Talk:Mauna Kea

I removed

1. REDIRECT [[Template:Coordinates/{{{11}}}]]

from the top of the page, which required removing a lot of mark-up, (some of) which may need to be put back - ??? Ro Thorpe 18:46, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Oh wow, that was my fault. I was messing with the Coordinates template and forgot to fix it.Drew R. Smith 00:15, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

How's that look Ro?Drew R. Smith 00:18, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Fine, thanks - Ro Thorpe 00:26, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

problem with conversion from feet to meters

I know that people have been playing around with this but I haven't paid any attention until now. You're gonna have to refine things. I just now tried to change, in the text, 33000 feet to 33,000, which is how it should be, and that loused up the *metric* figure. Go figure. But please try to fix it -- this is not something that is just going to be confined to one volcano in Hawaii.... Hayford Peirce 01:55, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Good point. When we were making the conversion template we weren't really thinking about large figures. There's got to be a way to fix that, but I don't have the foggiest idea how. I'll talk to Caesar and see if he can figure something out.Drew R. Smith 04:35, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Puh-leeze! something's gotta be done! Maruru! (as we say in Tahiti) Hayford Peirce 04:59, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Seriously, I have no idea how to fix that. And as for it "lousing up the metric figure" thats because the article was written in american english, therefore metric was the unit to be converted to. The template displayed the converted from figure, then got confused because it didnt know what to do with a comma. If the metric unit were the unit being converted from it would have shown up normally.Drew R. Smith 23:13, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, then, we gotta get rid of the template and just use our pocket calculators and then type in the two figures. Hayford Peirce 23:56, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Ok. After searching around on WP (we really should have our own help pages for this stuff) I found a workaround. Not a solution, but it works for now. Instead of typing

{{convert|33000|ft|m}}

and getting 33000 ft (10058.4 m) you would use

{{convert|33000|ft|m|0||33,000}}

to get 33,000 ft (10058 m). Still not the best way to do it, but the only one I know. Converting smal units is still as simple as ever, using

{{convert|30|ft|m}}

for 30 ft (9.14 m). Drew R. Smith 04:36, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

No, Drew, that is still not correct. The article should read, in *all* cases, something like: "it is 34,300 feet high (6,967 meters), with the commas in the correct place as per standard usage. If a template can't do this, then the template should be discarded and plain old mathematics used to replace it. Hayford Peirce 04:58, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't know then. Let's not jump the gun on deleting it though. Caesar may know of an easy way to fix it.Drew R. Smith 05:19, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Conversion

It makes no sense to convert to 13,796 ft to 4205.02 m -- this pretends a precision which is not present. It should be rounded to 4205 m.

Similarily, "above sea level but 30,000" seems to be estimated or rounded (better: "about 30000 ft"?) -- thus the converted measure should also be rounded to a "nice" number: 10050 m (or even 10000 m).

Peter Schmitt 00:02, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

I completely agree, and thought I had done so. Apparently not, so I'll go change it now.Drew R. Smith 00:06, 6 August 2009 (UTC)