Talk:Gasoline

Template:WP1.0  There was a proposal concerning this article's title - whether it should be moved to Petrolium-based fuel. The unanimous consensus was to keep the original editor's title. The page is currently protected from moving, and any attempts to move it will be reverted.

For previous discussion see #Requested Move.

 There was a dispute about this article's title - whether it should be moved to Petrol. Many arguments have been presented for both sides. After all else failed, consensus was to keep the original editor's title, as per the Wikipedia:Manual of Style:

"If all else fails, consider following the spelling style preferred by the first major contributor (that is, not a stub) to the article."

The page is currently protected from moving, and any attempts to move it will be reverted.

For previous discussion see Archive 2 for the extent of the dispute.

Error

"Hydrogen 25.7 MJ/litre" ... Well ! But for what pressure ? Or is it liquid hydrogen? Does not seem to be explicit!

Broken Link on this page

The link, Gasoline Images - Vintage American gas station and fuel dispenser stock photography, link courtesy of http://www.coolstock.com Links to a 404... Am I allowed to fix/remove it?

Petrol Redirect

I don't know if I'm the fifteenth person to have this idea, but would it be acceptable to the wikipedians with deletion powers for there to be a seperate Gasoline and Petrol page that are exactly the same except for the terms "petrol" and "gasoline"? - Diceman 17:27, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

We had them, for about ten minutes before everybody went nuts over it. It was done with templates, so both were updated at once. If you had a fecking clue what was going on with all the template code with the names. --Kiand 17:32, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

So we don't use templates this time. I assume the bulk of new contributions will be on the Gasoline page, so the petrol page could be compared and updated accordingly every week or two. - Diceman 14:27, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

This is possibly the worst idea I've ever heard here. POV forks aren't allowed, and what is more POV than your locale's chosen language? From your point of view, petrol is correct. We chose gasoline. You don't get a fork, a likely poorly updated fork, because of that. It's a word. Get over it. --Golbez 16:55, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

That is ludicrous! How is speaking and researching in your native tongue POV? By that logic, there shouldn't be any non-English Wikipedias, since 'We chose English - get over it'. How patronising! Twrist 02:21, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

This is the English language Wikipedia. You and I speak different dialects of the same language, and there are numerous others. Should we have forks for each and every difference in terminology?

Whenever possible, we attempt to use neutral terms. For example, both aeroplane and airplane redirect to fixed-wing aircraft. Unfortunately, no such term exists for petrol and gasoline (and it would be inappropriate for us to invent one).

I don't understand why the word "gasoline" is so objectionable to some people. I accept the existence of the cheque article, despite the relative uncommonness of that spelling in the US. In fact, the page originally used the spelling "check," but I supported its move (because "cheque" is less ambiguous on a worldwide level). The word "aluminium" is virtually unheard-of in the US, but I don't interpret the aluminum redirect as some sort of slight. (The former term is preferred by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. There is no comparable authority on the subject of petrol/gasoline, but "gasoline" appears to be used more prevalently among major international organizations.)

In some cases, the same term is applied to different subjects. For example, Americans use the term "vest" to refer to the garment that you call a "waistcoat." Meanwhile, you use the term "vest" to refer to the garment that Americans call an "undershirt." Should I complain because our waistcoat/vest article is located at waistcoat? Of course not, because this is the less ambiguous term. We don't have a dedicated undershirt/vest article, but if someone were to write one, it would be located at undershirt (which presently redirects to undergarment). Similarly, "apartment" is less ambiguous than "flat," and "elevator" is less ambiguous than "lift."

Is any of this truly problematic? Is it so bad to be exposed to a different culture? —Lifeisunfair 12:51, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

I demand that the title of the article be changed to 'cardrink' which is what we call it in my culture. Your attempt to destroy my peoples' way of life with your imperialist verbiage is intolerable! My car gets 300 qualongs to the galiter of cardrink and that's the way Wikipedia should report it! Jburt1 00:22, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

My vote goes to "bangwater" --Angry mob mulls options 07:41, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Can't go wrong with Esperanto! There, problem solved! (Why do I have to think of everything?) Ewlyahoocom 06:55, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

