[WikiEN-l] HD DVD key mess - OFFICE/Foundation?

[Ken Arromdee]

On Thu, 3 May 2007, Andrew Gray wrote:
> Tell me this, please. Is there *anyone* in the world who would walk up
> to a friend and say - hey did you hear the news about [string of hex
> digits]? We can write an article which is perfectly explanatory,
> covers this whole fracas, and doesn't ever mention the actual value of
> the key; indeed, it would look and sound perfectly natural unless you
> were explicitly looking for the value.

I've never gone up to a friend and told him that the aphelion of Mars is
154,863,553 miles.  If I had reason to talk about astronomy, I might
tell friends that the aphelion is about 150 million, but I certainly would
not use all the digits that Wikipedia gives.

This is not a reason to change the Wikipedia entry to read "about 150
million miles".  The fact that nobody's going to use all the digits in casual
conversation (and probably not much at all) is no reason not to include them.

Your point *might* apply to avoiding the number in an article title (though I
would argue that it doesn't because someone could and probably would cut and
paste the number into a search box).  But it doesn't apply to not using
the number at all.