User talk:7/Template:fx

Part 2
This is the continuation of a conversation which started here.

Using such a dynamic template would be fine for expressing current happenings, but this is an encyclopaedia in which people often post current information and do not subsequently update. In the case of a dynamic template, it would appear to many editors who do not understand it that there is no need to update to the historical conversion which is necessary to ensure the results are not misleading. Thus, I see few and far between occasions to actually use such a template where it would not be misleading.

Currencies drift constantly over time relative to each other in a free market, so stating an equivalent US$ to “today” for an event that happened in 2003 would indeed generate misleading information. The same would be the case for extreme currency volatility which we experienced, for example, in 2008, when the value of the GBP vs USD varied between 2 and 1.45 (and the EUR varied between 1.6 and 1.25)

I would have no problem using the template for mentions of HKD values after 1972 (because it has been pegged to the USD and has a parity of approximately 7.78 since then). There are a few other currencies which are pegged against the USD which could use this too. To avoid the possible risk of misleading, I would suggest that the use of the template be restricted to those currencies which have been pegged to the US dollar only, with a caveat that it would only cover those periods when the currency was fixed, assuming there has been no change in parities by revaluation or devaluation. Ohconfucius (talk) 02:50, 19 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Will work on a better solution.     7   talk   02:56, 19 May 2009 (UTC)


 * One possibility would be including it in the relevant currency article, in which one could imagine saying "[The Euro]'s currently parity is US dollars." Ohconfucius (talk) 02:57, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Good point - that could be useful for all of the published currencies - but then we are talking about updating the data pages for the sake of only 10-15 referring currency pages (rather than for the thousands of other articles which I was hoping could use it).    7   talk   03:00, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll leave the technical bits to you: would it work to have a template for floating currencies, which could refer to values in the weekly updated/downloaded chart, and a template for the pegged currencies which would refer to a static table of pegged rates? Ohconfucius (talk) 03:08, 19 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Thinking it over... Thanks for the tips.     7   talk   03:26, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Very interesting. How far back in history will this work? Twenty years? A hundred? In Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, the author attempts to retroactively discount for inflation to arrive at prices one thousand years ago: four dollars being such an ostentatious display of wealth that people fall off their chairs! --Goodmorningworld (talk) 12:07, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

New interest in currency-converter and inflation templates
As of August 2009, there is new interest in these excellent templates. I think the inflation-adjusting templates and currency-converter templates are useful and would like to see them adopted by the wider Wikipedia community. In addition, there is discussion about toggle buttons -- so a reader could click next to a monetary amount and switch currencies. Example: $42K NZD (New Zealand dollars). Click, it's $26K USD (United States dollars). User:SimonTrew and User:Ohconfucius and User:Shakescene as well as myself User:Tomwsulcer have been discussing possibilities on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) and we're interested in advancing this stuff. Tomwsulcer (talk) 14:37, 19 August 2009 (UTC)Tomwsulcer