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Proposed further action

As the editing block expiry approaches it would be nice to avoid another spate of edits and reverts on the main page. I propose that we create one or more sandboxes under the talk page here. Editors involved in the dispute are encouraged to copy the wikimarkup of any previous favorite version into a sandbox page and then revise it to try to arrive at a compromise which they feel will be more acceptable to the other side. These sandbox pages can be riddled with explanations of rationale for each edit, something that should not be done on the main page. Then we can discuss each proposed set of changes.

I am going out for the evening - lack of response from me should not be interpreted as agreement with anything. Or disagreement either. Jeh (talk) 00:32, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

  • Here's my verbiage:


  • P.S. Cutting to the heart of the matter of what we need to be on the lookout for in the Binary prefix article:

    What the IEC prefix advocates have repeatedly tried to do is write the article with subtle bits that are clearly intended to convey the notion that using the IEC prefixes to communicate to general-interest readerships is the “proper” thing to do because it is now an “internationally recognized standard.” That sort of mentality led to Wikipedia’s three-year-long fiasco where some of our articles used the prefixes and others did not. No one (not any publication) should use terminology that is wholly unfamiliar to its target audience; that is simple common sense from Technical Writing 101.

    Some 99.9 centiuno (“percent” for those barbarians out there who eschew another *standard* even though it is a swell idea that is SI-compliant) of Wikipedia’s readership is familiar with “4 GB of RAM” but their brains suffer an (!) interrupt when they see “4 GiB of RAM”. BTW, the rule of SI says we are also supposed to write “75 %” and not the “75%” the rest of the world uses because, according to the BIPM, here a space must always separate the value and the unit symbol. What is Wikipedia’s practice? Why… follow the practice the real world is familiar with and ignore a *standard* by the God of all standard bodies.

    Anything in the Binary Prefix that would lead a reader to believe that it is proper to use the IEC prefixes in papers and articles directed to a general-interest audience simply doesn’t belong in the article and amounts to POV-pushing. The only two venues I can think of where it would be appropriate to use the IEC prefixes today is in internal newsletters at the standard bodies that endorsed the IEC's proposal and club for the IEC proponents who still believe that Wikipedia’s three-year-long experiment using them in our articles did some good and somehow advanced the world-wide adoption of the IEC prefixes. Outside of these two venues, all the IEC prefixes do is confuse. Needless confusion is verboten in all proper technical writing; we don’t practice it on Wikipedia and we don’t slyly dupe our readership into doing so by proxy. Greg L (talk) 19:08, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Such bluff and bluster, Greg. I have come to realize that your hyperbole and ridicule is merely your own personal idea of a humorous style and should not be interpreted as the vehemently non-WP:AGF, non-WP:CIVIL, personal attack behavior that it appears to be. As a humorous flame I personally think it fails in being too over the top... the master flamers I remember from the glory days of Usenet would probably give it a C+, B- at best... but that's a very high standard and anyway, that's just me. Still... you know, the guy who acts the most confident of his own hand while loudly ridiculing his opponents' is usually the guy who's trying to buy the pot with a bluff. Of course, if you want to continue portraying yourself that way, that's your privilege (and is certainly fine with me). Jeh (talk) 22:24, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Hyperbole and ridicule: I’ll buy that. “Humorous flame”: I'll buy that too. “Bluff” and “bluster”: nope. No POV-pushing in this article please, Jeh, no matter how hard you try to come across as a wise voice of calm reason. I see through that. Truth is truth. All the POV-pushers managed to do when they had half of Wikipedia’s computer-related articles routinely using “MiB” in an “Oh… didn’t-cha know”-fashion was make Wikipedia look like a foolish playground for child futurists. And confuse our readership to boot. Fortunately, Wikipedia’s practice of routinely using “KiB” and “mebibyte” has been deprecated. Now the battle ground seems to have shifted to just “changing the facts” in an effort to somehow change the world. It is just as bad to induce others to use this unfamiliar terminology in their writings by slanting this article until it is no longer balanced. It’s just that simple. I’m done weighing in here now as I find your debate tactics shallow and transparent. Goodbye. Greg L (talk) 00:28, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
Well I'm sorry to hear that, Greg, because 1) I have never tried to portray myself as a "young" anything, 2) and you have seriously misjudged the situation. I told you quite a while ago I was dropping out of the push for IEC prefixes in MOSNUM. And you know something? In subsequent weeks, away from that battle, I came to realize that you're right in this point: WP should reflect common usage. And therefore MOSNUM should preclude the use of IEC prefixes as unfamiliar to readers -- except in articles like this, which are about binary prefixes. And no, I'm not trying to promote IEC prefixes through this page either. I simply think it's misrepresenting history to pretend that nothing in any JEDEC document ever could be construed as promoting them. Yet, I agree with the statements above (forgot who said them at this point) that the final impression with which the reader is left is that the IEC prefixes see virtually no use in the real world, even in JEDEC documents approved after the one under discussion here.
Oh, it was you! "Anything in the Binary Prefix that would lead a reader to believe that it is proper to use the IEC prefixes in papers and articles directed to a general-interest audience simply doesn’t belong in the article and amounts to POV-pushing." Well, I might soften that just a tad, but I basically agree.
Again, I ask you (and everyone) to look at what I've done so far in my sandbox and if you think it's going in the direction of not reflecting real world use or of promoting IEC prefixes, please suggest changes. And for that matter, if you can find anything I've written here that suggests I'm trying to somehow promote IEC prefixes elsewhere on WP, please point that out too. Hello? Jeh (talk) 00:42, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

is familiar with “4 GB of RAM” but their brains suffer an (!) interrupt when they see “4 GiB of RAM”

Throw in a series of interrupts for the average users when they see the capacities in windows in MB as in divided by 1.000.000 in other places in 1024^2 and a few places even 1024.000 that's kinda strange. However when they find out the capacities are in something strange as 1024^2, they brain goes through multiple series of interrupts with a few reboots. Most average people are comfortable with the SI system and wrongly think it also accounts for RAM. Further more they really don't care more than if it's enough for me and be done with it. They or classify it the SI way or dismiss it as a strange computerthinghie. --Thelennonorth (talk) 16:48, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Whether or not the IEC prefixes should be adopted, how users react to current prefix usage vs. IEC prefixes, etc., is not really the point of either this poll or the article. The article describes binary prefixes. It does not exist to argue for or against them. As such the article must accurately represent the actual history and current usage of binary prefixes as documented in WP:RS and must present a neutral point of view (WP:NPOV) on any matters of opinion that arise. Jeh (talk) 02:39, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Call for opinion poll regarding the proper reflection of JEDEC standard document

