On Mar 22, 2004, at 9:04 AM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
In the tables for [[Montana]] (a state in the United States) and [[Germany]] (the country in Europe), we learn that Montana is 381,156 km^2 and Germany 357,022 km^2. To Americans such as myself, these numbers have no intuitive meaning. I know via conversion factors how long a kilometer is, if I stop to think about it, but still the numbers mean nothing.
This bugs me, but I consider that particular argument to have been lost a long time ago, and with good reason I suppose. (Although I think in the case of km^2, it would be sensible to express both numbers and not omit mi^2.)
I posted an idea to solve this problem at http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/ MediaWiki_feature_requests_and_bug_reports#Conversion_syntax, but I got no response (hint, hint...), so I don't know if it's feasible.
Peter
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