User talk:Bleakcomb

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D. Lion West 07:48, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hectares

I don't think it's the MoS so much as its supposedly SI practice. I remember some other editor saying as much somewhere a long time ago. However, this link suggests otherwise.

Yes, what you found and shared pretty much supports my opinion (well, it's not an opinion anymore, is it?) that it's better to use hectares for land parcels >1 km². I'm pretty sure it was Bobblewik ... that was his thing ("A request" on his talk page seems to have been what precipitated his departure. His listing at WP:MW suggests as much). He actually inspired me to do a lot of drive-by metric additions. But he could be very dogmatic about this, and I guess he didn't care to do anything else and was forced to back down. Didn't realize it was so long ago (and it doesn't surprise me, either). Daniel Case (talk) 03:11, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Less than, as my edits should make clear. Daniel Case (talk) 03:42, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

You'd think, here in the US, that square miles would be used above a certain amount of acres for land parcels, but no, they aren't. The Adirondack Park's area here in New York State is given as six million acres, and the state uses that in its promotional material. Square miles seem to be preferred only for the areas of political entities. Also, I can't remember what the number of acres per square mile is ... OK, working it out with a calculator it comes to about 640. I can see going to km² after a hundred hectares as very rational; I can't say the same about the 640 cutoff point. Daniel Case (talk) 04:18, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Frankly, that >1 km² thing was a personal compromise I came up with as a way of accomodating Bobblewik and his incessant insistence on getting rid of hectares everywhere. I would cede him anything above a whole number, but point out that land-area figures like "0.02 km²" are really difficult to envision and counterproductive, and much better to say "2 ha". The funny thing is it actually fits with doing acreages as 1 km²=250 acres, a much easier figure to work with than 1 square mile=640 acres.

I think the rationale for not using hectares was that (this may have been according to Bobblewik again) really strict scientific SI goes in increments of a thousandfold ... you are supposed to use either cm or km for length (I recall learning, in high school, to use the exponential value for c as 3.0 X 10¹⁴ cm in scientific notation for use in equations) but not good old meters. Likewise, area jumps from m² to km², again with nothing in between (like hectares) supposedly permitted. You are offering more persuasive evidence for the use of hectares across the board (something I really had no argument with, that I thought was standard practice under the metric system until Bobblewik got us all convinced we should use square km). I mean, I don't have a problem giving the area of the Slide Mountain Wilderness Area, one of my favorite nearby hiking and backpacking spots, as 47,500 acres. So 19,000 ha wouldn't be a problem either.

We should probably try to get something formally about this in the MoS and end this confusion.

BTW, the only place where I gave the area of a non-political unit in square miles was Hudson River Historic District, also here in New York and the largest National Historic Landmark District in the U.S. Since it sprawls through several communities and two counties, I thought square miles made the point better than acres. I think Butte-Anaconda Historic District in Montana, the next largest NHLD, did the same thing. Daniel Case (talk) 03:44, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] List of pipeline trails

For the time being, there aren't enough examples of trails following pipeline easements to warrant a separate article, so they a few examples are included in List of rail trails. Eventually there may be a List of pipeline trails. Also a List of canal trails. Also a List of converted fishing piers.

Today I came across by chance Syndal Heatherdale Pipe Reserve Trail, and so that I don't lose track of it I have added it the List of rail trails. The McKinley Bridge also be crossreferenced there.

What do you think? Tabletop (talk) 23:28, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Drummoyne

hey, sorry about that I made about 150 edits to articles linking to gaelic, these went to Gaels,Irish language,Gaelic Ireland,Gaelic culture & Scottish Gaelic. I was bound to make at least one mistake. It being in Australia, I didn't see the Scottish link. Bogger (talk) 12:05, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Northern Suburbs Sydney