It is asserted that this version of the page Binary prefix reflects sufficiently in spirit the sources it quotes as to the status of the prefixes kilo, mega, giga, and the role of the binary prefixes in the document. Request to administrators: please keep the page protected for the duration of this poll. Kbrose (talk) 17:46, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

  • Agree Kbrose (talk) 17:46, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Agree with some comments: There should be no implications that the IEC prefixes are commonly used (there is none now). I would not object to possibly reducing the strength of “albeit endorsing binary prefixes as an alternative.” to something like “albeit presenting the IEC binary prefixes as an alternative.” Rwessel (talk) 22:22, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Disagree The article text violates WP:NPOV by advancing a minority view ahead of the actual stated position in the document and the actual real world position. There is a newer standards document, it clearly shows MB/GB being used in the binary sense and not using IEC prefixes.Fnagaton 00:16, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Agree with comments. Same comments as Rwessel's. Jeh (talk) 00:26, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Disagree. Volunteer editors on Wikipedia need to stop POV-pushing. For several years editors have tried to push the adoption of the IEC's proposal by writing our own articles on computer-related subjects so they used symbols and terminology like “MiB” and “kibibyte”, which the vast majority of our readership were unfamiliar with. It does no good if we provide a link to what it means if they aren't going to encounter such terminology anywhere else on this pale blue dot except for Wikipedia; all we did was confuse readers. Just because a standards body makes a proposal for a new standard, doesn't make it a “standard” until it is widely adopted. Note how we all use the percent (%) symbol? Because of the cumbersome nature of expressing dimensionless quantities like “ppm” per SI guidelines, the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) in 1999 advanced a standard for the adoption of the special name “uno” (symbol: U) to represent dimensionless quantities. Thus, instead of “75%,” it would be “75 centiuno,” or “75 cU.” The value 25 ppm would instead be written “25 µU.” Thank heavens we didn't have a cabal of wild Wikipedia editors mucking up our articles with centiuno because “it is vaunted and holy standard.” Not one single computer manufacturer in the world uses the IEC prefixes when communicating to a general-interest audience. Please decist with inane verbiage in this article about how the IEC’s idea is a “standard” and anyone who doesn’t follow the IEC's proposal is in violation of a directive from the United Federation of Planets. Some 99.9 cU of our readership hasn't heard of the standard bodies that have endorsed the IEC proposal and couldn't give a darn if they did. That (real-world practices by the computer industry) is what defines a standard. Greg L (talk) 01:34, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Disagree. The current JEDEC memory standards do not use the IEC binary prefixes. The kibibyte proponents have focused on one footnote in a 2002 JEDEC document that mentions that the IEC binary prefixes exist has proposed an "alternative system" for specifying memory size. How many editors here have ever read a JEDEC memory standard? JESD79-3D, the DDR3 SDRAM Standard, revised in September 2009 list memory sizes of 512MB, 1GB, 2GB, 4GB and 8GB. Note: JEDEC has redone their web site and access to the standards requires a free registration. The existing Wikipedia links to the standards are not working. Another inconvenient truth is that despite the IEEE 1541-2002 standard, the IEEE magazines have failed to adopt the IEC binary prefixes. A decade after the IEC proposed their binary prefixes it is safe to say it is a failed standard. -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 03:52, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Disagree: I find Swtpc's and Greg L's arguments compelling. Tony (talk) 03:56, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Comment: It would be more convenient for discussion if someone summarized the changes between the two (or how many?) proposed versions, instead of asking for opinion about one particular version. As an aside, let us remember that whether we like the prefixes or not has no bearing on what should be in this page. Shreevatsa (talk) 06:40, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Comment: Shreevatsa, the way the article was written gave undue weight to a minor footnote in a standards document first published in 1999 where a quote inside that footnote said "deprecated" when the main standard document clearly still has definitions to those terms and does not explicitly state deprecated. The article was written is such a way that put forward the unsupported theory that this meant IEC prefixes are meant to be used. All future standards documents published by the JEDEC, like the cite to the much more recent standards, shows the terms mega/giga etc being used and does not use IEC at all, this refutes the claims of "deprecation" and IEC being used. In summary, the article as written was against WP:NPOV and WP:UNDUE because it was supporting a minority point of view based on an assumption. Fnagaton 10:02, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Disagree. I was asked to come here with a 'fresh' layman's view of the situation, and must admit to find this geeky subject being talked about in the article in a very biased and intimidating manner. The last two sentences in the lead (viz: "This recommendation has since been endorsed or adopted by the international standards bodies, as well the major national standards organizations.[4][2][5][6]

    Despite this, the new binary prefixes have seen limited adoption in practice; the use of K (or k), M and G as binary multipliers when denoting the capacity of solid‑state memory like random access memory (RAM) remains ubiquitous industry practice,[7] and the JEDEC defines the prefixes kilo, mega, and giga in binary sense in its standard for semiconductor memories.[8]") strike me as being only virtual reality. To me, this is quite reminiscent of another failed standard - the Betamax episode. The crux of the situation is that there seems to me to be minimal coverage of the non-currency of the binary standard in the real world. Furthermore, it makes one wonder what those bods in the ivory tower of the standard-setting bodies are up to with this one. Their inability to reconcile the wishes of scientists with the general public's, and lack of understanding as to why the popular use of k and M have stuck in decimal mode, have resulted in numerous attempts to revise, recast, relaunch it -essentially backing each other up as if their credibility was at stake if kibi or Mibi failed. They do not seem to accept that scientist/mathematicians do not rule the universe, and that normal people overwhelmingly prefer an easy to comprehend notation. Ohconfucius ¡digame! 14:38, 30 January 2010 (UTC) Furthermore, Swtpc6800 has demonstrated that the article has been very selectively citing the text in standards, which in any event seem to have little following, as to make this article very misleading indeed. Ohconfucius ¡digame! 14:49, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

