Jimmy Wales wrote:
One side note is that Tarquin changed 9,000,000 square
miles to
23,000,000 square kilometers. This move was apparently
uncontroversial.
Is that right? As an American, I frankly confess that the metric
system is a curiosity to me. 9,000,000 square miles, I can grasp,
because I know how long a mile is intuitively. The kilometer, on the
other hand, is non-intuitive, just an arbitrary length from a
textbook.
As a Eurpoean, I never touched miles, yards, etc. until I worked in the
US for a few month. Always missed these highway exits ;-)
As a scientist, I have to insist that the metric system is to be the
main system used on Wikipedia! (Of course, feel free to mention
miles&co. somewhere too;-)
Magnus