Forgotten Realms Wiki talk:Units of measurement

I think the units given in the source material should be quoted first, with the conversion listed in parentheses afterwards. When Wizards starts publishing stuff in metric units, then it will switch :D

Moviesign 22:09, March 5, 2012 (UTC)

I see what you are saying, however the main concern is that USA uses imperial measurements, population around 300 million, but practically the rest of the world uses metric, population 6 billion or so. It's clear we need to list both, since "60 yards" or "14 inches" means nothing to me, but "10 centimetres" might be equally useless to an American. I think we should take the utilitarian approach here to list the metric first. Fw190a8 (talk &middot; contr) 22:49, March 5, 2012 (UTC)

Hehe, your argument would hold water if you quoted US-based Forgotten Realms customers vs. non-US customers. But my case is historical, not cultural or even demographical. If you were quoting an ancient medalion that described the Staff of Ra as being six kaddam long, you would write "The relic was six kaddam (about 1.8 meters) long." which still respects the original text and provides a modern interpretation. We are the scribes, cataloguers, and archaeologists of the Forgotten Realms (remember, it is now policy to write as if we are thousands of years in the future) and we should respect our ancient treasures. :) &mdash;&mdash;Moviesign 23:37, March 5, 2012 (UTC)


 * Speaking as an Australian for whom something like a yard means nothing, I really don't mind the US measurements. The D&D game uses those measurements, and the Forgotten Realms is a US-based franchise, with a largely American fan-base (I assume), and I respect that. I use US spelling in my articles, UK spelling otherwise (I'm bilingual!). (Disclaimer: I work as a technical editor who edits scientific papers, usually in US spelling, so I may just be quite used to working this way.)
 * For honesty and accuracy, I believe we should as stay as true to source material as possible, just like with regular lore. If US spelling is used, I'll use US spelling. If a particular type of unit is quoted, I'd use that. A conversion essentially modifies information, so it shouldn't be uses a primary data.
 * Changing the units introduces a problem of reduced accuracy. For example, 5.0 feet ≈ 1.5 metres, but 1.5 metres ≈ 4.9 feet. That 5 feet might already have been rounded, so it would be increasingly inaccurate to call it 1.5 metres, if that makes sense. I'd prefer to give the original, most accurate measurement first, followed by a converted estimate in brackets, just so it's clear which the source uses and which is the estimate.
 * Some points on the proposed guidelines from a scientific standpoint:
 * We shouldn't invent accuracy. A measurement of 5 feet might already have been rounded down from 5.1 feet, so there's no need to choose an exact conversion of 1.524 metres. We should round to the same number of significant figures in each number: e.g., 13 feet has 2 significant figures (1 and 3), so this converts to 3.9 metres, not 3.9624 metres. For a single digit number, such as 5 feet, consider it as 5.0 for two significant figures (5 and 0), to produce a conversion of 1.5 metres instead of 1 metre or 1.524 metres.
 * It's more common to space out abbreviated units, just like you would with the full names: e.g., 5 feet, 5 ft, instead of 5ft. This is mainly to avoid confusion with mathematics in scientific use (e.g., 5cm or 5c m, where c = 2.1,), however, and I can see how doing the same with inches, in, could also be confusing. -- BadCatMan 03:30, March 6, 2012 (UTC)