  • Disagree. For the reasons already stated above. --Marty Goldberg (talk) 15:11, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Let's stop: It seems this "opinion poll", which was about a particular sentence regarding JEDEC (thanks Fnagton for the summary), has degenerated (as usual) into an opinion poll about the IEC prefixes themselves. I need hardly point out that this is unproductive. To Ohconfucius: your "'fresh' layman's view" is indeed useful — what do you find unclear and confusing, and how could it be explained better? Let us remember that the purpose of the article is simply to describe these prefixes, how/why they arose, and what the status is. Shreevatsa (talk) 16:16, 30 January 2010 (UTC) (PS (offtopic): Observe that Ohconfucius seems to be saying that decimal units are easier to comprehend than binary units. It is my own opinion too, that novice users would be better served with simple powers of 10 as they are accustomed to, from elsewhere.)
  • Comment: The quoted footnote is from a standard produced by JEDEC Committee 10. JC-10 is tasked with standards for "Terms, Definitions, and Symbols" and has 18 documents for download. There are two very active JEDEC committees for semiconductor memory; JC-42 for "RAM Memory" and JC-45 for "Memory Modules". The computer chips and modules in your computer meet the standards created by these two committees. JC-42 has 127 and JC-45 has 39 documents available for download.

    The footnote is from a Terms and Definitions standard, JESD100B.01, written by JC-10 in 1999 with minor revisions in 2002. It is very much undue weight to use this footnote and ignore the 100+ standards written by JC-42 and JC-45. These standards use statements like "Module total capacity, in bytes: 256MB, 512MB, 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, etc." (JEDEC Standard No. 21C - Page 4.20.19-73 - November 2009)

    I was a member of JC-42 in the 1980s and early 1990s. The committee members are from the companies that produce the memory, the companies that design the memory into products and companies that create design tools for the first two groups. They are mostly engineers. -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 19:54, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

  • Comment: Shreevatsa is correct and I thank you for the analysis.

    I see nobody here trying to push binary prefixes onto the rest of Wikipedia, but some editors here are reacting as if that is the case. Not at all. This article is merely descriptive of binary prefixes, of their adoption by various standards bodies, and, yes, of their subsequent and current failure to be adopted by the relevant industries. As such it is appropriate to include many details about them, just as the Betamax article and for that matter the Flat earth article do regarding those respective topics. This is consistent with the second paragraph under WP:UNDUE, which is applicable here ("In articles specifically about a minority viewpoint...").

    I do agree that it is significant and deserving of significant mention, even emphasis, that JEDEC's own standards for specific products ignore the binary prefixes, as does every example seen so far of the products themselves, and virtually the entirety of the rest of the industry and market. This too would be consistent with WP:UNDUE.

    However I do not agree that mention of JEDEC's "Note 2" under their definition of "Mega" should be deleted entirely. In what is still the current version (December 2002) of their Terms, Definitions, and Letter Symbols for Microcomputers, Microprocessors, and Memory Integrated Circuits (JESD100B01.pdf) JEDEC 1) stated that they included the traditional definition of "Kilo", "Giga", and "Mega" "only to reflect common usage"; and 2) cited the IEEE's adopted standard of binary prefixes as at least an alternative. (And this is not in a "minor footnote" as Fnagaton repeatedly misrepresents, despite multiple corrections; it is in-line, part of the body of the definition for the term "Mega".)

    This was a significant event in the development of binary prefixes, and pretending it didn't happen is POV-pushing.

    But again, I agree that the present state of affairs must be represented. And even emphasized. In fact I think that juxtaposing JEDEC's apparent support of binary prefixes in that document with citation of their later documents that ignore binary prefixes entirely will only serve to highlight the fact that the binary prefixes are not seeing adoption outside of a tiny fraction of the market, and approximately zero adoption by the semicondctor industry, the most relevant part of the hardware market.

    Incidentally the JEDEC site is back up. You will have to register to fetch JESD100B01.pdf, but registration is free. The relevant "Note 2" is still at the top of page 8 and it most decidedly is not a footnote, Fnagaton's and now SWTPC68000's claims to the contrary. Jeh (talk) 20:15, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

  • Original Research: The IEC note was added to JESD100B by Fred Mann, a JEDEC consultant retired from Texas Instruments. Fred was the chairman a 30-year member of JC-10 and an enthusiastic proponent of IEC standards. He was a member of IEEE / IEC technical committees and an "evangelist" for the square box logic symbols recommended by IEC 60617-12. He convinced TI to switch to the IEC symbols in their TTL Data Books.[1] End Original Research: -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 21:35, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
That's really very interesting and significant, even if it is OR, maybe some supporting docs can be found. Your info that the "definitions group" at JEDEC is separate and much less active than the "memory standards group" is also very interesting. I hope you'll have time to look at least at my last edit tonight to my sandbox (it's the one that says "RED FLAG" in the edit summary) and see if this cite of the JEDEC "Terms" document still gives it undue weight. Jeh (talk) 09:13, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Correction: Fred Mann is the current JC-10 committee chairman but in 1999 was only a committee member. The "Solid State Times" was a JEDEC newsletter and the October 1999 issue has reports on the various committees. Mr. Mann was recognized for 30 years of service on JC-10. (The JEDEC web site currently lists Mann as chairman, 40 years on JC-10!) The newsletter list the JEDEC staff as 9 employees and 3 consultants, Mann is a consultant.

    Here are a couple of quotes from the newsletter on the brand new IEC binary prefixes. "JESD100 will also have a note added regarding the new IEC binary prefixes for storage capacity: kibi (210), mebi (220), and gibi (230)." "New projects will be to define the binary prefixes described above and to generate a JEDEC dictionary, which will use the terms of JEP120 and add the definitions." Given the date, that note was an announcement of the newly proposed IEC alternative system. It doesn't look like any work was done in the following decade to incorporate the IEC binary prefixes.

