Talk:International System of Units/Archives/09/2013

Meaning of "special names"

The GA reviewer seems to want an explanation of the term "special names". The meaning seems obvious to me: one of the usual meanings of the word "special"; i.e. these derived units have their own names (like "newton") which are, for instance, not based on the names of the base units. See

• http://www.bipm.org/en/si/si_brochure/chapter2/2-2/2-2-2.html
• http://www.bipm.org/en/si/si_brochure/chapter2/2-2/table3.html

The meaning seems obvious to me in context, and I would feel silly adding something so obvious, but what do others think? Would it make sense to explain the meaning of "special" in a footnote? Of course, putting it in such explicit terms also risks slightly altering the meaning. --Boson (talk) 23:16, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

The last paragraph of the section "Metre Convention" explains that French is the official language of the SI Brochure. The section also has a short table cataloguing words that might be used a an unusual way. What more can I do without indulging in WP:SYN or WP:OR? Martinvl (talk) 06:46, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

I understand entirely that the original was written in French, but that is no excuse for unclear English here - is it? Presumably someone who speaks English understands what the French meant in the SI brochure. "Special" is ambiguous in English, but presumably the French original is less so. In English "special", as an adjective, has several different meanings, including: distinguished, better than others of its kind, reserved for a particular purpose, not usual and primary. I believe that if we are to use that term, we need to introduce it first by explaining what is meant by it, particularly for those readers who do not understand the franglais, and its nuances as used by the SI. Example: "Some derived units have been given what are known as special names to make them easier to express. For example the unit of electrical conductance - kg⋅m²⋅s⁻²⋅A⁻¹ - is known as the siemens." FishGF (talk) 19:04, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

User:FishGF is exceeding his brief as a reviewer by getting this deeply involved in the issue. At this stage it is clear that there is a dispiute and this should be flagged for a third party to arbitrate before the review is closed. Martinvl (talk) 22:17, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

What issue? I raised a concern that "special" is ambiguous in the context in which it is used, and suggested that is could be made much clearer very simply. Your apparent explanation that it is because it is a translation from French does nit excuse the ambiguity - or if you disagree, please clarify. FishGF (talk) 19:56, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps we could just make that 'Some derived units have been given their own names (referred to as "special names"). For example the unit of electrical conductance - kg⋅m²⋅s⁻²⋅A⁻¹ - is known as the siemens.' I don't think we want to claim that we know the reason - unless a source can be provided.--Boson (talk) 22:40, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

That seems like a good way to put it. Jc3s5h (talk) 23:54, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

The reason I mentioned is that given in the SI brochure. The first sentence of the third paragraph in section 1.4 gives: "Some of the coherent derived units in the SI are given special names,* to simplify their expression (see Section 2.2.2)." FishGF (talk) 15:59, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

I have traced the term "special names" back to Maxwell's original paper. He gave no further explanation. To do so would be to second-guess his thoughts on the matter. Martinvl (talk) 15:23, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

That raises 2 questions: 1. How do you know that is the origin of the term? 2. He may have given no further explanation in the primary source, so why not search out learned opinion in secondary sources to help clarify it? Even the SI brochure manages to clarify it by saying it is to make the derived units easier to express. FishGF (talk) 21:15, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:International System of Units/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Pyrotec (talk · contribs) 18:23, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

I will review. Pyrotec (talk) 18:23, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

I would expect the review of History of the metric system (Talk:History of the metric system/GA2) to be completed during this coming weekend, and then I'll move onto this review. Pyrotec (talk) 15:36, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Initial comments

I've now done a quick initial read of the article, but I've not at this stage checked any references or checked the copyright status of any of the figures / images. Apart from these two points the article appears to be at or about GA-level, but there are a few "obvious" minor problems such as undefined abbreviations, such as GCPM (I'll probably fix this one myself.

