Talk:Kilobyte

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KB or kB

It is curious that the article opens with mentioning the recommended "kB" for kilobyte, but shows "KB" later on without mentioning the 'conflict'. It is correct that "KB" appears, e.g. in Windows, though lower case 'k' is the standard way of representing "kilo", as in "kg" and "km". The article does not even suggest that a line of reasoning for the upper case K might be that a kilobyte is actually larger than 1000 bits... I would not go along with that but it's a not entirely illogical thought.

Kilobyte = kB and kilobit is kb.

Similarly, MB = megabyte and Mb - megabit. Dori1951 (talk) 10:16, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

According to Metric prefix, the official abbreviation for the kilo- prefix is "k". That said, some operating systems such as Windows (I just checked the file explorer in Windows 11) so use "KB". I don't know that it's too important, since "K" is not assigned to any metric prefix so there can be no confusion as to what "KB" means. I should have read the article before posting. "kB" is for the traditional metric prefix "kilo", meaning 1000 bytes. "KB" refers to 1024, or 2¹⁰, bytes. Both definitions are referred to as "kilobytes". - ZLEA _T\^C 19:48, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The symbol KB does not represent 1000 bytes, so it is not a kilobyte. Is this what you mean? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 21:22, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect to byte

I see that most of the prefix-byte articles where changed a couple years ago to re-direct to byte. IMO that's a good start. I suggest doing the same for kilobyte, megabyte, and gigabyte. Consistency is only a small reason. The main reason is that there is no value having an article that describes the metric prefixes for each unit of measure. The point of the prefixes is that they apply the same to all units of measure.

Yes, WRT units of information metric sizes are wonky. They are decimal based, but actual sizes are binary based. Yes, there are [[binary prefix]es. This is all covered in both units of information and [[binary prefix]. There is no point discussing that for each metric prefix of byte. It's the same information! Link KB, MB and GB to byte and have byte discuss the whole metric/binary thing.

One person commented that "Wikipedia has no problem with duplication and redundancy (as long as it's cited/refed)". But I do! For multiple reasons. Duplicated info tends to diverge over time which leads to inconsistent info and wrong info. It frustrates readers who find the duplicate info and think: this is silly; it's the same info as on that other page. One thing that I often think about WP and life in general: Just because something satisfies the rules does not mean it's a good or wise thing to do. Quality and reasonableness go beyond rules. Stevebroshar (talk) 12:47, 25 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]