    The motivation of the JC-42 and JC-45 committee members is to help sell their companies products. If the new memory works with the latest microprocessors, motherboards and video cards everyone wins. The committees have done an outstanding job. You can go to a retail store to buy a memory upgrade for your computer and it works. The latest memory, DDR3 SDRAM, started to appear in products around 2007. The JEDEC DDR3 task group was formed in 2002. The memory committees don't seem to be concerned about binary verses SI prefixes; they correctly assume their customers just want working memory. -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 15:58, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

  • Actual world usage and adoption chicken and egg problems: First the content of this poll suggest it isn't about the JEDEC reference alone, a lot of content on this subject suggests a POV. I know/discovered it's POV because most average people know the K,M,G and so on from physics and assume they are in powers of ten. After all, a lot of computer related units are also dimensioned like this. Everyone that doesn't agree to this doesn't understands the unbiased logic behind it. The JEDEC reference seems to unveil the organizations or members willingness to use the IEEE/SI-prefixes, although nobody of the RAM makers wants to put that extra i in place. (They're lazy and cheap about this, let's call it what it is.) On the other hand they follow the standards. (If you haven't detected it already.) Now what do we call such kind of problems? Chicken and egg problems! There is one big problem for average and not so average people who also work with other context that's the ambiguity. Draining mental capacity about this ambiguity is retarded, nonsense, crap.
    Also the compatibility and computers are binary in nature arguments are utter nonsense because computers don't work with units, they convert the string to a whole number. It's us humans who have habit rott (you stuck in it).

    Short: JEDEC seems to want to include the correct GiB and stuff, but is afraid for backlash from manufacturers.

    (This analysis must be a disaster for your arguments Fnagaton, have a happy day!) --Thelennonorth (talk) 17:25, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
    • Comment: For the purpose of editing articles for WP, speculation or "analysis" re. why JEDEC, the memory makers, or anyone else do what they do is pointless. What matters is only what can backed up with reliable sources. If you can find a few WP:RSs to support your ideas here they could certainly be mentioned where JEDEC is mentioned in the main article. Jeh (talk) 22:55, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
    • Comment: On the contrary Thelennonorth the "analysis" is not a disaster for me. This is because the "analysis" is an assumption and not supported by reliable sources, it is original research WP:OR. The available reliable sources and evidence available disprove the "analysis" (assumptions) presented.Fnagaton 18:04, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Sandboxes

  • I have started my sandbox. So far I have edited only the first few sections. Note that the original text on that page is a copy of the main article as it appeared at that time, so diffs from that original version on the sandbox page forward will show all of my changes. Is there anything there that anyone disagrees with? Jeh (talk) 21:47, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
As of this version I can see it removes the undue weight given to the supposed deprecation, which is good. The article introduction is also more neutral than before and reflects the real world situation, which is also good. I'd like to make a couple of edits in your sandbox if I may? Fnagaton 01:42, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
Sure, have at it. Keep in mind I've only gotten partway through it and I see a lot of organizational changes in the near future, especially in the parts I haven't reached yet. And btw I appreciate your assumption of good faith on my part. Jeh (talk) 02:12, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
Or you could of course fork it and start one of your own. Jeh (talk) 03:10, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
Just a note: Please avoid writing in terms of "proponents of binary prefixes" and the like — there is no need to frame the article as a battle between proponents and opponents (especially when most people just don't care). Although it is evident here that the topic can arouse heated emotions in those who think others are doing something annoying ("hard drive manufacturers want to deceive us", or "hidebound conservatives want to perpetuate ambiguity", or "snooty standardists want to push unwanted prefixes on us"), we can try to do without all that in the article and just explain facts as clearly as possible. Another note: phrases like "almost no adoption" can be misleading, when there has been quite a bit of adoption (e.g. 0.01% of a large number is a long way from 0). [Besides the Linux kernel and the rest of the software mentioned, the OS I'm currently using (Mac OS X Snow Leopard) uses "GB" in the decimal sense in most places, and even command-line tools like 'df' show either GiB etc. (binary sense) or GB etc. (decimal sense) with '-h' and '-H' respectively.] Shreevatsa (talk) 03:35, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
Good point. That entire sentence could be dropped from the lede and the sentence preceding it combined into the first graf. I'll put that on hold until I see what Fnagaton has in mind. Jeh (talk) 04:09, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
...ok, I went ahead and made that change. Jeh (talk) 05:54, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
The point about MacOS showing "GB" in the decimal sense for hard drive sizes (as indeed Microsoft Windows does for comm speeds) is interesting. It is not so much a case of using binary prefixes as it is of using SI prefixes in a manner consistent with SI (and, yeah, with binary prefix recommendations). Similarly much of the "hard drive size confusion" that led to that stupid class action suit would be eliminated if either a) the hard drive makers started using binary divisors to quote their sizes, or b) OSs started using decimal divisors when they give hard drive and file sizes with GB or MB or whatever... the latter solution again is consistent with the spirit of the IEC recs but neither solution actually requires that "GiB" appear anywhere. And apparently MacOS X SL already does the latter? That's great. Now even more people will be convinced that when Windows shows a "500 GB" hard drive as "466 GB" that it is due to "Windows formatting overhead" - after all the drive doesn't show that way on a Mac! Haw! Jeh (talk) 04:09, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
The Apple site shows RAM as 2GB sans footnote, with harddrive space in GB but with a footnote. I will read through Jeh' sandbox in more detail tomorrow and have a go at editing. Today is my day of rest. :) Fnagaton 04:43, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
Ok, while I was waiting for you ;) I made a whole bunch more edits, that last (in terms of sequence in the article) being a comment at the top of the "usage in various applications" section. i.e. that's as far through the article as I've progressed.
I have also added a cite to the JEDEC "Terms, Definitions, ..." document, phrased in as neutrally descriptive language as I can come up with without just quoting the thing directly. Please note that I do NOT use the word "recommend", "approve", or even "suggest" in this context, nor do I quote the words "deprecated" or "confusing" even though they appear in the actual document. As I've said above, I feel that this is an important part of the history of binary prefixes. (though given SWTPC68000's information above, maybe a lot less important than I thought.)
BUT - I then immediately follow that with a bullet point noting that none of the actual memory standards published by JEDEC use the binary prefixes. You said you would find some refs for that when JEDEC.org came back up, so perhaps you can do that.
I similarly put the "however, IEEE's major publications don't do this" sentence, following the description of IEEE's adoption of IEC prefixes, in a bullet point.
My intention is that these two "bullets" call adequate attention to the (in my opinion regrettable, but as GregL said, facts are facts) non-adoption of the IEC prefixes even by groups that endorse them.
As Edward R. Murrow used to say, good night and good luck. :) I am strongly encouraged by the tone of civility and mutual cooperation that has developed here. Jeh (talk) 09:08, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
Jeh, I read your sandbox version and it is satisfactory. I feel the long list of standards organizations that have blessed the IEC prefix is a remnant of the push for Wikipedia to use the IEC prefixes. It should be balanced with a list of every IC and memory module maker that labels their parts as 512MB or 4GB.

