Cousin Bluey

Welcome!

Hello, Cousin Bluey! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. You may benefit from following some of the links below, which will help you get the most out of Wikipedia. If you have any questions you can ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking or by typing four tildes "~~~~"; this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you are already excited about Wikipedia, you might want to consider being "adopted" by a more experienced editor or joining a WikiProject to collaborate with others in creating and improving articles of your interest. Click here for a directory of all the WikiProjects. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field when making edits to pages. Happy editing! Dougweller (talk) 11:11, 5 May 2014 (UTC) Getting Started The five pillars of Wikipedia • Tutorial • Your first article How to: edit a page • upload an image Getting Help Frequently Asked Questions New contributors' help page Where to: ask questions • make requests Request administrator attention Policies and Guidelines Neutral point of view • Reliable sources Verifiability • Citing sources • No original research What Wikipedia is not • Biographies of living persons Simplified Manual of Style • Three-revert rule Copyrights • Policy for non-free content • Image use policy External links • Spam • Vandalism • Sock puppetry Deletion policy • Conflict of interest • Notability The Community Community Portal • Adopt-a-user program Assume good faith • Civility • Etiquette No personal attacks • Resolving disputes Build consensus • Village pump Signpost • IRC channels • Mailing lists Things to do Be bold in editing • Help develop an article Maintenance • Peer review • Requested articles Join a WikiProject • Translating articles Cleaning up: General • Spam • Vandalism Miscellaneous Categories • Disambiguity • Stubs User pages • Talk pages Useful templates • Tools • User scripts

Metric units in the UK

Still inconsistent but the use of miles is mainly for road distances. For area, we use metric. For heights of mountains and hills we also use metric. Dougweller (talk) 11:21, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

No, you are wrong. It is only establishment organisations such as government agencies that use metric for land areas. General use in the population, and reflected in the press and other media, is square miles or acres. Feet would be the preferred unit of hill heights over metres too. Don't be confused or misled by what the government do - they do not reflect public opinion, but the media and press usually do. Please respect that in the articles. Cousin Bluey (talk) 20:36, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

This seems to be your personal opinion. There is an inconsistency as for road distance and beer but for everything else the metric system is used as Dougweller explains. WP uses the system that is officially approved, and the one you will see on a OS map. -- Clem Rutter (talk) 22:18, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

No not my personal opinion at all, it is blatantly apparent from watching British TV, reading British newspapers and mixing with British people. Oh, and supported by the recent YouGov survey for UKMA, by the way (http://www.ukma.org.uk/docs/sam.pdf). In fact, UKMA complain that "the basic assumption that underlies Government policy - that metric education in school will lead naturally to a general acceptance of metric units for all purposes - is shown to be incorrect" - that is: the metric system has not yet been acceptrd by the British people - clearly and plainly put.

The inconsistency is not for road distances or beer, as even the "official" units for those is imperial. The inconsistency is that the "official" units for many other things is metric, even where the clear public consensus, supported by the press an so on, is imperial.

OS maps are produced by a government agency, so unreliable as a source of public consensus. However, the maps produced by the leading private sector map-maker, Geographic, are primarily imperial based, to reflect the preferences of their customers. Cousin Bluey (talk) 20:22, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Hiking trails have their own guidelines, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Hiking trails. Only in US articles do we use miles. You are a WP:SPA with an agenda, and this sort of editing rarely has a happy ending. Dougweller (talk) 05:24, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

If that is true, then why isn't it reflected in WP:UNITS? And why does it go against the normal British practice? Cousin Bluey (talk) 20:26, 7 May 2014 (UTC)