Template talk:Quantities of bits

message: Why are parentheses being used to distinguish between the decimal and binary sense of the units? This distinction is the most confusing part of the table. It deserves its own column to keep the two clearly separated. Lets join the Symbol and Name columns with parentheses instead. Those values are much less likely to be confused. Also, this helps to demonstrate that "Kibit" is a non-pronounceable symbol for kibibit just as "kb" is a non-pronounceable symbol for kilobit. This is an important distinction which was not apparent in the previous table. 12.135.134.146 22:52, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've reverted this, as it made the table look even messier than it did before. --StuartBrady (Talk) 22:14, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use of parenthesis 

message: * NIST
** "Because the SI prefixes strictly represent powers of 10, they should not be used to represent powers of 2. Thus, one kilobit, or 1 kbit, is 1000 bit and not 210 bit = 1024 bit." nist.gov
* SI/BIPM
** "These SI prefixes refer strictly to powers of 10.  They should not be used to indicate powers of 2 (for example, one kilobit represents 1000 bits and not 1024 bits)." 
* IEEE
**Information for authors - "Information for IEEE Transactions, Journals, and Letters Authors"
***TABLE OF UNITS AND QUANTITY SYMBOLS
***"kilo-: SI prefix for 103.  The prefix kilo shall not be used to mean 210 (that is, 1024)."
** IEEE Standard Letter Symbols for Units of Measurement, IEEE Std 260.1-2004 (p13)
*** one megabit = 1 Mb = 106 b = 1 000 000 b  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Thunderbird2 (talk • contribs) 13:09, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some non-dubious definitions 

message: I find the template confusing.  On the left it uses the symbol b for bit (as in Mb for megabit) and on the right it uses bit for the same purpose (Mibit for mebibit).  Why not pick one of them and stick with it? See also WP:MOSNUM talk page Thunderbird2 13:27, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I have edited the template to standardise on bit as the symbol for the bit, in line with the consensus reached at MOSNUM. Thunderbird2 15:15, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  unit symbol for bit 

message: Everybody agree that the computer industry has often used the SI prefixes to mean powers of 2. That is fundamentally wrong as they are defined without any ambiguity by the SI. Be it a widely commited error or not, it still is an error (from the viewpoint of the SI). They both are conventions. I argue that the most widely accepted, most consistent and clearest convention should win. SI wins on all counts. I think we should put something along the lines of "(deprecated, confusing)" besides the column title "Binary usage", however my "so dear friend" Shreevatsa reverted my changes both times. Is Wikipedia (its mecanisms) losing here?
Compvis (talk) 19:22, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The purpose of the table (and articles on Wikipedia) is informational, not to decide what "should win". Shreevatsa (talk) 19:53, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  It's not informational to suggest that these powers of ten are equal to these powers of 2. It's confusing. It's not informational to not precise what is the most widely consistent with commerce, and business, most logical and clearest usage of the two. It's confusing. Compvis (talk) 20:12, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The real world use of the terms is inconsistent and confusing. It sucks, but we have to deal with it. --Cybercobra (talk) 20:51, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: You're right! This is how I'm dealing with it! I think it is irresponsible intellectually to suggest that both usage have equal value. I'm not against mentionning that this has sometimes been the usage, since it's true. I'm just saying that there is absolutely NO ambiguity with the prefix kilo everywhere you look, except in the computer industry. The computer industry has virtually no rights to modify these definitions. If they want other meanings, they should create new words. The most interesting characteristics of a unit is universality, precision, and unambiguousness. Do you really think it is desirable to have two definitions of kilobyte, etc., and to always have to specify which you mean? Also I'm not against creating a new definition for a word if there is a good justification for the new meaning, or no good reason to restrain the word to the old definition. In this case, there are no good reason to have a new definition ("I don't want to use my calculator", "we've always done it that (wrong) way", and "I prefer round numbers" are not acceptable), and there are very good reasons to keep the old one. Compvis (talk) 21:13, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Fully agree, but this remark should be made on Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates_and_numbers)#Quantities of bytes and bits. There have been intense discussions there, which resulted in the current regrettable guideline. By the way, I prefer the version of this template as here. −Woodstone (talk) 03:27, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia writing style does not affect the acknowledgment of facts. A kilobyte has 2 meanings in the real world regardless of how editors decide to use it in the text of articles. --Cybercobra (talk) 03:59, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree again. That the real world has created ambiguity is a fact. But that does not mean that we should not attempt to avoid ambiguity in WP. One of the purposes of WP is to explain and clarify the facts of the world. −Woodstone (talk) 04:50, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  (Although I probably agree with both of you) Since this is turning into a discussion about the style to use on Wikipedia, and not about what this template should look like, let's not have this discussion here on this talk page. Shreevatsa (talk) 04:57, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