The example software applications are not exactly main stream. That section could be drastically trimmed. -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 05:33, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Or perhaps the verbiage in both cases could simply be decreased and examples of software and hardware that don't use the IEC prefixes could be added. Also I think the article needs a section titled "failure of significant adoption" in which examples of non-use of IEC prefixes can be collected. This would go well with the ending paragraph in the lede (which I think is important for balance in the lede) and all the references for that paragraph in the lede could be moved to this new section.

I am certain some people will think I'm a turncoat for taking this position, since I was definitely on the pro-IEC side of the MOSNUM fight last year, but... even the most steadfast IEC proponent has to admit that the IEC prefixes have seen very little adoption, therefore that is the impression the reader needs to take away from this article. Jeh (talk) 09:35, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Here is a mainstream software that supports the IEC prefixes: it's called MediaInfo and not only is it used by users but also by other programs as a library. Using the following url you can see the many translations of the website, this is a good indicator of mainstream acceptance: [2]. Also notice the many packages for many Linux Distributions available, this is another good indicator of mainstream acceptance (means: it's used a lot). Let's have a look at on the sourceforge page, mymy 724 users have rated it! That's quite a lot of users.
Let's have a look at the downloads statistics: [3]. The binary version 0.7.27 (mediainfo-gui) shows from: 2010-01-03 number of downloads: 2,417,010 over two million downloads! The library form of it: libmediainfo0: version0.7.27 from: 2010-02-06 downloads: 14,492. This seems to suggest that at least one mainstream application that uses the SI/IEEE prefixes uniformly and fully.
Epic fail for you [User:Fnagaton|Fnag]]aton, didn't meant to, lol!
--Thelennonorth (talk) 18:00, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
I wouldn't call it "mainstream" given that Google only shows under a million hits for it using the quoted name - for comparison "Photoshop" gets about 134 million hits; now that's a mainstream app. However I'll certainly add it to the list. Jeh (talk) 03:25, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
  • Since no one else has been editing for a while I made the rest of the changes I've had percolating in my brain. I cleaned up a lot of the organization names, fixed the refs so they actually relate to the thing being claimed, found at least one new refs, etc. And I did a major reorg of the material following the "adoption" sections. A few visible comments remain. I think my changes strengthen the "binary prefixes have not achieved much success" message. Some of the URL refs need to be turned into full-fledged cites. Comments, please. Jeh (talk) 03:00, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Does anyone have any ideas for where the section giving prefix usage for various hardware types (and not a true binary prefix among 'em) could go? Since nothing there actually uses binary prefixes I'm not sure it belongs in this article. The question then becomes, "where would people be most likely to find it?" Jeh (talk) 20:01, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Applications that show GiB,MiB,KiB and so on. e.g. MediaInfo --Thelennonorth (talk) 18:07, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
One, I'm asking about the list of hardware types, not "applications." Two, we have found no hardware that is sold or described by its maker using the IEC prefixes so an article titled "Hardware sold using GiB,MiB,KiB and so on" would be empty. We want to find an article name -preferably an existing article name - where people would naturally look for this information. Jeh (talk) 03:25, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Go live?

Since no one has proposed any criticism or changes for many days now (and fixing up refs can just as well be done in main article space as in talkspace) I think it's about time to replace the main article text with the sandbox in its current state. The one remaining visible comment-to-editors can move to the main article's talk page. I'd leave the sandbox to preserve the edit history. Do I hear any objections? Jeh (talk) 20:01, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I guess not. See the next section. Jeh (talk) 08:07, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Definitions

Sorry for budding in late, but I was struck by the phrase: "no examples of hardware marketed using binary prefixes have been found". That revealed to me a fundamental misunderstanding about what a "binary prefix" (or a binary unit) is. For me a binary prefix is a prefix used to indicate a quantity based on powers of two. So indeed (almost) all solid state memory uses binary prefixes for its measure. It does not matter if that prefix is visibly binary or not. In the statement 512 MB of chip memory, the "M" is a binary prefix. Unfortunately there is also the same "M" that is used to qualify a 300 MB disk, which is a decimal (and SI) prefix. The essence is that there are two prefixes with the same appearance. I think it would be worthwhile to make a better separation of the concept of binary prefix and the representation of that prefix. That would also allow to avoid stating anywhere that an SI prefix is used in binary sense (which is nonsense: it is either binary or SI, never both). −Woodstone (talk) 07:46, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
An interesting point. But doesn't this sort of fly in the face of the terminology used throughout the article - starting with the second sentence? See also the NIST page. Jeh (talk) 08:14, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
The matter of what the term 'binary prefix' means, is no longer a subject of opinion ("For me a binary prefix is ...") but of definition. That's what standards do. All standards bodies have agreed to define the term binary prefix (or JEC binary prefix) as one of the prefixes kibi, mebi, etc. and (with the exception of JEDEC) have agreed to use the SI prefixes only in their standards-based meaning. As a result, the usage of mega, for example, for memory devices is simply wrong, it does not make the prefix a binary prefix when used in that function. A binary prefix *IS* the representation, there is no further representation of the concept, along the line of User:Woodstone's statement. What User:Woodstone calls the 'representation of that prefix' is the interpretation of the prefix, i.e. mega is a 'metric prefix used in binary interpretation', but it is not a binary prefix, no matter how it is used. Kbrose (talk) 14:55, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
To Jeh. Yes I agree it's quite fundamental throughout. I just had a flash of the cause of the many misunderstandings much later in the text.
To Kbrose. Not quite. The standards bodies do not define the term "binary prefix", they define symbols to be used to represent the various values of binary prefixes. There can be more than one representation for the same value prefix. And worse, as we see, these can even conflict. The M in "a 512 MB chip memory" is not a metric prefix used in any interpretation. It is the letter M used as a binary prefix. I agree with you that that usage violates most (or even almost all) current standards (in that respect one might say "it is wrong"), but it is nevertheless very common, much more common than the use of the formally correct 512 MiB. −Woodstone (talk) 15:17, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
I agree with you that the standards primarily define the prefixes, but they all label the group as the '(IEC) binary prefixes' which is what my statement entails, as such the term binary prefix is encumbered by the definitions. A representation is a syntax. The statement 'There can be more than one representation for the same value prefix.' is not proper, as the prefix is a representation. You mean to say: 'There can be more than one representation for the same value.' And those multiple representations are: mega, M, mebi, Mi. Of these only the mebi and Mi are binary prefixes. Mega and M, are simply prefixes, but used in some meaning, the meaning that has traditionally been understood for such devices, which creates the conflicts. We didn't have to specify what that meaning or interpretation was, as everyone knew. Whether they are metric depends on whether the user adheres to the metric system, and of course we know that common and traditional use did not. The term 'binary prefix' did not exist before IEC defined it, afaik. So to call the binary interpretation of mega as a use of a binary prefix, is wrong. Call it something else, but don't create even more confusion by calling that use now as a use of a 'binary prefix'. Today, when someone speaks of the binary prefixes, they mean the IEC definitions without having to explain. Kbrose (talk) 15:45, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
To Woodstone: The specific example you raised can be fixed by changing it to "no examples of hardware marketed using IEC prefixes have been found". A few others can be addressed similarly or by changing "binary prefix" to "unique binary prefix". To do much more than that goes well beyond documenting reality. Perhaps we could move the definition of "binary unit" and "decimal unit" to much earlier. Jeh (talk) 15:49, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

