Wikipedia:Featured article review/Metrication/archive1

Metrication

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Review commentary

Message left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Science. Original author, Seabhcán, aware. Sandy 14:15, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

This article is full of external jumps and improper measurement styles. Needs updating to current FA standards.Rlevse 11:44, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Can you give an example? Self-Described Seabhcán 12:47, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

• I've no idea what the nominator's first sentence means. The article certainly needs work, which is worth doing for such an interesting topic. I've copy-edited the lead to kick things off. It's way overlinked ("speed", "car", and every country under the sun); there's both BrEng and AmEng; I wonder why the logos of three metrication boards appear—aren't there more interesting images in the Commons? Tony 13:54, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

• I notice the article lacks a discussion of the costs of retooling for metric. I don't know of a quality source for this topic. I also am not sure what the nominator's first sentence means. --Gerry Ashton 17:52, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, there are no cost analyses available for most countries who went metric because they did it long ago before such things were thought of. For the UK, the figures range from £50 billion to nothing, depending on who you ask, and this information is in the Metrication in the United Kingdom article. I don't have any information for the US. Self-Described Seabhcán 22:21, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

External jumps are links in the body of the text that take you outside wiki like this [1]. They should be in proper reference format, ie, footnotes, preferably in cite php format. Measurements are supposed to be spelled out, not abbreviated. I've run AndyZ's peer review script for you and put it on the talk page. It's generally quite accurate. Rlevse 11:33, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

• External jumps seem to be corrected, still lacking references. Needs work. Sandy 21:08, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

FARC commentary

Main FA criteria concerns are number of citations (2c). Joelito (talk) 22:56, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

• Remove. Edit comparison. There are still problems throughout. Here are random examples.
  • "Before the metric system" is Eurocentric; in fact, the first sentence appears to assume that nowhere else existed a thousand years ago. Just a quick mention of the state of play with measurements in other parts of the world, including India, China and the Arab world, is in order.
  • "Derived units are made from logical combinations of base units. For example, the speed of an object is defined by the number of metres it moves every second — m/s."—Well, wasn't this the case with the imperial system too?
    • Not always; consider the knot (and the acre, which is not a square of any imperial unit). "Natural" or "simple" might be betterm though. Septentrionalis 02:07, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
  • "Time has resisted metrication"—This is a superficial paragraph. Please don't tell our readers what to note (at least twice), or what is interesting (last section).
  • One of a number of clumsy sentences: "It appears that it was decimalisation that disturbed the people most — as, although Napoleon decreed that there should be "such fractions and multiples as were generally used", he redefined the old base units in metric terms."
  • Last para: Europe isn't a country.
  • Consistency lacking in a number of terms (St Lucia, USA, etc). Tony 12:11, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

• Remove. Entire sections of the article remain without citations or are under-citated.--Yannismarou 17:04, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

• Remove. Still under-cited, prose problems as well. Sandy 13:58, 29 August 2006 (UTC)