One of the reasons why I think it's silly that this article is located at gasoline is because I suspect very few people actually refer to it as gasoline except occasional formal circumstances. I wonder how many Americans ever actually use the term gasoline? From what I've seen, in the vast majority of cases it is refered to as gas. While gas may derive from gasoline and most Americans may know that, the fact remains it is referred to as gas not gasoline. Therefore, when it comes down to debate, it should be between the terms gas and petrol not gasoline and petrol. Clearly petrol wins since gas is too confusing. Also I think the bigger issue is that many people who prefer petrol see many of the arguments but up in favour of gasoline as silly. Gasoline may be preferred by many international organisations, but this primarily reflects the influence of the US. While this is not insignificant, trying to compare this to IUPAC on aluminium is rather silly. Similarly, the argument that Americans make up the majority of native English speakers seems rather silly. Who care's rather the majority of native speakers are? The most important thing, if anything would seem to be the majority of speakers who use English in everyday life or maybe the majority of speakers able to speak English at a level they can conduct a conversation about everyday things. Arguments on the entomology have some some merit but again, some people appear to be trying to draw to much from them. Gasoline is not a chemical name even if that was it's original entyomology. The fact that a user of CE is perhaps more likely to recognise gasoline then a user of AE is to recognise petrol has little merit since it simply reflects the fact that many Americans have little exposure let alone understanding of cultures other then theirs. The flaws of internet searches has been widely discussed and I won't go in to that. In conclusion, the biggest problem for me (and I suspect other people) is not so much that the article is named gasoline but the flawed arguments that supporters of gasoline have put up in favour of gasoline and their apparent assumption that we have no right to claim petrol has just as much merit in most regards as gasoline when on balance, I think many of us feel it does. But in the end based on the previous arguments, I would have to support keeping it as gasoline however this is only a tiny victory. Personally, I feel the previous arguments missed one key point which I have discussed elsewhere but I have no desire to take this any further so I will leave it at that. Nil Einne 07:22, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Your mentioning of the "fact that many Americans have little exposure let alone understanding of cultures other then theirs" was pretty uncalled for and nothing short of racist (nationalist?), and demonstrates to me your level of bias on the subject (aside from that, I could cite plenty of examples which would deny your assertion on that count). I would have expected a more civilized remark out of an non-American English speaker, seeing as how you're... you know... oh so much more "civilised" than we Americans are. Mikhajlovich 4:19, April 11, 2008 (PST)

I'd like to know the relevance of the study of insects in this debate. Since you mentioned it Nil I think you should explain yourself fully. Alun 11:27, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Most Americans do call it "gas" in everyday speech, but it is very frequently referred to as "gasoline" as well. This definitely should not be between "gas" and "petrol". Using "gas" to refer to "gasoline" is very similar to using "plane" to refer to "airplane". --SodiumBenzoate 13:51, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

I'll be honest - i'm english and so would prefer the use of petrol over gasoline. However, there's probably more people reading this who are more familiar with gasoline (re: line 17 ...since it simply.... from Nil Einne). so, lets find a compromise. so lets just use gasolineMovingpictures100@hotmail.com 11:20, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm a supporter of 'petrol', because, well, that's how we refer to it in my country, and from what I understand, everywhere except North America. I'm not saying that Americans aren't special, quite the contrary - you have your own language, and I respect that. I agree with what Nil Einne said in that the arguments supporting Gasoline don't seem to be much more than "we like the word". I don't mean to sound facetious, but hopefully you can see where I'm coming from. Perhaps a large majority of the people involved in this discussion do use the word "gasoline", but the dialect of a majority of wikipedians shouldn't be adopted as a native wikipedian dialect, for obvious reasons. The article itself seems to indicate that - excluding international corporate communication - the word gasoline is used mostly, if not exclusively, in North America. The word petrol, however, is used by all Commonwealth countries, which I naively assume represent a majority of the English speaking western world. As for the international corporate use of the word, someone already mentioned that this usage is more than likely caused by American economical influence in this commercial sector (in the English speaking, western world), rather than the word's widespread use.

As a fervent student of linguistics, and someone who has a lot of experience with arguing (it's good fun), I should point out that arguments like "it's just a word" and "what's the big deal" aren't going to be helpful if someone is passionate about dialectic equality. If Wikipedia has the ultimate goal of "universal knowledge", then the most universally applicable lexicon should be used, with alternative dialects included in the article synopsis. Whether the most universally applicable lexis in this case is petrol or gasoline, I'm [not going to say], but it definitely should be discussed further.

