Talk:International System of Units/Archives/10/2009

Unneeded section: SI base unit definitions

This section has several problems.

1. It is not necessary, because there is already an article, SI base unit, which covers this material and is mentioned as a main article in the Units section.
2. It claims to cover base units, but does not distinguish which of the many units mentioned are base units, and which are not.
3. It takes for granted that the reader will understand the definition and derivation of each unit (for example, that the definition of the ampere depends on vacuum permeability). A person with such a level of understanding would not need to read this article. This is too exoteric for an overview article.

--Jc3s5h (talk) 15:43, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

While the section could be improved (I think there is valid criticism in your points 2 and 3, but these could be addressed by improving the text, rather than deleting it), I don't agree that it should be deleted. It's not unreasonable to have some brief information about the base units in the SI article even though there is some information (presumably more detail?) in the SI base unit article. I also think this info would be better as a subsection under the Units section rather than where it is in the article.

(To address process rather than content, it's not very polite to delete someone's work within 5 minutes of them adding it without discussion, and your response to my revert was to add a template disputing the factual accuracy (not necessity) of the section. As to "no consensus", it seems that the original writer of the section and I both think it's worth having, and you disagree, so this isn't very informative.) Djr32 (talk) 19:54, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

The section was factually inaccurate, in that it was titled "SI base unit definitions" but did not distinguish which units mentioned were base units. This would indicate that every unit mentioned was a base unit, which is false. I don't see a need to restate information in the SI base unit article here, but perhaps some typographical changes could be made to put the wikilink to that article closer to where the base unit table is. Also, perhaps the Quantity column for the candela unit could be expanded a bit to make it more obvious it has to do with light. --Jc3s5h (talk) 20:53, 8 October 2009 (UTC)