Avenues2009

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Happy editing! I dream of horses ^{(Contribs) (Talk)} 15:50, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Units

Hello, I'm ArkHyena and I've noticed that you have recently been mass-changing units in multiple articles. Please do not change units without giving a reasoning as to why they should be changed, and these changes should be discussed in their respective articles' talk pages, especially for an FA such Mercury (planet). Thank you. ArkHyena (talk) 23:53, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

I have high functioning autism and thus like everything to be nice and straightforward. Thus I tend to use the more exotic metric prefixes (read the article about metric prefixes to acquaint yourself with what I mean) because then I am using the same units in multiple arenas from the subatomic to the astronomical (thus Gm to Rm makes more sense to me than AU or light years), and wish everybody else did so. En route to my eventual PhD, my schoolteachers found me using them in my work back then, and today I tend to but in to my astronomical society's online meetings with a conversion of their AU or light years to whichever metric prefix in metres fits the particular distance they are talking about. Thus I was trying to implement what to me seem more appropriate prefixes in all those articles. Avenues2009 (talk) 23:59, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

Major or systematic changes should be done based on consensus (with details on how at WP:CONSENSUS). Regardless, established consensus is that the radii and mass of celestial objects should be given in kilometers and kilograms, respectively. This is ultimately because these are the units most laypeople understand and are used in academic literature, for better or for worse. ArkHyena (talk) 00:36, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. Astronomy articles should present SI unit scales that most readers will be familiar with; hence km, kg, cm, and so forth. It should also preferentially use units that astronomers conventionally use in their peer-reviewed papers; thus AU, pc, kpc, Mpc, Myr, and so forth. Adding less familiar units as additional conversions just generally increases clutter. In the case of widely popular Astronomy topics such as the planet articles, old English unit conversions may make some sense, but otherwise the MOS:CONVERSIONS guideline usually applies: "in science-related articles, supplying such conversion is not required unless there is some special reason to do so". Praemonitus (talk) 12:53, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Do you see what I mean here? Avenues2009 (talk) 00:07, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Please do not make any more changes of this type to use obscure units. These units may seem appropriate and consistent to you, but Wikipedia articles should be written in a way that is accessible to general readers. Most readers will be familiar with units like km and kg, but may not be familiar with units like Mm and Zg. The manual of style says "Units unfamiliar to general readers should be presented as a name–symbol pair on first use, linking the unit name" so even if unfamiliar units were used, they would need to be explained and linked. But this seems unnecessarily cumbersome. Simple familiar units should be used in most cases. If you disagree with this advice and believe that these uncommon units should be used, please open a discussion on WT:Manual_of_Style/Dates_and_numbers and get consensus before making any further changes. CodeTalker (talk) 00:38, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

And what about going the other way, to the subatomic? The change I would have (but have not) made to the article about the electron relates to its mass. To me it is much more straightforward to write 910.92827139qg than 9.1093837139x10-31 kg. Avenues2009 (talk) 01:10, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

That would again be a terrible change, in my opinion. Very few people would know what a "qg" is, but most people would be expected to understand scientific notation. CodeTalker (talk) 01:29, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

I have opened a discussion there. Avenues2009 (talk) 09:15, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Similarly for the proton what would make more sense to me is to have 1.67262192595 yg as its mass (but again I haven't changed anything. Avenues2009 (talk) 01:13, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Sorry for mistyping the mass of the electron that makes sense to me. With my autism goes poor sight. Avenues2009 (talk) 01:15, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

All good. In case you didn't know, you are able to edit already-posted replies; this is common practice to fix minor mistakes or affix addenda :) ArkHyena (talk) 09:26, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

I can't see now to do that on the smartphone. Perhaps a feature needs adding to the app. Avenues2009 (talk) 10:05, 21 July 2024 (UTC)