If Nil Einne is British, he/she suffers from worse English skills than he/she is complaining about. "Who care's" should have no apostrophe; "entomology/entyomology" is irrelevant to this discussion (etymology is more relevant); "draw to much" should be "too"; "that was it's original" possessive pronouns have no apostrophe (cf ours, theirs, hers, yours, its); "more likely to recognise gasoline then a user/cultures other then theirs" make no sense (the word "than" is used in comparison while "then" is used in sequence). These glaring errors significantly undermine any merit his/her argument may have had. 58.171.144.192 (talk) 13:18, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

One more thing: language can be extremely divisive. Different terms for the same thing - as in this case - can cause an "us and them" situation. Perhaps it could be considered to have the page named after the actual chemical in discussion, "Petroleum". I don't think anyone would object if the title wasn't in "the other team's" language. - Fluck 16:21, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Au contraire, Fluck. The title of an article should be the word that is most commonly and unambiguously used to refer to the subject in question. No one in the world, not even petroleum engineers, refer to gasoline / petrol blends by their chemical compositions, because this is neither practical nor standardized. People call it gasoline or petrol, and if the article were titled something other than these two, I would object.

Lifeisunfair has had the most intelligent thing to say here about this subject. A solution like a POV fork causes more problems than it solves (it solves none), and in the end, it's just a title. All English-speaking users will be able to find this article easily, so long as both terms redirect to the article--and they do. So what's the big deal here? Ultimately, the article has to be titled something, so even if exactly 50% of English speakers called it gasoline, and 50% called it petrol, one or the other has to be chosen. Gasoline won. There's no compelling reason to use either word here over the other, but the title is already gasoline, and it's utter nonsense to be offended by that fact. Changing the title serves no purpose except to declare that "petrol" is superior to "gasoline"--and it's not. -69.47.186.226 06:22, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

1. I agree with what Nil Einne said in that the arguments supporting Gasoline don't seem to be much more than "we like the word". - This is so true.
2. Also, "it started out as gasoline" is not a reason to keep it that way, it's simply because an American started the article.
3. Also, "there are more speakers of AmE" is not a reason for preference - It shouldn't be in terms of population, the USA is but one country, look how many other countries use English, and all of them (referring to the people) are speakers of Commonwealth English or their own countries dialect. Bennelliott • Talk • Contributions 17:50, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

1) At least two countries use the term gasoline (U.S. and Canada). 2) The Spanish language uses the term gasolina, so gasoline is familiar to non-English-speaking people too, while petrol could be dangerously ambiguous. 3) Comonwealth English does not exist, not outside of wikipedia at least. 4) "It started out as gasoline" is a pretty good reason, why don't you read the MoS. 5) If "There are more speakers of AmE" is not a reason then neither is "it shouldn't be in terms of population". They would be equally valid 6) except that countries don't speak, people do. 7) Stop this nonsense. —^Jack_Lumber ^/tɔk/ 21:44, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

1. If Commonwealth English didn't exist outside of Wikipedia, it wouldn't be on Wikipedia in the first place - The explanation of Commonwealth English is on it's namesake article.

Possessive pronouns have no apostrophe. 58.171.144.192 (talk) 13:18, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

1. As I said below; The only reason why Canadians use "gas/gasoline" is because of the heavy influence from the south. The same applies to many words that you only see in CaE and AmE.
2. Spanish is but one language.
3. I have read the Manual of Style, but that's beside the point - "It started out as gasoline" is not a good reason, as I have explained above. If it was a good reason, then the MOVE PAGE tool would not exist, and spelling mistakes in titles would be rife.
4. "except that countries don't speak, people do" Don't be pedantic - I was typing fast.
5. "Stop this nonsense". I believe that sentence is now obsolete. Bennelliott • Talk • Contributions 17:45, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Hits on Google for "Gasoline": 29,800,000 hits on Google for "petrol": 34,300,000 Petrol is in my opinion therefore the more commonly used term. Why am I getting involved in this!! Himynameishelen (talk) 18:15, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Here's the flaw in your thinking: Yahoo! hits for "gasoline" = 115,000,000 > Yahoo! hits for "petrol" = 88,400,000. Search engines are a pretty unreliable way to solve this problem, when you get right down to it. For all intents and purposes, this argument really is pointless. JackLumber is completely correct in that many foreign words are based on the term gasoline, while virtually none are based on petrol. Therefore, petrol really would be the more ambiguous of the two terms, at least as far as non-English speakers are concerned "'¿Pétrol? ¿Qué es eso?'". But aside from that, the main factor here is that whoever created the article used gasoline first, and therefore, to fight so adamantly about changing it just because it is known to some people as something else would be just about as anal as searching through Wikipedia articles for the sole purpose of changing all instances of the word "color" to "colour", "maneuver" to "manoeuvre", etc., etc. Let's just lay this argument to rest and say that the redirection of petrol to the gasoline article is really our only rational option. Either that, or we can segregate Wikipedia's English language articles into BrE and AmE... an idea that's pretty unattractive to me, wouldn't you agree? Mikhajlovich 4:19, April 11, 2008 (PST)

