Talk:Emitter

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[edit] Units

mL/s and lbf/in² are more respectable units in scientific contexts than liter/hour and PSI (and yes, I do know the difference between lb and lbf). However, the latter units are customary in talking about drip irrigation, even in metric countries (including Israel, where it was invented). (For non-drip, m³/hour is common.) Wikipedia is supposed to be descriptive, not prescriptive. As for kg/cm² vs. kPa, kPa does seem to have prevailed. --Macrakis 20:12, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

As a matter of philosophy, Wikipedia is an international resource, written by international contributors and targetted at international readers. It is specifically intended to be translated and/or accessible to those whose primary language is not that of the text. By contrast, the many different national resources are written by national contributors and targetted at national readers. Translation is not a priority for them. It is not only understandable that Wikipedia is different from a resource in the nation of any given reader, it is sometimes desirable for Wikipedia to be different.

For example, language independent abbreviations are much better in a translatable international encyclopedia than English language dependent forms (such as: 'psi', 'fps', mps, 'sft', 'bpd', 'bcf'), even if a reader says these are customary in their national resources in an English language dominated country. I hope that you might consider this point.

I am not greatly worried about which of the volume (m³, L) and time (h, s) units are used. The symbols are international. So feel free to change those to the way you think is best.

I also happen to have prefer the format:

• unconverted unit (converted unit in symbol form)

rather than:

• unconverted unit or converted unit in full form

I think that is also mentioned in the manual of style. That minor style amendment was part of my motivation for the editing.

My main priority is that articles contain metric units and this article already did. So the edits are not a big deal for me. Do whatever you think makes the article best. Thanks for drawing it to my attention. Keep up the good work. Bobblewik 00:03, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

I certainly agree that articles should be useful for non-US and non-native English readers. But... not at the expense of intelligibility for English-speaking readers. Indeed, Wikipedia policy explicitly recommends using common English names in titles, at least.

What's more, I don't see how "lbf/in²" helps either non-US readers—who will presumably use the metric form—or US readers, for whom it will be jarringly unfamiliar: Google search of "drip-irrigation psi" finds 26 dB [sic] more citations than "drip-irrigation lbf". Water pressure in the US is almost always expressed in psi: expanding it to lb/in² or worse to lbf/in² makes it far less intelligible, not more. Similarly, a quick check on Australia (an example of an English-speaking metric country) using the Google restriction site:au seems to show that PSI is far more common than lbf, and that PSI coexists with kPa as a common unit.

I do wince every time I read of lb-ft of torque (instead of lbf-ft), or the BTU output of a gas kitchen burner (should be BTUH=BTU/hour), but I try to restrain my pedantic impulses when it doesn't actually make a difference to anyone else. And it does not make a difference when it is used for comparison—the usual case: is motor A torquier than motor B? Will gas range A boil water faster than gas range B? (Using watts uniformly, on the other hand, would help when comparing to electric ranges!)

We may regret this state of affairs, but "Wikipedia is not a soapbox". --Macrakis 04:00, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

You make some fair points. Some have been discussed before (I think in the manual of style talk pages but I am not sure). You may wish to revive the discussion on general styles. Set the article according to what you have said. Thanks. Bobblewik 08:41, 8 September 2005 (UTC)