I understand your point of view, and for almost any other use-case except representing units, I would agree. I wouldn't recommend using numpy in this way, for example, nor would I recommend importing anything except units directly from quantities.

However, for units, I think the visual appearance of the variable name is critical. "0.42*kHz" is immediately comprehensible in a way that "0.42*pq.kHz" is not.  While the main target audience for Neo is Python tool developers, I think we also aim to provide a tool that can be used by non-Python-expert neuroscientists in their day-to-day data analysis, people that currently use Matlab, for example. To attract this audience, I think the documentation needs to make Neo look as friendly as possible, and prefixing every unit with "pq" does not do this.

By the way, I'm not sure how many people will see this conversation. Perhaps we should move the discussion to the mailing list?