Read Wikipedia:Search engine test#Google unique page count issues which concludes Caution must be used in judging the relative importance of websites yielding well over 1000 search results.58.171.144.192 (talk) 13:18, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

I use the word "petrol" in English and Afrikaans, but I would be amazed if you could find more than five English-speaking Wikipedia users who don't know what "gasoline" means. The use of "gasoline" in the article title and text is clear and unambiguous. Any attempt to change the article is in my opinion motivated by a strong partisanship either towards the English Commonwealth dialect or against the American English dialects. I most strongly oppose messing with page contents just to satisfy dialect preference, and vehemently oppose messing with article titles for these reasons. The users above who wonder why we're wasting time on this BS have my sympathy as well. --Slashme (talk) 14:11, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Why not simply call this page 'petroleum spirt'?

Super

From Super:

In Australia and New Zealand, as well as in continental Europe, Super was the name for a number of years commonly given to leaded high octane petrol (gasoline). Originally the name denoted premium leaded petrol, as opposed to Standard, which was non-premium leaded petrol. However, with the introduction of unleaded petrol in the early 1980s, Standard petrol was discontinued, leaving only Super, which then became a synonym for leaded petrol in general. This continued until the late 1990s, when leaded petrol began to be eliminated in favour of various different blends of unleaded petrol contain special additives for use with leaded vehicles. The name of these blends varies from oil company to oil company.

News

Currently, the price of gasoline in the US is nearly $3.00 for a gallon of gasoline. Seen this on FOX News. Martial Law 08:29, 10 April 2006 (UTC) :)

Well, that settles it. We pay USD 6.73, so we've earned the right to name it! I can't believe Americans complain about the price of petrol, and we've been told there will be substantial rises this summer.

Fair comparsion? You pay USD 6.73 a gallon of gas? Or is that 6.73 a liter/litre of petrol? Just curious. I remember thinking, "Oh, wow, $0.60!" - and then finding out that it was just $0.60 a litre, which pretty much came up to around $2 USD a gallon of gas. Hbdragon88 04:30, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Fuel is sold per litre in the UK, much to my disgust, because of EU law. I still think in gallons. Our gallons are slightly different to yours. I used 6.73 USD as a direct comparison ie. I got the average UK price (in Pounds) for a litre of unleaded from the newspaper (its slightly more expensive where I live) then converted it into US Gallons, and then turned the pounds into dollars. You would pay that much for a US gallon at our prices. The price has gone up since I last posted, In US terms we are going to hit $7 USD per US gallon before the year is out. Although people complain about fuel prices in the USA, its actually low compared to other 'western' countries. I've been told that we pay more than anyone else in the world, does anyone know if that is true?

I don't think it's useful to compare prices for gas without taking into consideration the widely varying taxation rates. They vary greatly within the US, and I would imagine our rates are different than yours, as both of ours are different from other countries'. -- stubblyhead | ^T/_c 23:06, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

I realize that this discussion took place quite some time ago, but I would just like to point out that while our gasoline prices may be lower than yours (although at this point, they are surely catching up) our nation is much more spread out and we travel by automobile much more than you Britons do. Illinois2011 (talk) 04:59, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Price Calculating/Converting

I have noticed the Australian fuel price is out of date seeing as Petrol has dropped in price significantly over the last few weeks ($1.40/litre listed here, its now down around $1.10/litre). I am hopeless at maths but have used the Google Calculator to convert it to $US/gallon (it says $AUD1.11/litre = $US3.13/gallon) but I am not sure how accurate it is. Could someone with the skills to do so calculate this correctly? or... could someone list the equation for this type of conversion? Nickuss - 4 October 2006.

Possible math error on energy content table

I'm not an expert, but the energy content of gasoline is listed as approximately 32 MJ/l or 131 MJ/USgal. I think perhaps that should be 121 MJ/USgal, assuming about 3.79 l/USgal. Could someone in charge of this article please check that? Thanks for maintaining this great information resource! SteveVTS 16 Nov 2006.

Contradictory numbers in Energy Content table

This isn't my field of expertise, but I noticed what seem to be some contradictory numbers or bad conversions in the Energy Content table. For example, Aviation Gasoline is shown as having a lower number of MJ/liter and BTU/gallon than Regular Gasoline, which doesn't sound right. But when converted to MJ/kg, the number is higher than gasoline.