Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers/Archive 53

message: Some people or editors may find this iformation useful. I'm  a member of countering systemic bias. Simply speaking, it is a bia due to the nature of the system (wikipedia). Most editors here are coming from United States or in countries where English is their mother language. Most of the information/comments are biased towards the western. Opinions or information from Africa, Asia and South America are missing.
What I am trying to do is:
# Resolve the problem that "the information and perspective in the articles or sections may not represent a worldwide view." In this case, most style tend to be one-sided and in favour of one style standard (mainly United States or western).
# Integrate contents from various articles or policies, and remove the redundancy.
# Make sure the guidelines comply with major wikipedia policies, standards or philosophies.
# Make it consistent throughout the page.
# Make it consistent throughout different guidelines and policies.
# Resolve discrepancies and conflicts occurred within the same article.
 --Wai Wai (talk) 10:07, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: My role

message: As regards the comment of "no changes to the manual should be made until there is a concensus reached. Every change has to be discussed in the discussion page first."
It's clearly wrong unfortunately. Please read the following: <Br>
Major philosophy (official policies): 
:Improve pages wherever you can, and don't worry about leaving them imperfect. However, avoid deleting information wherever possible. -- Wikipedia:Editing policy
:perfection isn't required and don't worry about messing up. It is what wikipedia is - the editing process will take care it all. -- the five pillars of Wikipedia.
Specific guidelines: 
:Feel free to update this page as needed, but please use the discussion page to propose major changes. -- guideline of updating style pages
Explanation (Note: The following is just a rough guideline. It is never intended to be complete or extensive):
Things which may need discussions before editing:
* Major or fundamental proposals 
* Proposals which may be against major wikipedia philosophies or policies
* Important changes which is not going to or has reflected general consensus
Things which may not need discussions before editing:
* ideas, rules, or information copied/derived from other guidelines or policies (since they have reflected general consensus already)
* sub-proposals expanding or enriching the existing one
* Changes which is going to or has reflected general consensus (maybe supported by official policies or the like)
* Non-content-specific changes like copyedit, integration, reorganization, categorization, formatting and style etc.
* minor changes or edits
In the forthcoming days, I will try to explain some of the reasons why I make the changes. Nevertheless it is very time consuming and it is impractical to explain every single change, including copyedit and minor ones. Priority has to be decided. If anyone has any doubts about any of my changes, please specify which one and what your doubts are, so I will know which are in higher priority and focus my explanations on them. Consensus and agreement could be made in this regard.
Please give me a few days to respond. Best regards.
 --Wai Wai (talk) 10:07, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Editing procedures and requirements

message: I am sure this has come up before, but I don't see anything on the project page. User:GoDot is insisting on calling the current decade "the 2000s" as in "bank redlining had largely diminished by the mid 2000s" (Seattle neighborhoods). I find this very confusing: if someone says "the mid-1900s" they mean around 1950, not 1905. But since this is a user with whom I repeatedly find myself disagreeing, and since the MoS doesn't yet address the matter, I'm simply bringing the question here. - Jmabel | Talk 02:23, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Did you try to look at 2000s or 1900s? Compare to 21st century and 20th century. Christoph Päper 13:38, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The current decade 

message: I know it was a loooooooong time ago that we were debating on whether or not a space should be put between the number and the unit of Olympic Event names. The IOC official site does not put space, so one would expect the Wikipedia articles should do the same (e.g. 10km), but according to this overcited page, it was kept according to the WP guidelines (e.g. 10 km).
I recently received a long awaited reply from the IOC in which the Sports Director Kelly Fairweather noted to me that the IOC is "working with the International Federations to define the exact terms to be used for disciplines and events." She stated that the project would be completed by October 2006 and the IOC website after that point would be the place to find the official terminology. Until then, "there is no one approved terminology."
I just thought some others would like to know. → JARED (t)  21:19, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, I agree. The usage of either one is relative to the situation in which it is used. Different articles (topics) may require the use of different methods, but I'm really not up for arguing for it... → JARED (t)  15:01, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Update on Olympic Debate 

message: This has probably come up before: Should the Indian numbering system (hazar, lakh, crore, arab...) be used in articles about Indian subjects?  Should exponential breaks be done in the Indian system (i.e. 1,00,000 as opposed to 100,000)?  Thoughts? -- Samir   धर्म 09:57, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for pointing me at that article - I came across an article with a comma after two digits once and was very confused! Are numbers other than lakhs and crores commonly used? My opinion, off the top of my head, is that it would probably be reasonable to use the Indian names and style of digits when referring to Indian subjects (thus complying with the MoS requirement to use the local form of English), but also advisable to write the number out in the more common style to avoid confusing non-Indian readers who might think it was a typographical error, e.g. "five crores (5,00,00,000 or 50,000,000)". -- Arwel (talk) 12:54, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Indian numbering convention