More to Woodstone: The point here is not whether it is proper to use an SI prefix in a binary sense. The point is to write the article using terms and referents that will be the most informative and least confusing. Whatever terms are used, the article needs three of them. Here are the ones the article uses now:

  1. "Decimal units": Refers to SI prefixes used for powers of 1000.
  2. "Binary units": Refers to the very common—though incorrect according to SI—practice of using the SI prefixes for powers of 1024. In the earlier part of the article, sometimes described as "SI prefixes used in the binary sense" or similar.
  3. "Binary prefixes": Refers to unique prefixes, recently invented and not borrowed from SI, used only for powers of 1024.

Regarding #3: Everyone in my recollection who has opined on the issue of use of IEC prefixes on Wikipedia, regardless of which side of that issue they're on, has been apparently fine with that usage. By extension I assume that just about everyone in the English-speaking world who has heard of the concept is fine with it too.

Now, you want to take the third term in that list, "binary prefixes", and use it to mean both referents #2 and #3.

Not only does this fly in the face of very common usage (and thereby confuse the reader), it also degrades "binary prefixes" to an ambiguous term, requiring disambiguation at every usage.

So that means we would need to find a new term for #3. What do you propose there? We can't use "IEC prefixes" throughout, because the IEC doesn't appear in the chronology until quite late; and anyway, other "binary prefixes" (definition 3) have been proposed besides the IEC's.

And introducing any brand new term will merely add confusion.

