Nǐ huì shuō Zhōngwén ma? No? Funny how people write in the language they know. Over in the US, that means miles instead of kilometres, and US-style dates, and “aluminum”. I don’t necessarily agree with the way the US does it, but asking someone to do translations for you, when (a) you could do yourself in 30 seconds, and (b) it’s in an informal, discussion-area post where the exact values don’t even matter? That seems rather unreasonable.
Systems of measurements != language. This is an English-language site and so a reader would expect all discussions to occur in English. However, if you’re giving measurements, use an international standard. Sticking to US units out of an assumption that international readers can be bothered to patiently convert them all is at the very least impolite.
I think demanding that people use the units you prefer is impolite. Maybe unless you’re an editor and at some point you or your employer will be giving the object of this criticism money.
SI units aren’t “units I prefer”, it’s an international standard. What if I claimed that same defense when making a post with measurements given in pre-revolution Russian units? “Come on, arshins and sazhens are totally on Wikipedia!”
People in the US use imperial measures as their native units. I doubt anyone on this site uses arshins and sazhens as their primary day-to-day measure of objects. Asking someone in the casual discussion area to translate out of their native units, for your convenience, when probably half of this site uses those units, is selfish.
If half the site were dominated by pre-revolution Russians I would (a) be very confused and (b) once I accepted that this wasn’t a hoax, I’d use Google to learn the local vernacular rather than expecting them to cater to me.
Nǐ huì shuō Zhōngwén ma? No? Funny how people write in the language they know. Over in the US, that means miles instead of kilometres, and US-style dates, and “aluminum”. I don’t necessarily agree with the way the US does it, but asking someone to do translations for you, when (a) you could do yourself in 30 seconds, and (b) it’s in an informal, discussion-area post where the exact values don’t even matter? That seems rather unreasonable.
Systems of measurements != language. This is an English-language site and so a reader would expect all discussions to occur in English. However, if you’re giving measurements, use an international standard. Sticking to US units out of an assumption that international readers can be bothered to patiently convert them all is at the very least impolite.
I think demanding that people use the units you prefer is impolite. Maybe unless you’re an editor and at some point you or your employer will be giving the object of this criticism money.
SI units aren’t “units I prefer”, it’s an international standard. What if I claimed that same defense when making a post with measurements given in pre-revolution Russian units? “Come on, arshins and sazhens are totally on Wikipedia!”
People in the US use imperial measures as their native units. I doubt anyone on this site uses arshins and sazhens as their primary day-to-day measure of objects. Asking someone in the casual discussion area to translate out of their native units, for your convenience, when probably half of this site uses those units, is selfish.
If half the site were dominated by pre-revolution Russians I would (a) be very confused and (b) once I accepted that this wasn’t a hoax, I’d use Google to learn the local vernacular rather than expecting them to cater to me.
If you didn’t prefer metric units, would you be arguing for them?
If anyone actually preferred arshins and sazhens, would they be a good example?