text: NPOV doesn't suggest that we should never point out incoherence. I agree with you, however some ideas are better or more coherent than others. To not point out significant incoherences is to be intellectually dishonest. One of the reason why an idea would be less valid is if it is incoherent with itself or with previous widely adopted and reasonable conventions, such as the SI. And by the way, megabyte has 3 meanings (1000^2, 1024^2 and 1000*1024), and before I changed it the entry for Petabyte mentionned 1024 * 1000^4 bytes... I'm sure you see where this is going... Compvis (talk) 05:49, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: At any rate, these issues of criticism are too complex to be covered in the template, they belong in one of the related articles or as part of a WP:UNITS debate. --Cybercobra (talk) 06:47, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: What part of the following is unclear or too complex for you? NIST SI prefixes: "Because the SI prefixes strictly represent powers of 10, they should not be used to represent powers of 2. Thus, one kilobit, or 1 kbit, is 1000 bit and not 210 bit = 1024 bit." Compvis (talk) 00:34, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  SI is one of the most respected "opinions" out there, binary usage should be clearly marked as deprecated 

message: Please see the Template talk:Quantities of bytes page for a discussion on how we should display the decimal and binary values in these tables.  This discussion is initiated because of the edit that substantially changed the approach.  —Quantling (talk | contribs) 15:35, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Discussion on decimal and binary values in table 

message: I corrected the abbreviations for the ISO/IEC 80000[1] and JEDEC memory standards such as 100B.01 and JESD21-C.
Although its predecessor, IEC 60027-2[2], assigned the abbreviation Kibit to the kibibit, with the rest being succeeded by -b instead of -bit, ISO/IEC 80000 replaced that abbreviation with just the -bit ending.
And the JEDEC memory standards don't have words behind the abbreviations; the abbreviations are effectively standalone: "All JEDEC standards avoid the use of the terms megabit, megabyte and gigabyte and refer to memory capacity as a number followed by the units. (64Mb, 256MB, 1GB.)"[3]
I wanted to include this quote as a caption in the table, but I couldn't figure out how. Could someone else please take the liberty of doing so?
NOTE: I say, specifically, that I "corrected" the abbreviations not from an assumed position of prescriptivistic arrogance, but because what I was correcting was information purporting to reflect the standards. But they didn't, and the thing about de jury standards is that if something is different than what the documentation states, it's wrong. Thus, assuming my information was correct, then what I did really was to correct them.
References:
1. World Heritage Encyclopedia. "Binary Prefix" › "Specific Units of IEC 60027-2 A.2 and ISO/IEC 80000", Reproduced by World Public Library under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0). Accessed 2015-11-19 (UTC-5).
2. United States, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). "Prefixes for Binary Multiples". Accessed 2015-11-19 (UTC-5).
3. World Heritage Encyclopedia. "JEDEC Memory Standards" › "Redefinition of Some Standard SI Prefixes", Reproduced by World Public Library under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0). Accessed 2015-11-19 (UTC-5).  — Preceding unsigned comment added by SarahTehCat (talk • contribs) 00:43, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I reverted your edit because the IEC symbol for bit is 'bit', not 'b'.  Dondervogel 2 (talk) 10:37, 21 November 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:  Sarah, the "world heritage encyclopedia" site has merely copied the WP articles from sometime in the past. That's what they do - they are in no way a RS. The NIST site you linked clearly shows that they use "B" for byte, but "bit" for bit. i.e. NIST specifies no abbreviation for "bit". Jeh (talk) 11:22, 21 November 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Abbreviations were wrong; I corrected them 