Note that the standards documents in question usually refer to "prefixes for binary multiples". See for example this NIST page. Note also the page title which shortens this to "binary prefixes." Now, you could argue that "prefixes for binary multiples" also applies to referent 2: When we use "MB" to mean 1,048,576 bytes, the "M" is a prefix and it refers to a binary multiple. But NIST seems to think that "prefixes for binary multiples" and for that matter "binary prefixes" refers only to unique, newly-created prefixes. I don't see a case for disagreeing and I certainly haven't seen a better idea. Jeh (talk) 17:33, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Well done Jeh! The ambiguous thinghie is very crucial to my opinion. (I'm for the cleaning of the meanings NO powers of two for G,M,K,T... because it's CONFUSING!!!) Haven't you found out Fnatic? The only reason memory makers don't change anything is because it costs them money to change something. They're lazyefficient(I hate that kind of efficiency-crap).Kbrose shut up! Your input isn't valuable or useful even worse it promotes confusion and ambiguity!!!!!!!--Thelennonorth (talk) 17:08, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
Thelennonorth: In this thread we are simply trying to find the way to best describe the existing "state of the prefixes" and the history that led up to that state. For purposes of brevity and clarity, I would like to find a succinct and unambiguous name for each usage pattern: One for SI prefixes with their standard SI meaning; one for the "borrowed" SI prefixes used to mean powers of 1024, and one for unique binary prefixes used to mean powers of 1024. (But I'll rewrite to avoid a need for such succinct names if I can't find a good set of them.) The fact that some people don't like existing usage patterns (such as the second one I just mentioned) doesn't excuse us from describing it, not when it's so common. It is true that existing usage can be ambiguous and confusing to some, but that does not mean the article can promote anyone's opinion on the matter. Even the "succinct names" have to be carefully chosen to be neutral. Jeh (talk) 03:25, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
Correction Kbrose, I have seen the term "binary prefix" being used to describe K/M/G etc with quantities in powers of two. The word "neologism" can be used to describe terms that are newly invented or have not yet entered common use, this would fit with IEC prefixes, for example.Fnagaton 20:09, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Good analysis Jeh. There is more. There are two abstract concepts:
  • "binary prefix" and
  • "decimal prefix"
and there are three (standardised) sets of symbols representing them:
  • SI prefix: k, M, G
  • IEC prefix: Ki, Mi, Gi
  • JEDEC prefix: K, M, G
Between the abstact concepts there is no overlap (if you discount the empty prefix for 2^0 or 10^0). The representation sets do have a partial overlap for at least M and G, and practically K as well.
Currently the article has the same name for the abstract "binary prefix" and the IEC prefix. That should be disentangled. How to sensibly map names? The IEC standard claims to define "prefixes for binary multiples" or shortened "binary prefixes". It does not preclude other standards to define more "binary prefixes". However, if you want to keep "binary prefixes" to mean the IEC set, we need another term for the abstract binary prefix (and for symmetry also for decimal). Could we make it: "binary use prefix"? Then we could call the standardised sets "decimal/binary/customary prefix" respectively. −Woodstone (talk) 01:19, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
I believe the sandbox currently goes some ways toward referring to your "abstract concepts" as "powers of 1000" vs. "powers of 1024" and similar. After all the same concepts apply even when no prefixes are used at all (as in "512×10242). This direction could well be continued. Note that there are at least two other "abstract concepts" mentioned in the History section: full precision and truncation, the latter e.g. 131K instead of 128K (actual value is 131,072).
Regarding representations: When one says "SI prefix" that unambiguously connotes a power of 1000. "IEC prefix" or "binary prefix", to me, connotes a power of 1024 - at least in most usage and in almost all discussion of this and related issues here on WP. Now you have an interesting talking point in that what you've called a "JEDEC prefix" - that is, a prefix borrowed from SI but used to mean a power of 1024 - is in a sense a binary prefix, but your talking point does fly in the face of common usage. The last round of "binary prefix wars" established very well that common usage and reader familiarity hold sway here.
So it seems to me that the only thing needing a new name is what you have called "JEDEC prefix" - a prefix borrowed from SI but used to mean a power of 1024. But I'm afraid I find "JEDEC prefix" misleading (most readers will not have heard of JEDEC; while for those who have read the article, the fact that they did at least acknowledge the IEC prefixes in their "terms and abbreviations" document muddies the waters there greatly). And I'm afraid I find "binary use prefix" not specific enough. By a very similar argument to yours and by strict interpretation of the words, Ki, Mi, etc., are "binary use prefixes."
"Customary prefixes" vary depending on what hardware we're talking about. If it's a hard drive, the "customary prefixes" are teh SI prefixes.
The same argument re. reader familiarity would seem to apply against any invented term.
Perhaps the relevant sections can be rephrased so that the awkward, but unambiguous, "SI prefixes used for a power of 1024" can be used... but won't have to be used in so many places as to be wearying. Jeh (talk) 08:06, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
So, I tried revamping the lede to make more clear what we're talking about. Please comment. Jeh (talk) 08:23, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
I have reread the current version head to tail. At section "1.3 Standardization of dual definitions" the IEC is oddly missing. Perhaps this whole section should be moved down to become the lead in a new "Standards" main section, in which the current "2 IEC prefixes" would become one subsection (and "1.6 Other" could be merged with "2.3 Dissent"). As you already indicate the section Hardware is rather remote from the subject and repeats a lot of what was said in history. Perhaps remove after a check to merge some points of interest in history.
Small remark: the text has twice "... have seen very little adoption". Writing "... have seen little adoption" is less POV and more encyclopedic.
Do you want me to give it a try in your sandbox? Or do you prefer to keep control yourself.−Woodstone (talk) 04:31, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
Re. "have seen very little adoption", good catch. Will fix. Also changed one of them from "adoption" to "use". The "very" nuance can be either established by the examples, or not.
IEC is missing from section 1.3 because in the time period described by 1.3 the IEC prefixes did not yet exist! Section 1.3 describes events and situations largely prior to the introduction of IEC prefixes. As 1.0's section title indicates, everything in section 1 is historical and is as close to chronological order as I could manage. Notice how it ends with section 1.6, which describes proposals for unique binary prefixes prior to IEC's; why would you talk about IEC's prefixes before that? And then 1.6 leads right into 2, "IEC prefixes".
Similarly, merging 1.6 into 2.3 would be a bad fit: Section 2 is similarly in chrono order, and 2.3, "Dissent", describes dissent that followed IEC.
I've rearranged 1.6 slightly to make this sequence more obvious. And I can see a slight reword that would make it reasonable to interchange 1.5 and 1.6. Or, perhaps we get rid of the 1.5 section break and just let the "deviation between..." section flow into that. That would work. I can see a few other permutations that would likely work also. In fact I'm now toward 1.6 (ends with "as sizes increased and so the discrepancy increased"), then 1.4 (details the discrepancy), then 1.5 (results of the discrepancy), with only slight rewords.
If you want to pursue your ideas please have at it - maybe I'm too close to it to see what you're getting at. But it sounds like a major reorganization. It would be better for change tracking if you just forked whatever version you like into your own sandbox. It's not that I want to "keep control" but I am still making improvements to this particular fork. What I think are improvements, anyway...
As for section 3.1.2 (all the hardware examples) it is material that should not be lost, but that doesn't mean it belongs here. We should find an existing article it belongs in, or create one. The only reason I haven't done the latter is that the only titles I can think of are far too unwieldy. There are related articles, Timeline of binary prefixes (which is really not solely about binary prefixes, IEC or otherwise) and Orders of magnitude (data), but neither is a good fit for the info in 3.1.2. Come to think of it, a lot of the "History" section here is a text version of excerpts from Timeline of binary prefixes.
My goal was originally to include JEDEC's citation/acknowledgement/whatever of IEC prefixes while still presenting an objective report from which the reader will draw conclusions that reflect reality and the article's sources. The article was in major need of reorg, though, so I went down that path. It seems to me that the problem of where the material in section 3.1.2 goes is a different problem. The article can always "go live" with that section as is, the issues with that section detailed on the talk page, and that stuff can be moved elsewhere later. Jeh (talk) 06:12, 12 February 2010 (UTC)


Ok, I've tried the 1.4, 5, 6 reararngement and furthermore promoted those into a top level of their own. How's that? Alas it throws all the later section numbers off, but you can always look at an earlier version re. those. Jeh (talk) 06:56, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

More to Woodstone: The more I think about it, the more I "get" that "binary prefixes" applies both to the IEC prefixes and to the common use of SI prefixes to mean powers of 1024. After all, the latter are most certainly prefixes, and their meanings are definitely integral powers of 2. And the lede here is not in disagreement. How about:

In the context of this article, the following terms are used with these meanings:

  • "SI prefix" means a prefix or abbreviation defined by SI and used in a manner consistent with SI, that is, as a power of 1000. Example: a "500 gigabyte" or "500 GB" hard drive contains ...
  • "SI-named binary prefix" refers to a prefix or abbreviation defined by SI, such as tera, giga, mega, kilo, T, G, M, or K, but used to indicate a power of 1024. Example: a "512 megabyte" or "512 MB" memory module contains ...
  • "IEC binary prefix" refers to one of the prefixes or abbreviations proposed and adopted by the IEC as unambiguously referring to a power of 1024. Example: ... a "512 mebibyte" or "512 MiB" memory module contains...

The article's current distinction between "binary unit" and "binary prefix" is just wrong. The correct dichotomy between "prefix" and "unit" is that "mega" is a prefix, while "megabyte" is a unit.

