that any meaningful peer review occurs. Journals that are not peer reviewed by the wider academic community should not be considered reliable, except to show the views of the groups represented by those journals." The same advice applies to websites. One should therefore avoid sites like the USMA site. In other words, there is nothing to discuss. Martinvl (talk) 07:04, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Observing the tone of some of the exchanges here, I am in doubt that getting embroiled would be a good idea, but speaking without peer-review, as neither a US citizen nor resident, my impression of de facto predominant practice in the country is what I used to call "imperial units". For my part I reckon that you could call the US either metric or not according to taste or simultaneously. I still think that to remove the map is neither helpful nor desirable, nor prejudicial to either USMA or its opponents. They are not the only readers of the article anyway, and it is a comfortable visual aid to other readers. JonRichfield (talk) 11:20, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

"United States" may refer to the federal government (which itself is composed of many branches, departments, agencies, etc.), to the 50 state governments, or to the people. So the statements "The United States has adopted SI", "The United States has/have officially adopted SI", and "The United States federal government has officially adopted SI" are vastly different statements.

Also, the language of laws reflect the vision of the lawmakers, but the real law is contained in the details, which often is in hard-to-find agency regulations, waivers, or informal policies. That is why secondary impartial non-government sources are better to get a real handle on what the law is, and what the real situation is.

Of course the USMA is a pressure group and cannot be relied upon for neutral information. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:05, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

I see the subtle differences depending on the precise language and I see what you mean by pressure group and by unreliable source and the value of secondary and unbiased sources. We need to rewrite it all relying purely on secondary impartial non-government sources and eliminate information that relies purely on USMA sources. What's the best way to do that? MeasureIT (talk) 20:27, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

I do not think that the article as it stands relies on any USMA sources. However I see no need to rely "purely on secondary impartial non-government sources", all that we need to do is to follow standard Wikipedia procedures and ensure that people who partake know what they are writing about. Over the last few days we have spent a lot of time discussing where SI is used, but we have not spent any time discussing what SI is. Martinvl (talk) 03:31, 30 August 2012 (UTC)