Talk:Pressure

From User Talk:Shran: Merging
Thanks for the See also links on pressure. I had actually intended on suggesting that the four unit articles be merged to pressure but was going to wait until the dust settles on the same issue with the temperature article.

In both cases I believe that the benefits of seeing how the definitions compare, outweighs any old reasons to maintain separate stub articles. Especially since those terms can now become sectional redirects. —MJBurrage • TALK  • 14:23, 16 June 2007 (UTC)


 * No problem. As for turning those pages into redirects, the problem with that is, as pointed out elsewhere, that's really not how it's done in an encyclopedia. I'm beginning to have second thoughts about the merging of the time measurements, myself. How these are generally handled is a single article – say, temperature – lists links to the various temperature terms, while the terms themselves are on separate articles. This is because, even though they are all part of temperature terminology, they are distinctly different from each other. It would kind of be akin to merging Earth, Mars, etc. into the Sol system page or merging information on all Klingons into one article, which, of course, is out of the question. That said, I'm abstaining from the whole temperature discussion for the time being. ;) --From Andoria with Love 14:37, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

But is not a big part of the reason for "how things are/were done" in this case the former limitations of the wiki software? Before redirects could link to sections. there was no alternative to separate articles that did not also require clumsy links in each and every article that referenced one of the terms. Furthermore redirects could not be in categories. Neither of those is a limitation any more, and so they should not constrain what we do now.

In both the temperature and pressure cases the list of examples is much more useful combined. Once you do that it only makes sense to remove the same examples from the separate unit articles. Once you do that the unit articles become one line long stubs, and would be more useful at the top of the combined article. Each of the units then becomes a redirect. In retrospect I could have done the above in three stages, walking though those steps, but as soon as I had the idea, it was clear to me where it would progress and so I created both articles.

As for Earth measurements, on reflection, that article should probably be moved to fundamental Earth units (or something similar), and limited only to length, mass, and volume. For such basic units we would not want a list of examples (which would be ludicrously large if it was created). As for the technical issues with such a move, only the redirects need be updated, since any other articles should be pointing at those redirects, which is the reasoning behind redirects in the first place. The idea behind the merge is that each article was only a stub, and was very likely to always remain a stub given the topic. (How much is MA ever going to have to say about any of these units without referring instead to Wikipedia.) Since there is no longer a technical reason to keep a small group of related stubs separate, they were merged. (The same reasoning applies to time measurements) —MJBurrage • TALK  • 15:36, 16 June 2007 (UTC)


 * A big part of the reason that's how it's done is because that was the way people wanted things done: one article for one subject. Several contributors here aren't big fans of the idea of condensing multiple articles into one page. Like I said, though, I'm abstaining from this for now. --From Andoria with Love 17:55, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Shran, the entire point of being an administrator is to be actively involved in mediating and offering choices and options in dealing with situations. Abstaining from that role defeats the purpose of why you were nominated and accepted being an administrator.
 * With that said, shouldn't this discussion be on a more topic-appropriate talk page or forum? --Alan 22:45, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
 * "I'm abstaining from this for now" = I'm not sure what to think or how to help with this situation at the moment but when or if I think of something helpful I'll let you know. But yes, I do agree it would be more fitting for a talk page or forum. --From Andoria with Love 23:00, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Not trying to put any pressure on you... --Alan 23:04, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I copied this here in order to discuss the merging of pressure pages (we have to handle these one at a time anyway).
 * The comparative list of pressures is nice. Perhaps, on the four definition pages (which are absolutely needed as long as they are mentioned, shown). We can have a link to that section instead of having a list on each four pages. And since we won't define the units on this page, that will get rid of some unnecessary redundancy.--Tim Thomason 22:55, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Given that the following pages&mdash;pressure, atmosphere, bar, Pascal, and PSI&mdash;will continue to exist in some form regardless, with pressure being a combined list of example pressures. There are then two possibilities: 1) each unit is defined on its own separate page, and any reader has to click back and forth to compare the definitions and origins, or 2) each unit is defined in it own section of the pressure article, with the other articles as redirects to the appropriate section allowing comparisons by simple scrolling.

In both cases a link in any other article to say Pascal will take the reader right to the definition/entry of the word in question. In both cases the individual articles (be they short definitions or redirects) can belong to categories.

So unless there is a technical issue no one has explained to me there is nothing better about (and in fact less utility in) having the definitions in separate articles. —MJBurrage • TALK  • 02:03, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, the definitions on those four pages will be short (and they should be unnecessary on a Star Trek-defined pressure page, other than to say "these are pressure measurements:" or something) as they weren't well-defined in canon. The four pages simply should note the use of the measurement (not necessarily indicative of pressure) in the serieses and this page should have a small pressure definition as well, and canon citations to pressure mentions and effects in Star Trek. After that you can have a list of a few necessary comparative pressure measurements (as well as a more complete list on the four pressure measurements' pages). Technical-wise (forgetting about the style of the site), it could help keep the page under 30 KB (might not be a problem here, but would be on a "length" or "weight" page, and we should be consistent).--Tim Thomason 02:34, 17 June 2007 (UTC)