Pegasus Fleet Forums

All,

My latest work for your perusal and comment:

http://wiki.pegasusfleet.net/index.php? ... Cardassian
http://wiki.pegasusfleet.net/index.php? ... sian_Union

In Cardassian, you have them "standing 1.8 meters on average". Some of the fleet are from the US and use feet, not meters. I don't want to use a conversion tool every time I look at the page. Also, Betazoid page is up on the wiki. Need to put the link in. Only read Cardassian, not Cardassian Union so far. Will update on that next.

Hadn't realised I'd missed out a link. I'll add that in.

To be honest, I decided upon meters partly because that is what it was given in on the article I was reading that gave that information. We use feet here as well (to be honest, I've always assumed meters to be the American preference for measuring height), but I decided to leave it in meters in the article simply because it is easier to be generic. .1 of a meter covers a wider range of potential heights than an inch does, and because of that it's a lot easier for people to do a rough estimation of their physical height in comparative terms in meters (for example, I can see that my doorframe looks about 2 meters high, maybe slightly more. I have no idea how high it is in feet, because the intervals are shorter).

For reference, 1.8 meters is a couple of inches below 6ft - somewhere between 5'9" and 5'10". I could change it to that in the article, but it sounds less like an encyclopaedic article in my opinion to try to generalise on what is usually a more specific measurement (it would be like saying that an object was roughly 100mm, rather than a hand's span).

I tend to agree with you, Williams. I'm in the states as well, but when I think of SciFi, I think in metric. 1 meter is just a scootch over three feet, so it's not hard to estimate from here.

As far as the states using metric: I wish. It's SO much easier to convert lol

And some of us can't think in that measure system. I know sounding encyclopedic is important to you Krace, but if I can't understand the measurements and there is nothing given so I can, I have to say something. Just put something in parentheses. Don't take offense, but I need to be able to understand it.

In the States we definitely do not use meters for measuring height. Almost always it is in feet and inches. Of course, we strongly prefer meters over centimeters. To me, centimeters is an odd choice for height. As an engineer, in most cases I prefer to use metric as well, since it is much easier to convert and work with. However, I still think better in standard.

All that being said, I think the entry should be in meters. I think it's been fairly well established in canon that metric is the official system of measurements in Starfleet. All of our ship specifications are in meters. Distances are almost always kilometers. I agree that there is some confusion, but I think it would be better that the listings are uniform. I know having one person do the conversion once would be easier, but I don't know if it's worth sacrificing the professionalism of our wiki because one person doesn't know metric. Does it really come up that often that it's a problem?

Almost every time I see one of Krace's measurements, I head to onlineconversion.com. It's annoying. Even if it was in parentheses like (60 in), I wouldn't care. I can't understand metric and it's a pain. Professionalism is one thing. Professionalism at the cost of comprehension is another.

And as for the ships, I have no clue how big they are. One reason I suck at R&D

One meter is roughly one yard (actually closer to 39 inches). That's the conversion I use. In this case, 1.8 meters is about 1.8 yards, or about 71 inches (5'11"), approximately (39 in + 4/5*39 = 39 +32 = 71). I did that in my head. The actual conversion for comparison comes out to 70.8661, for reference. It really isn't that hard. I won't argue anymore, and I'll leave this one to Krace to decide. But any articles I write, whether for R&D or GAC, will be in meters.

Cardassian Union looks okay. Alex, Krace, please PM me with days you will be able to meet this month.