I'm beginning to think there is not a wonderful set of succinct terms. Even "SI prefixes" requires clarification in this context. If need be I'll just continue to rephrase everything to avoid all such terms. Jeh (talk) 03:25, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Great. I have been reading this discussion, and was about to "strongly" disagree with what you said above a few days ago about "binary prefix" referring only to the new ("IEC") prefixes, but now there's no need to bother. :-) Indeed, the problem of not having a good name for the prefixes is a recurring problem on this talk page. Suggested alternatives include "traditional prefixes", "common prefixes", and "Greek prefixes"; the article at one point used "traditional binary prefixes" and at another "SI prefix used in the binary sense". (See Talk:Binary_prefix/Archive_9#Basic_English, Talk:Binary_prefix/Archive_11#Not_SI_Prefixes_Prefices, Talk:Binary_prefix/Archive_11#We_need_a_name_for_the_SI_prefixes, Talk:Binary_prefix/Archive_12#Terminology, or Talk:Binary_prefix/Archive_13#SI_prefixes_are_never_binary for some discussions I remember, though they aren't very fruitful.) Also, for what it's worth, I strongly dislike calling the new prefixes "IEC prefixes", as IEC was neither the first organisation to propose them (that was IUPAC) nor the only one to adopt them (it is my impression that it was originally NIST who prodded IEEE/IEC in the first place). In the meantime, let us agree on the scope of the article: it is not to describe just the new prefixes, but to describe the binary usage (and even decimal usage, where prefixes coincide), so as to place the issue in its proper context and be maximally useful to the reader. BTW, in the spirit of "examples first!", I also propose more explicit examples in the leading paragraphs, say bullet points something like:
  1. SI prefixes: The use of kilo-, mega-, etc. to denote powers of 1000, e.g., 1 Mbps = 1000000 bit/s, 1 MHz = 1000000 Hz, and, as used for hard disks and DVDs, 1 MB = 1000000 B
  2. Traditional binary prefixes: The use of kilo-, mega-, etc. to denote powers of 1024, e.g., as used in most operating systems and software, 1 KB = 1024 B, 1 MB = 1048576 B
  3. New binary prefixes: The use of kibi-, mebi-, etc. to denote powers of 1024, e.g. 1 KiB = 1024 B, 1 MiB = 1048576 B

(Change wording and terminology as appropriate.) I find that giving examples first invariably improves the comprehension of readers. Regards, Shreevatsa (talk) 04:26, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Shreevatsa: I don't have much time tonight but briefly...
1. I lean away from "traditional binary prefixes" as it seems a little judgmental (some would say for, some against!).
2. I don't think "new binary prefixes" is sufficiently specific.
2a. I favor "IEC binary prefixes" or even just "IEC prefixes" as they were the first to actually adopt that proposal, and what they adopted is not entirely the same as what IUPAC proposed (the abbreviations are different).
3. The strength of the above disagreements is "mild." About 2.5 on a scale of 0 to 10.
4. I'm in complete agreement re. early examples. I would put the three definitions with their examples in the lede.
4a. Whatever is chosen for the article's use, these definitions could include "often referred to as SI-named binary prefixes" (for the second one) or "often called 'IEC prefixes'" (for the third, if it turns out not to use "IEC prefixes").
5. I'm in very strong agreement re. the purpose of the article. Jeh (talk) 05:56, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
  • I would like to say that I think after Jeh's hard work the changes should go live because they correct the point of view pushing in the current article and reflect the real world situation much better than before. Hence I think Jeh's changes improve the quality of the article. I think the quibbles about exact terminolgy should not hold back the changes to the live article and hard work Jeh has done. Fnagaton 18:08, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for the support, but I do think Shreevatsa and Woodstone have a point. Terminology should be unambiguous, consistent, and correctly informative throughout any article. It seems to me that "SI prefix" and "IEC prefix" work well I just can't find a succinct name for "SI-borrowed prefixes used for binary multiples" that I'm happy with. To me a "traditional prefix" is an SI prefix! Maybe "traditional binary prefix"? Should the other two be expanded to "SI decimal prefix" and "IEC binary prefix", so as to match the format? In the meantime I'm working more in the direction of just eliminating these usages altogether. On the other hand I do agree that it's high time to stop polishing the cannonball and shoot it! A day or two more at most. Jeh (talk) 19:03, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps "customary binary prefixes" is the best term. That is the qualification also regularly used for the USA/GB mile/pound system and considered neutral there. I agree that we can go live after making the naming consistent. Especially disturbing are the several occurrences where SI prefixes are said to be used in binary sense. Those are invalid statements. In such cases they are not SI prefixes, but customary prefixes. −Woodstone (talk) 23:13, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
I like it and have "rationalized" everything around that. This diff shows today's work and is not too bad to review in one lump. Note that I've removed the historical stuff about hard drives and ancient floppy types - but saved it; I will put it elsewhere, likely in the Hard disk drive and Floppy disk drive articles, possibly some of it in Timeline of binary prefixes if it isn't there already. Please comment. Jeh (talk) 04:13, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
The whole is much cleaner now. One phrase in the definitions section is left doubtful: "customary prefix ... originally defined by the SI..." should be " ... borrowed from the similarly named SI ...
Now I would like to give one more try to my earlier thoughts about rearrangement of some sections. Here the new proposal, using in brackets the current numbers in the sandbox. Basic idea is: (3) Problems (4) Solutions. The historic ordering you alluded to earlier is not strong.
3 (new header) Inconsistent use of units
3.1 (from 3.2) Deviation between powers of 1024 and powers of 1000
3.2 (from 3.3) Consumer confusion
3.3 (from 3.3.1) Legal disputes
4 (from 3) Unique binary prefixes
4.1 (from 3.1) Early suggestions
4.2 (from 4) IEC prefixes
(old 4.1 Specific units of IEC, leaves only in the right margin the one table "prefixes for bits and byte multiples")
4.3 (from 4.2) Other standards bodies and organizations
4.4 (from 4.3) Dissent
5 Current practice
−Woodstone (talk) 05:24, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
Agreed re. the phrase in the definitions section - fixed. I wonder if we really need the "terminology" section any earlier than the "current practice" section? I'm pretty certain that everything before that refers to the various systems descriptively rather than with a succint term. As for the rearrange, that really isn't much change at all and I do see what you're getting at. What would then be the out-of-historical-sequence placement of "early suggestions" can be fixed with a few case changes in that section (e.g. "computer scientists had recognized..."). I'm going to give it a rest for tonight, let others comment, and look at it again tomorrow or the next day. Jeh (talk) 05:35, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
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