I'm now going to work my way through the article, section by section, but started at History and finishing with the Lede. This will likely take up to a week or so. Pyrotec (talk) 14:45, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

History

• Untitled subsection -

• This entirely unreferenced, so I'll treat it as a summary of what follows. However, I may need to come back to this, if I find material here that is not in the following subsections.
• I added the definition General Conference on Weights and Measures for CGPM, as it was otherwise undefined.

• Uncoordinated development -

• This subsection looks OK. Pyrotec (talk) 16:15, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

• Metre Convention -

• There seems to be inconsistent use of CGPM and GCPM, I'll change those that I come across to CGPM. Pyrotec (talk) 15:19, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
• Otherwise, this subsection looks OK.

• Towards SI -

• This subsection looks OK.

SI Brochure and conversion factors

• This section looks OK.

Units and prefixes

• Base units -

• This subsection looks OK. Note: I did some minor cleaning up as I went through this subsection.

• Derived units & Prefixes -

• These two subsections look OK.
• Please someone review the radian unit. As far as I know it cannot be expressed using meter * meter^-1. Maybe the operation was not the product, in which case clarification is needed.

• Non-SI units accepted for use with SI -

• Generally OK, but I regarded the bullet-pointed headings with references to Table numbers somewhat poorly explained so I added "and the reference to Tables 6, 7, 8 and 9" into the existing [Note 6].
• Similarly, most of these bullet-pointed headings have no references, but its clear that verifiability is back to ref 21, so I'm accepting them as they are.

Pyrotec (talk) 22:00, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Writing unit symbols and the values of quantities

• I changed the links during the reviewing process for ISO, IEC, NIST (etc), so that for the first occurrence, each was invoked by name and then subsequently by abbreviation.

• • Otherwise, this section is OK.

Realisation of units

• This section is OK.

Post-1960 changes

• This section is OK.

Pyrotec (talk) 20:49, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Worldwide adoption of SI

I changed "Worldwide" to "Global". (For clarification) This is not a requirement of GAN, I considered to be a a minor improvement. Pyrotec (talk) 16:29, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

• First, untitled, subsection.

• This subsection looks OK.
• Note: While reviewing, I added the "publisher's name" to the NIST citation, I can't see any reason for not including it.

• United Kingdom and the former Empire -

• This subsection looks OK.

• United States -

• This subsection generally looks OK. However:

• The sixth paragraph (starting: "During the first decade of the 21st century, the EU directive 80/181/EEC had required that dual unit labelling ..." would benefit if a citation was provided for the statement that the delay was due to opposition by the Food Marketing Institute, representing U.S. grocers, in penultimate sentence.
• Similarly, the final statement in the same paragraph, about the EU postponed the sunset clause for dual units indefinitely, would also benefit from a citation.

• European Union -

• Stopping for now. To be continued tomorrow. Pyrotec (talk) 16:43, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
• I found inconsistent use of GCPM & CGPM and millimeter and millimeter. This has already been mentioned before, so I made them consistent.
• Otherwise, this subsection looks OK.

• India -

• This subsection looks OK.

"New SI"

• This section looks OK.

Lead

This appears to be compliant with WP:Lead, in so far as it provides both (as required) an introduction to the topic of the article and a summary of the main points in the body of the article. The current lead also appears to reflect the "balance of the body" of the article, however, for an article of this length the article would be improved if the four-paragraph lead was perhaps expanded to provide a little more detail (but still within the four-paragraph format). Nethertheless, I'm going to award GA-status to the article as it stands. Pyrotec (talk) 20:53, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Overall summary

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

1. Is it reasonably well written?

   A. Prose is clear and concise, without copyvios, or spelling and grammar errors:

   B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

   A. Has an appropriate reference section:

   B. Citation to reliable sources where necessary:

   C. No original research:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. Major aspects:

   B. Focused:

4. Is it neutral?

   Fair representation without bias:

5. Is it stable?

   No edit wars, etc:

6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?

   A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content:

   B. Images are provided if possible and are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

I'm happy to be able (at long last) to be able to award this article GA-status. Congratulations on a fine article. Pyrotec (talk) 20:53, 22 November 2013 (UTC)