Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/British unit

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was keep. I moved it back to English unit where it was before this all got started. howcheng {chat} 21:18, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] British unit

KEEP! Imperfect it may be, but it does contain information I could not find anywhere else. Fix, but keep. R.L.V.

This article is hopelessly wrong. The only people who refer to English Units are Amercians. The system that they describe actually dates back to the Holy Roman Empire, not England or Britain. Whilst it might be salavagable I doubt it. It has become to massed up by addition made by someonewho knows little or nothing about the history of the measurement in the UK. Imperial is a late and very codefied system which, were as the systems it replaced were more remshacle than ever. The term 'English Units' should be decribe as an Americanism describing in accuratley European measuring systems.--IanDavies 01:02, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

  • Keep and move back to English unit (IanDavies moved it just before listing it for deletion). The history of measurement in England is distinct enough from that of Scotland, Ireland, France, ancient Rome, etc., to warrant its own article. Indefatigable 18:47, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
    • Comment Then call it the History of Measurement in England, most of the measures are based in various Viking, Saxon with some Norman.--IanDavies 20:52, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep - They have a British Thermal Unit too. Endomion 21:30, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep and move back to English unit per Indefatigable. If the article has issues then it should be marked for clean-up; not deleted as the subject is valid. -- JLaTondre 00:38, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep possibly needs retitling to, but not so worried about that myself. Jcuk 02:29, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep but God alone knows what the title should be. These historical units have a much wider currency that is suggested by "English" or "British" units, not least due to their spread throughout the Empire, but also if you look into the history of science you will find people like Boyle, Hooke, Newton and others using drachms and other units, and their work was circulated worldwide. Use of the FFS (Furlong/Firkin/Fortnight) system still has some currency as an affectation among traditionalists. I guess that perhaps archaic units or units (archaic) might be the best target. We should definitely keep the content. - Just zis  Guy, you know? [T]/[C] AfD? 17:58, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment There is also Imperial unit which covers 1824 and beyond. This article appears to be addressing the period before that time, but it doesn't appear clear cut (probably because the topic isn't either). -- JLaTondre 19:24, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
This is broader; "imperial" is a narrow subset in anybody's usage, and much narrower yet in the United States where it only is used in connection with the volume units introduced in 1824. Gene Nygaard 22:37, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment I agree with the first entry. This is a difficult subject, but this isn't a useful article. I don't think it contributes to material available elsewhere, in parts it is wrong, in others misleading, and the conversions are too precise. It fails to address the issue with rigour. It is insufficiently detailed to be useful to historians, and dangerous for non-historians. The list is useful but these are definitions for a dictionary, not an encyclopedia. At the very least the name must be changed - it is an invention. English wouldn't be better as units were regional within England, and often imposed in e.g., Wales GBH 22:28, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
  • The accuracy issues can be fixed. The problem of the correct title is a thorny one, but I've recently been reading the original papers of Robert Hooke in reproduction by Robert Gunther, and the units in those papers (including early work on gravitaiton, magnetism, microscopy, the nature of light and so on) include some of these archaic units. - Just zis  Guy, you know? [T]/[C] AfD? 23:18, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
  • That should hardly come as any surprise. You wouldn't expect Hooke to be prescient enough to use the metric system a century or so before it was invented, would you? Newton liked troy ounces for weight, but often used French length units rather than the English units. Gene Nygaard 13:30, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
It supporters and the article haven't show anywhere that the units are in anyway English. You haven't shown the originated in England or by English people. You haven't shown that the measures were peculiar to England. The only thing that has ben demostrated is that Americans use the term English Unit, but Americans also have English Muffins, which do not occur in England. This all shows one of Wikipedia weaks points. If Hooke happily used units from everywhere why are some reffered to as ENglish?--IanDavies 14:17, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep and move back. It's a matter of origin, not of current usage. Gene Nygaard 22:37, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
    • Are you an American?--IanDavies 14:17, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. This is a useful page, which I have used for reference in the past. In its present form, the article has three main problems: 1) Everything is listed under 'historic' when some of the measures are in current use; 2) it is possibly mis-titled and should be English Units, though I could argue that British Units is more sensible for historic perspective since English units became the defacto British ones and all that's missing (if anyone knows) is earlier units used in other British areas (I have some data somewhere on units used in Mona (later, Isle of Man)); 3) there can be confusion with what those in the USA call English Units (just as they say they use the English Language yet use something slightly different than those in England) but that can simply be explained in a paragraph and a pointer to a separate article on units in the USA. --Douglas 16:01, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.