Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers

