Template talk:Exchange rate

Per discussion below (#Principle of quoting exchange rate on an arbitrary date) and at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Numismatics, exchange rate snapshot has been removed. For its old instruction, see [1].

Discussion

This table's criteria seem absurd to me. While the Swiss franc is completely backed by gold and the per capita income of the Swiss is high, the Turkish new lira started sliding again just like the old one because of overprinting and the per capita income of the Turks is low. That Turkey has ten times as much population as Switzerland makes Turkey as important? Please! --Q43 13:18, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I can see your point. But ultimately, I didn't include the Turkish new lira, nor did I include Indonesian rupiah, which also has a bad record of inflation. I'd like to make 2 points about the table.

1. It is just a tool for making such decision. By no mean should we follow this table blindly.
2. At the same time, it is a necessary data for make such decision.

--ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 13:09, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I've removed 6 of those currencies. While they might be noteworthy locally in some regions, they are not of consequence internationally. The Chinese currency may be re-added at a later date as the economy becomes more and more influential, however at this time it's not absolutely crucial to the world's economy. +Hexagon1 ^(t) 05:10, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

JPY is definitely more significant than AUD and CHF. IMHO, the original list is adaquet. It somewhat matches the list on xe.com. And it is possible to extend the template so that additional currencies can be optioanally added. Reverting now. --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 01:23, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't mean to remove the yen. My bad on that. But my point remains valid, that table still includes a rather large amounts of unnecessary currencies. I don't think currencies such as Brazilian Reais and Mexican Pesos are of huge significance globally. +Hexagon1 ^(t) 04:16, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Bottom line is, we have different threshold of "significance". The two of us can argue all day long here what the threshold should be. The truth is, it's arbitrary. How do you propose we resolve this? Bring this up to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Numismatics? --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 04:28, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Problem With This Template

I realized that when I made some changes that were useful to the Turkish new lira in its own article, those changes affected all articles where this template is used! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Q43 (talk • contribs) 11:17, 13 June 2006 (UTC).

This is what a template is for, for things that are common to many article. So when you need to change something, e.g. remove a "major" currency, you only need to do it in one place. and you don't need to duplicate the effort. --Chochopk 18:21, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but what happens when in a certain article one needs to add a "minor" currency? --Q43 13:12, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

There is a way, see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Foreach and http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Array. But I'm afraid this is not my priority now. --Chochopk 02:41, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Principle of quoting exchange rate on an arbitrary date

IMO, it is not a good idea in principle to quote exchange rates as at some arbitrary date. It is not sustainable and not encylopedic. An annual average is far more useful.

• It is not sustainable because it is unrealistic to expect that it will be revised for all currencies every day. Anyone who needs to know the actual daily rate will use a reliable source like XE.COM or OANDA.COM
• It is not encyclopedic because, by capturing the rate on an arbitrary date, no useful understanding of long term price is conveyed to the reader.

The historical exchange rates (since 1990) that are given in Exchange rates section of the Economy of the United Kingdom entry, are far more useful. Spikes are smoothed and the reader gets a far better idea of the relative prices and how they move over time. It only needs to be updated once a year and the exact date is not critical. --Red King 16:38, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Well said. I would like to hear more opinions from others. --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 16:45, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Removed. --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 07:53, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Table Historical exchange rates...

What if we listed Historical exchange rates? For example, the National Bank of the Republic of Belarus provides historical rates for the Belarusian ruble. You would get the information from the countries web site (assuming they provide it). If no information is provided on the countries web site The CIA's | The World Factbook has the data compares other countries currency to the United States dollar.

I am not an expert at tables, but it could look something like this:

--Historical Exchange Averages--

Period	Belarusian rubel official average exchange rate against
	Russian ruble	US dollar	Euro
2005
January	77.63	2 171.65	2 857.53
February	77.43	2 166.95	2 818.42
January – February	77.53	2 169.30	2 837.91
March	78.00	2 154.23	2 844.05
January – March	77.69	2 164.26	2 839.95
April	77.40	2 152.76	2 788.09
January – April	77.62	2 161.38	2 826.90
May	76.97	2 150.05	2 734.26
January – May	77.49	2 159.11	2 808.12
June	75.43	2 149.59	2 618.80
April – June	76.60	2 150.80	2 712.79
January – June	77.14	2 157.52	2 775.64
July	74.90	2 149.57	2 589.78
January – July	76.82	2 156.38	2 748.30
August	75.46	2 149.65	2 642.05
January – August	76.65	2 155.54	2 734.78
September	75.79	2 150.82	2 638.32
July – September	75.38	2 150.01	2 623.27
January – September	76.55	2 155.02	2 723.89
October	75.28	2 150.14	2 585.36
January – October	76.42	2 154.53	2 709.71
November	74.76	2 149.43	2 538.10
January – November	76.27	2 154.06	2 693.64
December	74.68	2 151.00	2 551.38
October – December	74.90	2 150.19	2 558.20
July – December	75.14	2 150.10	2 590.53
January – December	76.14	2 153.81	2 681.49

I copied the table's source from the | National bank of the Republic of Belarus.

You do not need to provide as much information. It could just use quarterly averages or even annual averages.

You can find annual averages comparing countries currency to the United States dollar on | The World Factbook and | Federal Reserve Board: G.5A Release-- Foreign Exchange Rates.

Confusing formatting

The formatting chosen is highly confusing. By looking like a section header, it invites the user to expect to see an edit-section hyperlink and (worse) be able to see it in the TOC.

I would like to convert it to a captioned table, similar to the below:

Current TWD exchange rates

Use Yahoo! Finance:	AUD CAD CHF EUR GBP HKD JPY USD
Use XE.com:	AUD CAD CHF EUR GBP HKD JPY USD

Please discuss here. –EdC 22:57, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Alternate formatting using navbox class:

–EdC 23:08, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

The nav box look can be confusing, because the links are not navigational. Many readers are probably used to the look and feel of wikipedia navbox, and this look and feel would be counter intuitive. I'm not against the first proposal. But the question is... if the mock section header is removed, under what section should we place this template? Before this template existed, such links are hard-coded by brute force like

===Current NIO exchange rates=== 
[http://finance.yahoo.com/currency/convert?amt=1&from=AUD&to=NIO&submit=Convert AUD] | 
[http://finance.yahoo.com/currency/convert?amt=1&from=CAD&to=NIO&submit=Convert CAD] | 
...

So I created this template in the mind of reducing copied-and-pasted stuff and avoiding human error. So if a new section header is to be created, like

==Current NIO exchange rates==
{{Exchange Rate|NIO}}

then it would partially defeat the purpose of templates... If no new sections are created, then where do we put it? --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 09:32, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

OK, putting true section headers in templates doesn't work, because it screws up section editing, but fake section headers are confusing in their own way (confusing content with presentation). So, Template:Exchange Rate needs to work with or without a section header. That's why I suggested using a navbox-style class; it does make some sense if you think of the exchange rate links as external links. Here's an alternate example using the toccolours class:

Current TWD exchange rates
Use Yahoo! Finance:	AUD CAD CHF EUR GBP HKD JPY USD
Use XE.com:	AUD CAD CHF EUR GBP HKD JPY USD

The idea is that it should work as a drop-in replacement, but a section header could also be added, as simple as ==Current exchange rates==. EdC 14:41, 2 January 2007 (UTC)–

This has been sitting around for a bit. I have to say I hate the fake header, it took me a while to figure where it came from and:

- I'm a programmer and

- I've been editing Wikipedia for a while.

Anyway, I've added a new style=navbox attribute. It overrides the header attribute and produces a table just like EdC's above. — Blue-Haired Lawyer 15:38, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Currencies

I've reverted to the Bloomberg currencies (as also used at money). Can we discuss any further changes? +Hexagon1 ^(t) 10:10, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I understand where you're coming from. I have no problem using bloomberg's "benchmark" currencies. I just felt that CNY is now more significant than HKD. The economy of mainland China is much bigger than that of HK, and is growing much faster. And CNY is not following one currency anymore, where as HKD is still pegged at a narrow band with USD. That's just how I view it. What about adding an option to add additional foreign currency that is important in terms of trade. For example, for Kazakhstan, the additional foreign currency would be RUB. For South Korea, it could be CNY. --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 22:24, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

While I agree CNY has become a significant currency, any arbitrary cut-off for currencies would be WP:OR. While we might agree on 7 currencies (for example), someone might come along and dislike the last two currencies so he starts arguing for 5. Then someone from the nation using the sixth currency would disagree, and this could very rapidly deteriorate into an edit war (a similar thing happened at First World recently). I think following Bloomberg's standards is the best and least conflict-prone solution. +Hexagon1 ^(t) 02:14, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't want to open the Pandora box either. What do you think about the option to add another currency outside the 8 Bloomberg currencies? I understand WP:NOR and know what it is intended, but I think adhering to that rule strictly may hurt that the spreading of knowledge. In this instance, "the most important" trading partner to a country is probably not even OR. The CIA world factbook provides such data. --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 09:21, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Done, with up to 3 currencies allowed. Also converted to template doc page pattern. –EdC 16:22, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

