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Is talking about somewhere in the native system more important than talking to everywhere in theirs? Honestly, I've no horse in this but it never hurts to consi

Is talking about somewhere in the native system more important than talking to everywhere in theirs? Honestly, I've no horse in this but it never hurts to consider your audience. Internet suggests that "normal" for 65% of HN is metric.

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saiya-jin 4y ago
... and 95% of the mankind according to internet(TM). Its always funny to read similar statements, US folks putting those systems as something almost equal in usage when exact opposite is true. Exactly same for volume units. If for nothing else, units conversions is either trivial or stupidly complex, and everybody is doing it all the time so it makes actual difference. We used to have tens if not hundreds of similar systems to imperial one here in Europe during medieval times (my own country at least 5 of those), but we moved to much greener pastures since then and now it just looks... ridiculous to keep it polite.
throwawaaarrgh 4y ago
Seems like an excessive placation for a very minor problem. People post in SI and the Americans convert it, Americans post in US and everyone else converts it. There's no rocket launches failing because a HN comment's units had to be converted. It also seems weird on principle. If 65% of HN readers spoke Mandarin, would you make all your comments in Simplified Chinese?
- oliwarner 4y ago
  Perfectly valid points, but I probably wouldn't complain if I did post on a Mandarin-heavy site and somebody translated it. That's what happened here. Somebody posted in their native unit, somebody converted it to the audience-standard unit and you took issue with "normal" and a lot of words were thrown on the bonfire of internet squabbles and here we are. I don't expect people to change their units themselves. It's nice when they cover both bases. But it's also nice when people offer a conversion so others get the picture without having to do any mental gymnastics. I think what we could all do without is this bit.

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saiya-jin 4y ago

... and 95% of the mankind according to internet(TM). Its always funny to read similar statements, US folks putting those systems as something almost equal in usage when exact opposite is true. Exactly same for volume units. If for nothing else, units conversions is either trivial or stupidly complex, and everybody is doing it all the time so it makes actual difference. We used to have tens if not hundreds of similar systems to imperial one here in Europe during medieval times (my own country at least 5 of those), but we moved to much greener pastures since then and now it just looks... ridiculous to keep it polite.

throwawaaarrgh 4y ago

Seems like an excessive placation for a very minor problem. People post in SI and the Americans convert it, Americans post in US and everyone else converts it. There's no rocket launches failing because a HN comment's units had to be converted. It also seems weird on principle. If 65% of HN readers spoke Mandarin, would you make all your comments in Simplified Chinese?

oliwarner 4y ago
Perfectly valid points, but I probably wouldn't complain if I did post on a Mandarin-heavy site and somebody translated it. That's what happened here. Somebody posted in their native unit, somebody converted it to the audience-standard unit and you took issue with "normal" and a lot of words were thrown on the bonfire of internet squabbles and here we are. I don't expect people to change their units themselves. It's nice when they cover both bases. But it's also nice when people offer a conversion so others get the picture without having to do any mental gymnastics. I think what we could all do without is this bit.