Hi J Bar, you said on Tourombah's talk that you would like to get this right and get more input from WP Sydney. I wouldn't mind having two cents worth in a wider forum. I support your reversions of Tourombah's AGF edits until some consistency and notability have been established. I might also draw your attention to Tourombah's edits of Lower North Shore (Sydney). In general there might be two needs to be met. One is a popular, colloquial, ill-defined notion of regions (eg Lower North Shore) and the other being regions defined on ABS statistical regions of Sydney which could form the basis of many good (perhaps even featured) articles of the demographics of Sydney based on easily verifiable data from the ABS, not a mish-mash. Again we should get this right, because it has been mucked up so far. Many thanks. Bleakcomb (talk) 22:41, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. You make some good points. The Lower North Shore articles certainly needs some work, especially since it drifts between describing the region Lower North Shore or Lower Northern Sydney. I'll address this when I get a chance. With some of these regions, often these terms are general and not finite, so it's really hard to define them in these articles. We have had quite a few discussions about these regions overthe last couple of years and the Northern regions seem to cause the biuggest problems. For example, people have argued that there is no such region as Upper North Shore or where Upper and Lower begin and end or which suburbs should be included in the Hills District and which belong in the Greater Western Sydney. Anyway, we also have to deal with the fact that some suburbs can belong in two regions or that some regions can encompass other smaller regions. For example, the St George district is also part of Southern Sydney along with Sutherland Shire. Many of the South-eastern suburbs of Sydney are also part of the Eastern Suburbs although people who live there might argue for their exclusion. Anyway, if people can provide references of these regional terms being used, then the region names can be included as separate articles. That's how Upper North Shore was included. There were businesses who described themselves as located in the Upper North Shore, the local newspaper had many references and the local councils also used the term on their website. So we should scrutinise any other 'new' regions in the same way. Cheers. J Bar (talk) 06:39, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Have a look at the comments on Tourombah's talk page by JRG [1] and also what has already been discussed by many others on the subject od Sydney regions over the past two years.[2] Cheers. J Bar (talk) 07:14, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Lane Cove National Park, Parks, Infoboxes, Hectares

Replying to User talk:Bleakcomb#Lane Cove National Park, Parks, Infoboxes, Hectares

Projects giving love and attention to Australian esp. NSW National Parks, I'm not sure but you might try some of these.

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Sydney/Parks and gardens
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Melbourne/Parks and gardens
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia
• Wikipedia:WikiProject New South Wales

No I hadn't seen {{Geobox/type/nature}} but what you've got in your sandpit looks good. I don't mind if you replace the infobox with the geobox. I don't believe that there is any Wikiconvention you'd be breaking, in fact I get the feeling that the geoboxes are meant to be replacing the infoboxes (... I s'pose geoboxes are infoboxes but you know what I mean). I could be mistaken best to check the templates' talk pages.

There is no mention of any depreciation hectares on the Manual of Style ... no mention of hectares at all. Nor does the MoS depreciate non-SI metric units in general nor should it since that would leave us with cubic decimetres instead of litres. Bobblewik did vanish abruptly. He's a good bloke, well-intentioned, but the crusade against hectares lacked the weight of consensus then and still does now (as I read it, anyhow). In fact, if it is the case, as you mention, that "most park administrators (NSWPWS, Victoria, SA, etc) list hectares and would be used as source for many articles", then their inclusion in the article would be the norm. This proposal might be of interest.

You'll notice that I included a few parameters not mentioned in the documentation of {{Infobox park}}. These are new parameters which I added to the template this morning they let you automatically convert between square metres & square feet, hectares & acres, and square kilometres & square miles. The parameters are {{{size_m2}}}, {{{size_ha}}}, {{{size_km2}}}, {{{size_sqft}}}, {{{size_acre}}} and {{{size_sqmi}}}). I really have to get around to updating the doc page. But it looks as if the geobox does autoconversions too. JЇѦρ 07:53, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Accuracy of conversions

I've changed the accuracy of the conversions on New Mill, Cross in Hand back to two decimal places. As the imperial measurements are given to a inch, using 1 decimal place in not appropriate as that gives an accuracy of about 4 inches. Another reason is that the Dutch Molendatabase uses 2 decimal places for measurements quoted (see example) which will enable a direct comparison to be made between mills. Mjroots (talk) 04:56, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Kings Canyon National Park

Don't you think the "History" section should be before "Geography" section in this article? Otolemur crassicaudatus (talk) 10:25, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

I have checked the other articles. Most of them mention the history first, so I have made the change. Cheers. Otolemur crassicaudatus (talk) 11:06, 17 May 2008 (UTC)