While the Chinese currency may be important regionally, it is not a benchmark global currency (yet). In any case, making exceptions for particular currencies would unfortunately fall under what you called "open[ing] the Pandora box", soon we'd have people elaborating on how essential the inclusion of the North Korean won is. I like EdC's custom currency solution, well devised. +Hexagon1 ^(t) 11:49, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

That is exactly what I proposed in the first place.... >_< --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 12:56, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh, my appologies, I misunderstood you! Now your reference seems obvious but then I mustn't have been thinking straight. Good that EdC was WP:BOLD and and implemented your solution. +Hexagon1 ^(t) 11:12, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Site

Now that another Pandora box has been opened. Now we have 3 websites for exchange rate. As discussed before, someone could come along, and argue that an xyz exchange rate website is "the" website for exchange rate. I'd like to limit this discussion to the 4 best known website for exchange rate, and evaluate them.

	accurate	covers all currencies	graph	historical	has inverse rate on the same page w/o clicking
Yahoo	almost	looks like so	some	No	No
XE	more so than the others	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Oanda	almost	looks like so	No	Yes	Yes
Google	not enough significant digits	no TJS, BAM	Yes	No	No

How do I know if the numbers of a website are "accurate"? There are a number of currencies pegged to the euro. The fixed exchange rate is well known. You can easily search them on the internet, or even more easily, on the respective central bank websites. If the number matches, then it is said to be accurate. "Historical" column means detail numeric values on historical data, not just a graph.

I am incline to keep the current 3 sites, but change oanda to "daily exchange rate for the past year". --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 04:22, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

oanda.com does have graph info - its at http://www.oanda.com/products/fxgraph/fxgraph.shtml - but it is no longer reachable from their home page so I guess it puts too much load on their server. So probable best to leave the table as saying "no"? --Red King 22:19, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

For those who keeping adding google to the template, please see table above. Yes, Google is notable but it has serious deficiencies. When/if these are rectified, it can be added. --Red King 22:19, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

It looks like this table may be outdated - Google, for example, is providing up to the billionth place on some conversions, yet is not considered to have enough precision to be judged on it's accuracy. I thought it might be necessary to point out in case anybody comes back to this that the data is stale. Major_Small (talk) 13:09, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

A note on my last comment: it seems the differences may come from which URL you use to find the information. If you use http://google.com/search?q=USD+EUR you'll get different results than http://google.com/finance?q=USDEUR I was lead to the search method because this page has what seems like a broken template. The problem was that the search method yields more results: http://google.com/search?q=USD+JMD vs. http://google.com/finance?q=USDJMD Major_Small (talk) 13:23, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Currate.com and ad blocking

I've removed Currate.com from the template, because it attempts to prevent users of ad blockers from accessing rates, making it less useful to a lot of readers. NeonMerlin[2] 21:21, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

I removed this comment as it is improper when comparing to other sites, such as Wall Street Journal with many links that requires paid subscription. - RJR

===============
Based on Wiki contributor's suggestion, I removed adblock scripts from all Currate.com web pages, as he said that everyone should be able to view the web pages without any restrictions. For that, please accept my apologies for all troubles. Robertrade (talk)

I have again removed this website. It appears to be of little significance compared to the other four, which share vast amounts of web traffic in the area of financial services, and is persistently added by an user which appears to be the site's administrator (and who has almost no edits in unrelated areas). Little more than an attempt to get unpaid exposure for the website. —what a crazy random happenstance 02:51, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

I restored Currate.com site, as there is no reason for the removal, as it has great tools, including currency images that other sites do not have. Please leave it alone, as it meets Wikipedia requirements.Robertrade (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 21:15, 25 December 2009 (UTC).