message: I have removed the JEDEC column: there is no basis for such a column.  In particular, JEDEC appears to say nothing at all about "Kbit", etc. in the binary prefix sense.  Without a source, we should not be synthesizing information.  —Quondum 21:13, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: The longstanding consensus is to keep the column. I'd be fine changing the column name if evidence can be shown that JEDEC has never referring to a kilobit as defined in the table. —Locke Cole • t • c 00:50, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Would you care to show what consensus you are referring to, with diffs?  You are curiously short on detail.  The onus is on you to find a reliable source.  —Quondum 01:13, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually the onus is on you to gain consensus if you want to change from the status quo. Simply revert warring to force through your preferred edits is disruption. —Locke Cole • t • c 05:58, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:   Can you supply a RS showing that the JEDEC symbol for 1024 bit is Kbit? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 12:05, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Why would I do that? —Locke Cole • t • c 12:31, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Because you are the editor insisting on the column. There was never common "consensus" for the column, only the desire to stop the edit warring about its misleading and unsourced status. There were editors who objected to its inclusion. kbrose (talk) 13:24, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: As I said above, I'm open to another name besides "JEDEC". Unless now the dispute is that anyone ever has referred to a "kilobit" as 1024 bits (and if that's the case, here you go). —Locke Cole • t • c 13:26, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  I see we're back to claiming consensus for things again, apparently this lying thing is catching. —Locke Cole • t • c 18:00, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:   Please refrain from further personal attacks, and focus instead on improving the template. If not JEDEC, what do you suggest as a header for the Kbit column? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 19:14, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:   Please refrain from lying then and I won't have to call you out on it? Deal? I would be fine with "Traditional" instead of "JEDEC". At the risk of giving you an inch and watching you take a billion kilometers, I'd be willing to admit that the usage on this is much less clear compared to kilobyte/kibibyte, etc. and would consider "Historical" but only after it has been demonstrated that kilobit/etc. are not currently being used by major manufacturers/developers to mean 1024 bits/etc. —Locke Cole • t • c 02:46, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:   The personal attack is noted. Stop your infantile bullying. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 08:58, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  Calling things a personal attack that you don't agree with doesn't magically make them personal attacks. Stop misusing that phrase. The solution to your "problem" is to stop engaging in the behavior that earns you that label. —Locke Cole • t • c 16:36, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:   I am through with your childish tactics and hostile editing, and this is the last time I will respond to a personal attack, or any other hostile post. I urge you to restrict your editing to constructive posts, like everyone else on this page. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 07:59, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  Can you direct my attention to any part of this whole debacle where you've been constructive (and I would define "constructive" here very narrowly; are you actually working to improve the encyclopedia or are you just pushing a point of view that deviates from 99% of the world)? —Locke Cole • t • c 19:56, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Should it be there at all? 

