Talk:Rhea (bird)
From Academic Kids
How come only metric measurements? Ortolan88
- Becaue that is what is used in science and in the whole world outside the US. Also was the choice of the person writing the entry. If you like, you can add American units in parenthesis after the metric ones. --maveric149
Condecension breeds condecension, maveric. You told me that. I have heard of the metric system and I also know how to do simple arithmetic. But I can't do the calculations in my head and I don't see why we should expect our readers to do so. By the way, they don't use the metric system in Liberia either. How about our Liberian readers?Ortolan88
- What do they use in Liberia? On an international note, things like feet and inches are difficult to use because they vary in length from place to place. A French foot is about 17 British inches, so in worrying about everyone giving a length in just feet would be wrong. I don't know how common such units are, but then, that's one of the reasons most people went metric in the first place.
Liberia uses feet, inches and pounds.
I think this and other articles would be better if they had both metric and inch-foot-pound measurements for the convenience of the American reader.
The likelihood that even French people would think of the archaic French foot is slim, it seems to me. The likelihood that American readers would appreciate seeing inches, feet and pounds is quite high in contrast. I expect the American readership of wikipedia may be as high as 50 percent.
It's not like I was asking for measurements in poods and versts. Ortolan88
- Feet and inches are now standardised worldwide (an inch is exactly 2.54 centimetres by definition). Gallons aren't (though the Imperial gallon has pretty much dropped out of usage - the US one is the only non-historical one) Yes, American readers deserve entries in cubits and furlongs or whatever their ridiculous measurement system uses ;), but equally American writers should translate their measurements into SI units. Getting "primary unit" consistency on Wikipedia is unlikely, but as long as they are consistent within an article that's OK. The exception is of course physics-related articles, where if you use American units as the primary unit the physicists will just roll about on the floor laughing :)
- So, in summary, yes, if an article has just one set of measurements it's a bug, but I think the easiest thing to do is just fix it. --Robert Merkel
Hey, I think we ought to use the metric system, play nothing but soccer, and have more sophisticated attitudes about adultery, but we are so provincial. And the lack of topless beaches has made us the laughingstock of the world.Ortolan88
- It's football ;) Seriously, sorry about the tail-twisting, but all in all do you think the above is a reasonable policy (in summary use one set of units consistently within an article, but provide translations, if a field of endeavour has a bias towards one set of units (science uses metric, drag racing uses imperial) stick with that set as the primary units)? --Robert Merkel
- Sorry: it's just that having both metric & imperial adds nothing to an article — any half-educated person can understand either one and do a rough mental conversion of the "5 feet = a bit less than 2 metres" variety. But seeing it in poods and versts would tell me something new I didn't know before — i.e., how long a pood is. Or possibly how heavy. (We don't seem to have an article on them.) Tannin 16:19, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Darwin's Rhea also in Chilean Patagonia
The diagrams don't show it, but the Darwin's Rhea is quite common in the Chilean part of Patagonia, as well as the Argentinian side. In fact, based on my observations the last two weeks, it is more common and less skittish in Chile than Argentina, possibly because of stronger protections against hunting.