I disagree, and have removed it. --John (talk) 21:43, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

I do not see any reason for the removal of Currate.com. Currate.com has the nice set of tools that are not available by other providers. If you look at http://currate.com/map.php (one of a kind), http://currate.com/extended.php (one of a kind - with over 4,000 currency images), plus the rates are updated daily. The reviews about Currate.com are wonderful (see http://www.johnnyjet.com/blog/2009/10/website-of-day-curratecom.html for his comments). Someone said it's considered as spamming, but it's not the case when comparing to XE.COM, OANDA.COM, GOOGLE.COM and YAHOO.COM. Please advise. Thanks - and happy holidays. Robertrade (talk) 22:02, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

See the comments above, and especially that of Happenstance. You have a COI in adding this link and should not do so again. --John (talk) 22:04, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Robert, the relevant policies are here and here. I quote from the Spam policy: "Adding external links to an article or user page for the purpose of promoting a website or a product is not allowed, and is considered to be spam. Although the specific links may be allowed under some circumstances, repeatedly adding links will in most cases result in all of them being removed" and also from the Conflict of Interest policy: "Do not edit Wikipedia to promote your own interests, or those of other individuals or of organizations, including employers, unless you are certain that a neutral editor would agree that your edits are in the best interest of Wikipedia." The other four websites are extremely notable and have been agreed upon for inclusion by community consensus that has held stable for several years. Your website has on the other hand been repeatedly removed. I'm sorry, but this is not the appropriate venue to advertise your website, and continued efforts to do so will eventually lead to action being taken to protect the template. —what a crazy random happenstance 06:28, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Table Syntax

There is too much space above the table in Renminbi#Purchasing_power_parity. Fix.174.3.98.236 (talk) 00:34, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Choice of currencies

Given this, it might make more sense to use USD, GBP, EUR, CAD, AUD, INR, PHP, SGD instead... ― A._di_M. (formerly Army1987) 19:06, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

While I agree that it may make more sense to use the currencies of English Wikipedia users, instead of some particularly popular currencies at the currency exchange markets, would we get a stable list of countries? Excluding any USD/EUR users in the "Other" category, I get the following "most popular" order: USD, GBP, EUR, CAD, INR, AUD, PHP, BRL, with SGD gone from the list completely. Would the list have to be updated very often? Is the current method of finding currencies more stable? (Stefan2 (talk) 08:43, 12 October 2011 (UTC))

oanda problem, and non-liquid cur (iqd)

sorry if this is repeat info. this page is tldnr.

the links to oanda don't work. the auto-url formatting or whatever it's supposed to do- just lands you on @ their converter & you hafta enter whatever 2 currencies you want.

and- with IQD I noticed there is no data on google finance. looks like this 'currency' is not really traded by banks on the global market. so- can we make this template exclude the links to google finance for now since there is no data? skakEL 15:55, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

if someone wants to fix the oanda links, a good permalink format for a desired currency pair is:

http://www.oanda.com/currency/live-exchange-rates/EURGBP/

but it's not a 1 month or 6 month chart, it's like a 15 minute chart. so.. there you have it.

skakEL 16:36, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Currency converter

I don't know how feasible this is, or if it's considered desirable (or even if it's already available and I haven't found it), but:

It would be useful to have another template (or other functionality) whereby amounts of money could be converted to a single user-specified currency, defaulting to a currency specified in the user's Wikipedia preferences. Thus a user in Peru could click on an amount in renminbi and the nuevo sol value would be displayed, with an optional drop-down list to change to a different currency. The most common requirement is perhaps not a comprehensive list, but "how much is that in my currency?"Pol098 (talk) 10:49, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Request to return my edits

On April 4, 2016 I made few edits for https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Exchange_rate by replacing missing syntax for currency conversion website. Someone added few links on September 10th and user:Mascarponette has believed it was a spam, and I understand templates like this are huge spam magnets. Anyway, my edits/fixes has nothing to do with Transfertmate/Transfertwise but unfortunately my work was also removed by Mascarponette. I'm kindly asking you to return my work/edits or use backup txt file https://www.dropbox.com/s/x9hchz66hassvfp/edit.txt?dl=0

Thank you! Tomdavis1 (talk) 16:46, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Not done: please make your requested changes to the template's sandbox first; see WP:TESTCASES. The sandbox is here — Andy W. (talk · ctb) 18:33, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Hello Andy W.! All done, please check sandbox - Thank you Tomdavis1 (talk) 04:18, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