message: So as recently as 2008, Intel (they're this small manufacturer of microchips, they're used in a few devices by companies interested in that sort of thing), had a definition in this PDF for kilobit, megabit and gigabit in a nicely laid out table (page iv in PDF, reproduced below):
Other Common Notation
#        	Used after a signal name to identify an active-low signal (such as USBP0#)
GB       	Gigabyte (1,073,741,824 bytes)
GB/sec   	Gigabytes per second
Gbit     	Gigabit (1,073,741,824 bits)
KB       	Kilobyte (1024 bytes)
Kbit     	Kilobit (1024 bits)
kbits/sec	1000 bits per second
MB       	Megabyte (1,048,576 bytes)
MB/sec   	Megabytes per second
Mbit     	Megabit (1,048,576 bits)
Mbit/sec 	Megabits per second
xxh      	An address or data value ending with a lowercase h indicates a hexadecimal value.
x.x V    	Volts. Voltages are DC unless otherwise specified.
*        	This symbol is used to indicate third-party brands and names that are the property of their respective owners.
But I know not everyone thinks Intel is a relevant player in the computing industry anymore, so maybe them using these terms like this doesn't hold much weight. After all, IEC, and I mean everyone has heard of IEC before (can I get a high-five?), they've standardized an alternative system of units for computing technology. Obviously we'd be fools to listen to Intel, or Apple, or Microsoft or any of those manufacturers. —Locke Cole • t • c 00:07, 9 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Just in case there's any concern over the 2008 date of that file, here's a recent specification from April 2021 (also page iv). This file doubles down on Mb (for megabit) and Kb (for kilobit). —Locke Cole • t • c 05:26, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  In other words, Intel have not double down on anything. Instead they switched horses from Kbit to Kb. Yet another reason to drop 'Kbit' from the template. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 10:03, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  In other words, you're moving the goalposts. First the column needed to be "deprecated" or removed completely, now you're nitpicking on Kb vs Kbit? Let me know when you settle on what it is you're arguing for so I can meet your "requirements" instead of trying to switch it around after I've invested time in the discussion. —Locke Cole • t • c 17:05, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Intel

message: bytes                                                                                              	bytes                                                                           	bytes   	bytes   	bits   	bits   	bits   	bits
Site         	kilobyte                                                                                           	kibibyte                                                                        	terabyte	tebibyte	kilobit	kibibit	terabit	tebibit
intel.com    	1,500                                                                                              	3                                                                               	2,240   	4       	668    	0      	301    	0
microsoft.com	4,370                                                                                              	135                                                                             	8,210   	91      	784    	2      	553    	0
amd.com      	75                                                                                                 	0                                                                               	252     	0       	3      	0      	6      	0
apple.com    	2,620A not insignificant number of these appear to be Apple App Store, Apple Music, or forum posts.	359                                                                             	6,180   	281     	1,130  	8      	765    	6
netgear.com  	58                                                                                                 	1Some or all of these are end-user community/forum posts, not company documents.	349     	9       	4      	0      	4      	0
crucial.com  	25                                                                                                 	0                                                                               	63      	0       	1      	0      	1      	0
Also worth mentioning a Google search of site:intel.com kibibyte currently turns up three hits (one of them on community.intel.com, an end user forum), while site:intel.com kilobyte turns up 1,500 hits. I've also added microsoft.com as a point of comparison, and included results for bits and bytes units. I'll try to expand this as I get time.
Looking at these results turned up this interesting article by Raymond Chen, a developer with Microsoft who has worked on Microsoft Windows since some of its earliest days on the shell/Windows Explorer. In the article he explains why Microsoft has not embraced the IEC prefixes. —Locke Cole • t • c 17:05, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Any comparison of this type is meaningless, first of all because in documentation the names of units are not usually written out in full and secondly because KB, MB etc are often used in their decimal sense and these are included in the count.−Woodstone (talk) 13:12, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree. It demonstrates that the IEC units are used very rarely, or not at all. To your first point, clearly the names are written out in full in some instances to register thousands of times. For the second point, that's irrelevant: if the IEC units were being used with any significant amount we'd see more than a handful (or certainly greater than zero) of uses. Remember, the onus for inclusion of IEC is on those proposing to have it on such prominent display. I'm just trying to help demonstrate how comically bad the situation is for anyone not involved in these discussions. —Locke Cole • t • c 16:41, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Use by specific companies

message: Couple of responses
*  I can live with JEDEC if 
** the Memory/Traditional/JEDEC section of the table is edited to omit the 'tera' row and the 'Kbit' column (because JEDEC defines neither), leaving the entries for 'Kb', 'Mb' and 'Gb' only.
** the sister templates are updated for consistency
*  'Traditional' doesn't work because 'kilobit' and 'megabit' are traditionally used to mean one thousand and one million bits, respectively. They had this decimal meaning before the binary one became popular and they still have this meaning today. And in my experience file sizes are mostly reported in bytes, not bits.
Dondervogel 2 (talk) 14:14, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Traditional is in the context of computing.  Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:07, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Part of this discussion is the consistency between the various templates. Bit and byte should use the same headers. File sizes are often in binary multiples, so "memory" is a bit of a misnomer for them. I'm not convinced that there was a clear transition from decimal to binary use. It was more the sloppy use for convenience that became a tradition.−Woodstone (talk) 11:45, 20 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Comments

