Talk: Megabyte

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We need to establish a convention for Wikipedia about the word "megabyte" because of the conflicting definitions, or else we cannot ever use the word. Should we go with SI, i.e. 10⁶ bytes, and then use the new MiB for 2²⁰ bytes? AxelBoldt, Friday, April 26, 2002

If we accept this convention for the word "megabyte", we then should do the same for "kilobyte", i.e. 10³ bytes and kiB for 2¹⁰ bytes, too. I know children look rather confused when I explain to them that km is a 1000 m, while kB is 1024 bytes, because computers work better with binary numbers... Maria Renee Jenkins, Sunday, April 28, 2002

It is our task to follow standards, not ignore them. The plain reality is, majority usage for MB is the binary MB, and I ain't talking about a small majority either. The fact that "there are 1024 somethingorothers in a KB" is one of the very few things that Joe Average computer user really does understand. And where did this Wikipedia "policy" come from all of a sudden? It's a really bad idea. Tannin 13:18, 19 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I picked the "policy" since after my question above, nobody expressed an opinion either way for quite some time. The policy does not ignore standards, but follows them. I agree with your assessment of majority usage, but I don't think it is a large majority: the average computer user encounters megabytes in four contexts:

• hard drive capacity
• memory size
• file size
• bandwidth

Decimal megabytes are used in two of the four contexts. If you prefer we pick the opposite policy, then you need to invent a name for 10⁶ bytes, and you need to make the case why Wikipedia should ignore international standards in favor of this new name. AxelBoldt 17:14, 21 Sep 2003 (UTC)

These are all good reasons to not take sides by pretending that one of the two major meanings of the word doesn't exist or is wrong. Rather, when the difference matters, be explicit about the usage of the term. --Brion 17:49, 21 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I don't think that the sentence "This is the definition used in Wikipedia" pretends that the other meaning doesn't exist or is wrong; it just fixes a convention to avoid having to change many links from "megabyte" to "megabyte (i.e. 10⁶ bytes)" or "megabyte (i.e. 2²⁰ bytes)". But I can live with that as well. AxelBoldt 09:29, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Proclaiming one to be the only definition used here would seem to require tracking down all uses of the term, deciding for sure which meaning was meant (possibly requiring further research), and either leaving it or changing it to "mebibyte". Letting normal usage stand allows further clarification where details are known and relevant. --Brion 09:38, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)