Talk:Micrometre

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This was claimed to be merged with metre, but wasn't. It would also be silly to have a micron article we can link to, for the deprecated old name of this unit, and not have a name we can link to for the unit itself. Gene Nygaard 04:28, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] In favor of removing redirect to Meter

I don't quite understand the rationale for having Micrometre redirect to Meter. Through a casual perusal of relevant discussions, I gather that there is discomfort about having an article for every possible SI unit and prefix combination, especially those that "would never be used in real life". I agree that having articles about obscure units such as "decilumens" and "exateslas" is ridiculous. However, I don't think that "micrometer" is so obscure. In fact, it appears that over 400 articles, from Noble rhubarb to LASIK, contain a "micrometre" link. From this evidence, I think "micrometre" has independent notability.

Micrometre is not Exametre, Petameter, or Zettametre (whose links are "self reflective" ones from technical "orders of magnitude" articles, and have been thus quite appropriatly made into redirects to Metre). Instead it is a term which has entered the vernacular, used to describe all sorts of small lengths. As such, it should have its own page. Someone reading LASIK who comes across the phrase "the tissue removed is approximately a dozen micrometres thick" will want to know what exactly this scientific sounding term is, and the micrometre article should be able to quickly tell them. They probably don't need to be informed of what a metre is, but this is what a redirect to Metre assumes.

I think the current 1 E-6 m page best informs those people who follow a "micrometre" link of what they are likely to be interested in. My only concern is that the notation of the title may be a bit confusing. I propose that we move the current 1 E-6 m material to Micrometre, or have a Micrometer article that looks similar to 1 E-6 m. What do you think?

P.S. This sort of analysis might also apply, with steadily declining force, to nanometre, picometre, and femtometre.

Erudy 14:32, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Quite frankly, it's enough for it to redirect to 1 E-6 m, as that is literally a micrometer. Having it redirect to meter presupposes that a user would type in "micrometre" or click on such a link with some other intent than finding out information on micrometers. Anyone who would type in "micrometre" could just as easily (more easily!) search for "metre" and get there, and anyone who had no idea whatsoever what they were clicking on would be able to understand the very clear sentence at the top of 1 E-6 m and follow that link to metre. siafu 14:46, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Having it redirect to metre (not the orders of magnitude pages) was part of the result of the earlier discussion. I actually agree with Erudy that micrometre should still have its own article, as it and many other prefixed units used to have (just look at the page history of this page). Micrometre more so than most other prefixed units, because of

1. Micrometer, the measuring instrument.
2. The now deprecated but still far-too-common use of "microns".
3. To a lesser extent, the old double-prefix usages such as "millimicrons" or "micromillimeters", more directly applicable to a nanometre page.

This would be helpful not only with respect to reading Wikipedia, but, importantly, with editing it as well.

The earlier discussion Bobblewik refers to this talk page has been moved from Talk:Units of measurement to Talk:Units of measurement/Format of articles about units. Go look at that as part of the basis of this discussion.

A problem with reviving the discussion here is that few people are going to have a redirect (and consequently its talk page) on their watchlists.

I'd suggest you move this revival of the discussion to Talk:Units of measurement, leaving a discription and link here and mentioning the earlier discussion there, along with what is moved. Gene Nygaard 15:03, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I do agree that micrometre should have it's own article, but I think in the meantime it's rather silly to redirect to the base unit when there is an article (albeit brief) on this exact topic in the form of 1 E-6 m. siafu 15:08, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

At the time the redirect was changed to 1 E-6 m, that page didn't even have any link whatsoever to the micrometer article. I've changed that, but that's just one of the little things often overlooked when changes such as this are made.

OTOH, the metre article still doesn't have any link to micrometer. Another one of the problems overlooked when the article which used to be here at "Micrometre" was first changed to a redirect. And the "metre" page also does not have any mention whatsoever of "micron"; maybe it did at one time, but if so somebody lost track of the fact that the prefixed units were redirected to that page. Gene Nygaard 15:21, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to recreate the Micrometre page, from some of the materials that existed prior to the initial redirect to Metre many moons ago. This page should have in-text links to metre and a link to 1 E-6 m. In this way, there is easy access to the base unit, and the (in my opinion, very interesting) "scale of magnitude" set of articles. True, there will be two articles for the same length (1 E-6 m and Micrometre). However, I think this is justified. First, there is precedent (i.e. 1 E-1 m, Centimetre; 1 E 0 m, Metre) to this sort of dualism. Second, this habit is defensible because of the "1 E x m" series have a nice flow due to there standardized form (mathmatical titles and stripped-down, strictly comparative content), a form which would be broken by substituting prefix-meter articles and more content about use etc. Nonetheless, this sort of content should be somewhere, and someone who types in prefix-meter (or clicks on a [[prefix-meter]] link for more common prefixes shouldn't be thrown into an article with a cryptic title formatted to fit an austere style. They should simply go to the article prefix-metre. Micrometre is sufficently common to warrent its own article, in my opinion. Erudy 15:53, 22 September 2006 (UTC)