message: I'm not at all comfortable with 'Traditional', for the reasons given, and even less so when the other two templates use 'Memory'; the three templates should be consistent. I also agree the terms are not limited to memory, so how about 'Legacy' as the heading for the old "JEDEC" column, for all 3 templates? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 09:46, 10 November 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Support for Legacy (even though it's not likely to go through) – , please make sure you add a note to the other templates' talk pages, too. --Zac67 (talk) 13:14, 10 November 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  Good point. Done. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 19:36, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

text: Support - sounds like a good name for the column; better than "memory", which is too limiting; more neutral than "traditional" good choice for consistency in templates. −Woodstone (talk) 13:49, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

text: No because Legacy implies it's deprecated, while it's not.  Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:17, 10 November 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  Uhhh, binary use of SI prefixes is very clearly deprecated by the international standards bodies BIPM (SI Brochure, 9th edition, p143"The SI prefixes refer strictly to powers of 10. They should not be used to indicate powers of 2 (for example, one kilobit represents 1000 bits and not 1024 bits).") and ISO (ISO 80000-1:2009, p7"SI prefixes refer strictly to powers of 10, and should not be used for powers of 2. For example, 1 kbit should not be used to represent 1024 bits (210 bits), which is a kibibit"). Dondervogel 2 (talk) 18:29, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

text:  Deprecated also by IEC (obviously), IEEE, NIST, ISO, SAE, and many more – see Binary prefix#IEC prefixes. --Zac67 (talk) 20:59, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Talking real world here.  Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:33, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

text: Support - The status of these is in fact deprecated, which does not imply non-use. kbrose (talk) 17:28, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  New proposal: ''Legacy''

message: OK, so we now have the following list of options
# Also common
# Common
# Common Usage
# Customary
# Deprecated
# Historical
# JEDEC
# Legacy
# Memory
# Metric
# Traditional
It's a long list. How do we whittle it down to a more manageable number? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 23:53, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: And if we are aiming for completeness, we should also consider the possibility of removing the column altogether. Let's refer to that as option 12 (or option 0?) Dondervogel 2 (talk) 12:36, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: We should also consider placing the common/common-usage column before the IEC column., and that it should be completed. NebY (talk) 15:10, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree with this. —Locke Cole • t • c 16:51, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Complete list of options

message: *Computing, this matches the language used at one of our sister projects, the English-language Wiktionary (see petabyte). Common or Common Usage would be second choice, Traditional would be third choice. Yes/before to the question of position, and Yes to the full list. —Locke Cole • t • c 01:19, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Responses

message: Requested closure here as the RFC was delisted some time ago and comments have mostly came to a stop. —Locke Cole • t • c 00:05, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Closure

message: Editors might like to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics#Add ronna- and quetta- to units articles?. NebY (talk) 23:22, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  New prefixes 

message: The question arises at Bit and byte prefixes whether the JEDEC column should include the prefix tera. JEDEC defines the prefix giga as a 'multiplier equal to 1 073 741 824 (230 or K3, where K = 1024)', and similar (binary) definitions are provided for kilo and mega. On this basis I can see the case for including KB, MB and GB in the JEDEC column, but there is no equivalent entry for tera, and therefore no justification for extending the column beyond giga IMO. What do others think? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 01:01, 17 December 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: The discussion you refer to at Bits and bytes took place years ago, with Fnagaton and his band of socks, hell bent on disruption. The discussion has been centralized at bits for more than a year. It does not make sense to hold 3 separate discussions on the same question. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 08:37, 17 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tera and the JEDEC column