Talk:Binary prefix

See also WP:COMPUNITS section in the Wikipedia Manual of Style. The talk pages for several of the unit pages (Talk:Kibibyte, Talk:Mebibit, etc) refer to this page for a historical discussion which is now archived. The vote on the "centralization" and the related discussion from 2005 can be found in Talk:Binary_prefix/Archive_2. There is also some relevant discussion in Talk:Binary_prefix/Archive_1 (2002-2005) and several related discussion threads from 2008 in Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)/Archive/Complete rewrite of Units of Measurements (June_2008). -- era (Talk | History) 19:46, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Template-table references removed from article, preserved here

Bit rates Decimal prefixes (SI) Name Symbol Multiple kilobit per second kbit/s 103 megabit per second Mbit/s 106 gigabit per second Gbit/s 109 terabit per second Tbit/s 1012 Binary prefixes (IEC 60027-2) kibibit per second Kibit/s 210 mebibit per second Mibit/s 220 gibibit per second Gibit/s 230 tebibit per second Tibit/s 240

Multiples of bits SI decimal prefixes Binary usage IEC binary prefixes Name (Symbol) Value Name (Symbol) Value kilobit (kbit) 103 210 kibibit (Kibit) 210 megabit (Mbit) 106 220 mebibit (Mibit) 220 gigabit (Gbit) 109 230 gibibit (Gibit) 230 terabit (Tbit) 1012 240 tebibit (Tibit) 240 petabit (Pbit) 1015 250 pebibit (Pibit) 250 exabit (Ebit) 1018 260 exbibit (Eibit) 260 zettabit (Zbit) 1021 270 zebibit (Zibit) 270 yottabit (Ybit) 1024 280 yobibit (Yibit) 280 See also: Nibble · Byte · Multiples of bytes Orders of magnitude of data

table that was formerly in lede, preserved here

IEC Binary Prefixes
Prefix Symbol Multiplier kibi Ki 210 1024 mebi Mi 220 10242 gibi Gi 230 10243 tebi Ti 240 10244 pebi Pi 250 10245 exbi Ei 260 10246 zebi Zi 270 10247 yobi Yi 280 10248

Yet another definition of K

As anyone noticed the TV definition of K where 4K appears to mean about 4,000? Could we be heading into another semantic war as TV's grow to 8K and beyond?  :-) Tom94022 (talk) 17:47, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

It's not really a unit, more a class name. Rwessel (talk) 06:52, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Agreed, but isn't that what today's conventional binary prefixes were back in the days when 4K RAM was large :-)? Tom94022 (talk) 00:11, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Not so much. In the 4K era, it would usually have been called "4000" or "4096" characters or words. A decade later, when the "K" usage became popular, it clearly was a abbreviation of an actual measure - IOW, you could buy a machine with 32K, and then expand it in 16K increments to 256K, and you'd usually specify the actual size as "80K". While 4K TVs are an emerging standard (although I'm not sure how relevant they'll be for most of the world in the next decade), and 8K appears to be at least getting some discussion, there's not going to be a whole to of growth in those numbers, without a significant change in what "TV" is. For monitors, there's more push for higher resolution (especially in some applications, like medical imaging), but there the current approach (size plus resolution) seems to work well enough. Another relevant example might be cameras – the “8MP” camera has roughly 8 million pixels, nobody expects an exact count, except in the specs (although to an extent, that attitude got the disk drive makers in trouble). Basically I don't think it's worrying about right now. Rwessel (talk) 06:03, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Funny Sounding

Perhaps the article should mention that there is an informal trend to pronounce and expand Ki Mi Gi Ti Pi Ei Zi Yi as kili megi gigi teri peti exi zetti yotti. This can be verified by a web search on the first few expansions. It may be that people who see the symbols in the context of information capacity in bytes, e.g. KiB MiB GiB, but have not seen or heard the words kibibyte, mebibyte etc, simply assume these pronunciations, i.e. kilibyte, megibyte, gigibyte (with the last "i" pronounced as the vowel in the word "bee", or as the last "i" in "milli"). It may be that others, like myself, first learning of the "funny sounding" pronunciations, try to come up with something better, and settle on these as the obvious solution. These pronunciations avoid the problem of sounding as though you have a speech impediment, or sounding like Johnny English after he accidentally injects himself with muscle relaxant, "kibibyte flibble". D.keenan (talk) 00:01, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

I suspect the web search is mostly indicative of spelling errors. I don't think there's any such "informal trend", given that there is very little trend toward adopting the IEC prefixes in any pronunciation. WP must follow reliable sources (and a count of web hits does not count). If you can find some for this claim, no problem; otherwise, problem. Jeh (talk) 01:05, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

You can eliminate most cases of spelling error by searching on, for example, "kilo mega kili megi" (without the quotes), and not allowing the search engine to "correct" the spelling. Then randomly read some of them to verify that they are what I say they are. Whether it's a "trend" or not is beside the point. I contend that it has already reached notable levels of usage relative to the level of usage of kibi mebi etc. D.keenan (talk) 04:57, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Sure, if someone disagrees with you, assume they don't know how to use a search engine. Search counts still aren't a RS, and what you read into a random selection of the hits certainly is not. Jeh (talk) 07:23, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

While I personally think they are funny sounding I think to be notable to Wikipedia standards some reliable sources would need to be found that comment on how "they are funny sounding" in the particular way described above. A search engine result isn't a reliable source, if you need this explained why then please ask on my talk page and I'll be happy to help. If you, D.keenan, can find articles in notable publications then please post them here for discussion or be bold and go ahead with some changes.Glider87 (talk) 09:35, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

We already have the "Dissent" section, which notes (with a ref) that none other than Donald Knuth called the actual IEC prefixes "funny sounding." However I find nothing, let alone anything from a WP:RS, that comments on a trend toward misspellings like "kili" and "megi", certainly nothing that claims that such misspellings arose from people thinking the official IEC prefixes were "funny sounding." To me it just looks like a bunch of copied misspellings--not exactly an unknown phenomenon on the net. Jeh (talk) 18:07, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

By the way, D. Keenan: the hit counts I'm getting appear to be specious. I searched exactly as you suggested. Here is one of the links on the first page of results. But I can't find "kili" or "megi" anywhere on that page. kibi and mebi, yes. Jeh (talk) 18:20, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Jeh, I agree the hit counts are nonsense. "Megibit" does appear on the page you link above, but it is clearly a typo. This post to the Conlang (constructed languages) forum, also from the first page of the Google search, shows someone proposing "kili" and "megi" precisely because he thinks "kibi" and "mebi" are "silly". Several other forum posts consistently use "kili", "megi" and "gigi" with no use of "kibi", "mebi" or "gibi" in a way that suggests they have never seen or heard the latter, and have simply assumed the former based on the symbols alone (Ki, Mi, Gi). Or as you say, they may all have copied these from the first person to make this "mistake". I note that the Ubuntu policy, referenced in the main article, completely avoids any full-spelling of the prefixes. D.keenan (talk) 14:03, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

So is it not enough that this usage is there for anyone to see? Must it first be commented on by a WP:RS before it can be mentioned in an article, even in the "Dissent" section? D.keenan (talk) 14:03, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes. Please read WP:V and WP:RS. This is Wikipedia, not the Urban Dictionary. Jeh (talk) 15:21, 8 February 2012 (UTC)