Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Zebibyte 2

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was nom withdrawn. Sr 13 07:36, 22 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Zebibyte[edit]

Unlike the other binary prefixes, the Zebibyte and Yobibyte appear not to exist; for instance, the description in http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html only goes as far as the exbibyte, as does the description of the standard in http://www.bipm.org/utils/common/pdf/si_brochure_8_en.pdf (the standard itself isn't available online). I can't find any reliable sources; Google reports 705 results for Zebibyte (for some reason increasing to 1450 when I exclude Wikipedia from the results), which is very low for a genuine unit (compare google:Exbibyte), so I conclude that these units are in fact non-notable neologisms (compared to the other units in the series, which are notable). There was an AfD at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Zebibyte previously, where consensus was to delete, but the page seems to have been recreated since and it's quite an old AfD. --ais523 13:51, 17 May 2007 (U T C)

Strong Keep: The SI prefixes are not asigned per-unit, they are SI-wide. Do we really search for a reference for something that is taught in high school? The reason why Exbibyte gives much-much more results is simple: Exbibyte is 2⁶⁰, which can be addressed by today's 64-bit process. Zebibyte and Yobibyte are artificial units, which are not required yet. They will be if and when 128-bit processors arrive. It is the same as Exbibyte was an artificial unit in times of 16 or 32-bit processors. Anyway, SI prefixes are not asigned per SI units, they are SI-wide: [1]. -- jsimlo^(talk|cont) 19:42, 17 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment: Is there a reliable source that would say that Zebibyte and Yobibyte are exceptions to the [2]? -- jsimlo^(talk|cont) 19:42, 17 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - Comment: I have found a reliable source directly on the IEC site [3]. -- jsimlo^(talk|cont) 19:57, 17 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    - The problem is the timing. The IEC's web page was published in 2007. At that point, Wikipedia and its mirrors had been spreading the idea of "zebibytes" for 3 years. In contrast, the articles published by the BIPM and NIST, hyperlinked to above, were published several years ago, and make no mention of "zebi-" or "yobi-" prefixes. Similarly, this document, published in 2002, states that Zi and Yi are not parts of ISO/IEC 60027-2. Also similarly, this letter, written in 1999 by A.J. Thor, the chairman of the standards committee that developed the standard, makes no mention of "zebi-" or "yobi-" either. This raises a significant possibility that the author of the IEC web page obtained the information not from the standard itself but from a GNU document or from Wikipedia. The fact that the BIPM, NIST, and the chairman of the standards committee itself all said one thing some years ago, before some Wikipedia editors had the bright idea that there was such a thing as a zebibyte, but an IEC web page says something else this year, needs to be looked into. Uncle G 02:39, 18 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      - I've looked into it. The explanation appears to be simple: The implication of this press release is that the IEC revised the standard in 2005, adding "zebi-" and "yobi-". Uncle G 08:51, 18 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
keep the article in SI zone would appear to be sufficient. DGG 00:40, 18 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. The existence of this article constitutes original research by synthesis. To wit: Wikipedia editors took the idea that "zebi-" and "yobi-" are IEC prefixes, and the notion that prefixes apply equally to all SI units, and synthesized these two sourced facts into the novel idea that there are such units as "zebibytes" and "yobibytes," even though no reliable sources have ever used such units. That is clearly original research according to our policies. *** Crotalus *** 04:16, 18 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment: Maybe so, but ever since (as Uncle G provided recently), there are now reliable sources, comming from the IEC. Though we might delete the article, because it was written as original research, we will have to create it again, because it is now well-sourced entry. The point is, the article seems to be okay, if we provide the reference ([4]) to it. The only problem that remains is, that there is no practical use for ZiB and YiB, because they are not addressable by today's 64-bit processes and they are not yet used by any external memory technology (afaik). -- jsimlo^(talk|cont) 12:55, 18 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Nom withdrawn, although the articles should be changed to make clear that the prefixes were added later and weren't invented at the same time as kibi (see Uncle G's source above). This is left open as at least one user wants deletion. (The current article shows the danger of original research, as it appears to be the result of a guess rather than actually checking sources, but a new version explaining the history would be preferable. I'm not sure why these are two separate articles, but that's not a matter for AfD to decide.) --ais523 14:12, 18 May 2007 (U T C)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.