@Tomdavis1: still not done for now, I've taken another look at the template history, specifically this. Several things trouble me. Firstly, you should probably hear back from Mascarponette and request further explanation/awareness before the change is synced. Second, it's currently unclear to me (personally) why "currency.wiki" meets notability guidelines and is reliable for inclusion. If Mascarponette does not get back to you, ping me again, or re-open the actual request by changing |answered=no for more immediate visibility. — Andy W. (talk · ctb) 04:34, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Hmm... I'm not getting any response from Mascarponette. As far as your questions; please check Alexa rank http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/currency.wiki plus, If you look at the history, the currency conversion website http://currency.wiki was contributed to Wikipedia over a year ago, why removing now, I see no spam and rates are very accurate. Why don't you browse it, compare with other sites? But, this is how I feel when I contribute my work as you do, so I notice few syntax issues that I've decided to fix and now its removed :) There is a saying, what ever happens, happens for good. Thanks for reading I wont be pursuing this any further. Just getting more and more bricks. Tomdavis1 (talk) 05:05, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

@Tomdavis1: Thanks for your patience. (please remember to ping; I just happened to glance back at this page and see a reply) Please don't let these replies discourage you, and understand that I'm not trying to push back... there are policies and guidelines in place, and sometimes it's not easy to get used to all of it. Your good faith edits were unfortunately caught in an edit war, which has potential consequences, so I just want to be careful. It does look like currently fxtop is ranked 163k while currency.wiki is ranked 93k. I read the site's about page, and my impression is that it is not a spam page. I'm still unsure about its reliability at this point, and now I have a further question about why another currency link is needed when the five given work reasonably reliably already? Also, it hasn't been a week yet since your post on that user's talk page... give some more time. — Andy W. (talk · ctb) 05:40, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Hello, I already reverted in the past currency.wiki, I still don't see what value added provide these 3 sites (currency.wiki, transfer mate and transfer wise) to the project, nothing. We can't have thousands of external links. fxtop is the only one to have such huge history (far back 1953) with lots of other nice features (cross fx rate, world map, pocket guide, converter in the past, inflation), and no reliability problem as source are central banks.Mascarponette (talk) 09:01, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

I can't agree fxtop provide the value modern readers are seeking for. Look at the design, look at the user experience - 0. Not even a mobile version. It's full of banner ads. The only thing fxtop provide is history (not sure about the credibility of these anymore). It says is currency converter, but you cant convert amount you want, you can see just 1 vs 1. New and better sources are not allowed and marked as spam from people who doesn't even know a thing about exchange rates...Also I see this in the footer - Exchange rates are refreshed daily and are the official ones published by Central banks, but the link leads to Fatal error. Does someone even maintain this website? I don't think it provides accurate and trusted info to Wiki readers. About Transfer mate and Transfer wise, I think both are way too better than fxtop. This is not about hundreds of external link, it's about relevant and useful information and option to readers freely to compare exchange rates... Anstoyanov (talk) 1:38 PM, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

There is a fully compliant mobile version on fxtop and currency converter is on bottom of the page of the currency pair portal, it converts simultaneously several values~which is more user friendly than other web sites. The link "Exchange rates are refreshed daily and are the official ones published by Central banks" doesn't link to fatal error but to a page saying "Exchange rates are refreshed daily (from monday to friday) and are the official ones published by the European Central Bank. Some minor exchange rates come from other sources (like African Development Bank). Historic rates are official ones, we use European Central Bank exchange rates since May 2000. Before May 2000, we retrieved exchange rates from Dutch central bank, Deutsche Bundesbank, Bank of England, US federal reserve, World Bank, Bank of Japan. ". Fxtop graphs are used by reference book about Economics from Oxford University Press written by Richard Lipsey and Alec Chrystal Mascarponette (talk) 13:55, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Still I can't say fxtop is good enough compared to others. Thinking Mascarponette is somehow related to this website. Can someone else tell his thoughts on this discussion...Anstoyanov (talk) 2:51 PM, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Currency Wiki

Why was CurrencyWiki removed from the template? Apparently there was some argument in the edits where an user very obstinately insisted on removing some of the sources. Apparently he overdid it and removed CurrencyWiki as well. And then he had the template protected so that his unilateral and undiscussed edits could no longer be undone. I think CurrencyWiki should go back into the template. http://currency.wiki --Maxl (talk) 15:24, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

I visited several times this site as I removed it in the past. I did another deep look right now at this site and don't see the value added. I also searched for references about this site and I don't find any. About page don't tell where prices come from, so there are doubts it is a reliable source, please note that we can't put lots of links in this template. Mascarponette (talk) 08:36, 13 October 2016 (UTC)