[anoncake]

That's a horrible idea.

1. The surrounding text depends on the number it contains. By blindly replacing numbers in every language version, you get garbage like "Town A is the most populated place on the region at 10,000 inhabitants, followed by Town B at 11,000."

2. If you look at multiple language versions and they disagree, you know one of them must be incorrect and you should watch out for bias and outdated information. Forcing them to all have the same data takes away that feature.

3. Bias is rarely a problem with objectively checkable data. When the PRC publishes an encyclopedia, the issue with it is not that they'd get the date of Tiananmen Square wrong.

4. Requiring people to use and read some sort of placeholders instead of ordinary text greatly increases the barrier to entry.