Talk:Q616838

I removed the alternate name "ICWM" from this page because this abbreviation does not appear on the organisation's website (www.bipm.org). Furthermore, if you look at page 106 (French) and page 211 (English) in the 9th edition of the SI Brochure, you will see that all the acronyms associated with SI are abbreviatiosn of the French language version of the entity being described. You will also see that some acronyms are always based on the English version of the entity name (eg BAAS) and other change with language (eg OMS - Organisation mondiale de la santé and WHO - World Health Organization). Martinvl (talk) 22:39, 2 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

ICWM is the acronym of the official English name for the organisation, and appears in the literature. It is, of course, valid to add it as part of the definition of the organisation here. That the French-based organisation choose to use the acronym of the French name is totally irrelevant. DeFacto (talk) 23:37, 2 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@DeFacto: In en:MOS:CAPSACRS, it states "Use only source-attested acronyms ...". The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word "attested" as "Sworn, vouched for, certified, proved". Will you please identify the literature to which you refer and also explain why it should be considered an "attested" source. Martinvl (talk) 12:46, 3 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Martinvl: I'm not sure what you think the significance of the manual of style (MoS) for English Wikipedia is here on Wikidata, or what leads you to apparently believe that their MoS is asking for an attested source (whatever that means) when it is actually asking that sourced acronyms rather than made-up ones be used. If you are saying that you were unable to find "ICWM" in the literature and would like me to show examples of where I have seen it, then sure, I can help you... Try these sources, for example: [1], [2], [3], [4] and [5]. DeFacto (talk) 18:19, 3 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@DeFacto: The first edition the SI Brochure appeared in 1970 (in French) and in 1971 was translated into English by reprentatives of the National Physial Laboratory and NIST. The translation was approved by the CIPM. (See https://ia802506.us.archive.org/11/items/internationalsys330page/internationalsys330page.pdf). This appears to be the first "official" document relating to the BIPM and its associated organisations in the English language. When the Convention of the Metre was signed in 1875, it was normal to use French as the default international diplomatic language, hence all offical BIPM documents were (and still are) issued in French.

Looking at your citations, I notice that three of the five are dated 1971 or earlier, a fourth (Item 4) is so sloppily written that it cannot be consdered authoritative (for example using "England" instead of "United Kingdom") while the fifth lacks an explanation of where it obtained its information. I view of this, I will concede that the accronym ICWM might have been used historically, but since 1971 it has had no official standing in the English language. Martinvl (talk) 20:18, 3 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Martinvl: this entry is not for the SI Brochure or the BIPM it's for the International Committee for Weights and Measures, which was, as far as I know, established in 1875. That it is also referred to in the literature as the ICWM, you now seem to agree, is beyond doubt, so I think this discussion is now over. DeFacto (talk) 21:26, 3 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@DeFacto: I agreed that HISTORICALLY it was referred to as the ICWM but once that organisation defined its preferred name and accronym in the English langauge, that is the preferred accronym that we should use. Martinvl (talk) 22:52, 3 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@DeFacto: Please look at the BIPM seal here. You will see the letters "BIPM" on the seal, but you will not see the letters "IBWM". Moreover both the logo and the text "BIPM" are trademarked and have been registered with en:World Intellectual Property Organization (See here). In my view, this gives overwhelming evidence that if "IBWM" is used in any Wikimedia context, it should be accompanied by a caveat stating that the official acronym [which has been registered with WIPO] is "BIPM". Martinvl (talk) 22:26, 6 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Martinvl: we were talking about whether the acronym [initialism] "ICWM" had been used in reliable sources when referring to the "International Committee for Weights and Measures", and we found that it had. I'm not sure why you are now talking about the designs and registration of the BIPM trademarks. DeFacto (talk) 20:28, 7 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@DeFacto: I think that I have shown conclusively that all your so-called reliable documents rely on information that is almost half a century old (49 years to be exact). Moreover, I expect the rules pertaining to all BIPM committees to follwo the same principals hence BIPM, BIPM and not IBWM and also CIPM and not ICWM. Moreover, if you visit this page you will see that the acronym "CIPM" is embedded into the indexing of various mations passed by the CIPM. Martinvl (talk) 22:07, 7 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Martinvl: I'm not arguing that the BIPM don't use "CIPM", I agree that they do. What I've shown, and you've agreed, is that "ICWM" is also used, even if to a lesser extent and whether historically, or not. DeFacto (talk) 22:43, 7 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@DeFacto: Why don't you look ICWM up here. You will find 18 different entries, none of which can be cross-related to CIPM. If you go to that site's home page you will see that they actually verify any acronyms that they catalogue and they describe how they verify them. This tells me that the use of ICWM as an alternative to CIPM is so obscure that it would be improper to catalogue it in Wikidata. Martinvl (talk) 10:35, 8 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

According to the Wikidata guideline for the description data of an item, its length should be between two and twelve words and [i]f the description goes onto a second line it is probably too long, and if it goes onto a third line, it is almost definitely too long. The current description of this item is 22 words long and filling 3 lines.

I propose that we shorten it from:

committee of eighteen individuals who oversee the work of the BIPM and report back to the General Conference on Weights and Measures.

To:

a committee of the General Conference on Weights and Measures. (10 words over 2 lines)

Does anyone have any objections to this, or comments or other suggestions? DeFacto (talk) 21:31, 9 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I wrote the original description and have rephrased it. Martinvl (talk) 22:15, 10 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I condensed it further DeFacto (talk) 16:01, 11 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@DeFacto: I have reverted your change - the Convention of the Metre defines the CIPM as a separate body from the GCPM - its members need not be GCPM delegates and the CIPM fills its own casual vacancies. (See https://www.bipm.org/utils/common/documents/official/metre-convention.pdf - Note, the second half of the document contains an English translation of the convention).