Passy2

MOSNUM for British Engineering

Please make sure you have understood the MOSNUM guidance before you change styles on UK engineering-related articles. This topic was the subject of a protracted and occasionally unpleasant debate some months ago, and the consensus position is not lightly to be interfered with. The consensus position, which I was partly responsible for shaping, is that the primary units in the article should be the units used to design the project. Given that modern British civil engineering uses metric units almost exclusively, this typically means that metric-first should be used for these subjects unless there is a very specific reason not to do so in a certain context. The sole categorical exemption is for roads, which are still described in the older units. The general rule to prefer miles and mph applies only to articles which do not relate to science or engineering. Articles about Brunel may use imperial-first, for obvious reasons, but to do this for modern engineering would be anachronistic and illogical, which is why the exemption was made.

In the case of newer British railways, the ERTMS technology used to relay speed information to the drivers of trains on HS1, HS2 and such (hence also to set speed limits like 300 km/h on HS1) uses metric units only. These are nominal/defined speeds and should therefore be given in metric-first format ("nominal values are given in the original units first" is a strong general MOSNUM principle, and the engineering rule can be viewed as an extension of this principle). I grant that this produces a mess when modern high-speed lines are discussed alongside the older mainlines, which still use miles, chains and mph, but such is the weird muddle that exists in British life.

If you are confused by this, please ask me a specific question before display-flipping the units again.

Archon 2488 (talk) 21:11, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your interpretation of MOSNUM - it explains your actions, at least. I disagree that the articles in question are "engineering" articles though. They are generic descriptions of proposed infrastructure projects, with, amongst all their other content, some engineering details. I believe the UK convention of using miles and mph for this type of data applies, per MOSNUM. Passy2 (talk) 21:21, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

This sounds a little too much like Wikipedia:Wikilawyering. The articles are evidently about major ongoing British civil engineering projects -- I don't see how any fair-minded person could object to the description of HS2 and Crossrail as "engineering projects". I also don't understand how "infrastructure" differs from "civil engineering" in this context. The "test case" for the MOSNUM exemption was the Edinburgh_Trams article, and the consensus position was that the metric units should be used first (the system has, for example, a nominal speed limit of 70 km/h). The problem with not allowing exemptions for nominal values is that you would end up with absurdities like "6.2 mile races" instead of 10 km. So these are also precisely the kind of articles to which the engineering exemption was intended to apply. Of course there is non-engineering information in the articles, but to argue that this fact detracts from their being about engineering projects is perilously close to lawyering.

Regarding speed limits, MOSNUM is absolutely specific: the nominal or defined limit must be given firstly in the original units, even if it would make the article internally inconsistent, nevermind inconsistent with other parts of MOSNUM.

The appropriate course of action now is for us to stop edit-warring and start a discussion on the respective articles' talk pages about whether they relate to engineering projects (which is the MOSNUM criterion). I can't imagine it will be a long discussion. Archon 2488 (talk) 21:51, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Help me!

Help me with the following please. On Wednesday I edited Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers with no problems. Today all I can edit is my talkpage. If I try to edit anywhere else I get a message including the followig: "Editing from Passy2 has been blocked (disabled) by Callanecc", with no explanation of why or how to get it unblocked.

Passy2 (talk) 23:29, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

You have been blocked from editing because you were deemed to be a "sockpuppet" of indefinitely blocked User:DeFacto. See Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/DeFacto/Archive#19_February_2014 for evidence. Huon (talk) 23:52, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Huon for the help here. Is it normal to be "deemed" as such and on so flimsy a basis, and without knowing anything about the suspicions, and without being given a chance to dispute it? I'll read those pages you link to more thoroughly and see if I can get to the bottom of it. Passy2 (talk) 19:46, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

I haven't checked the evidence linking this account to DeFacto, but I did look at quite a few of your contributions, and to be blunt, even without the sockpuppetry issue you'd just about now be looking at a topic ban or a block for disruptive editing. While I personally would notify people to be investigated for sockpuppetry, that's not a strict requirement. Huon (talk) 22:48, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi Passy2. I understand that you have had your access restricted in some capacity, as detailed here. Possible avenues of recourse may be prompted by documentation here, here and here.

ZICO (talk) 00:02, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi ZICO, thanks for throwing some light on this. I find it astonishing that such a thing can happen, and in such a blatantly unjust manner. "Evidence" from one participant in the discussion and seconded by someone I've never come across before, and who has not contributed to any of the related articles or discussions here. As I said in reply to Huon above, I will read through those links and seek guidance as to how to recover from this. Although reading back up the "DeFacto/Archive", it seems like I'm not the first to fall into this trap. Presumably, if I can get one of them to vouch that I am not them, and them not me, I might have a case. Passy2 (talk) 20:03, 24 February 2014 (UTC)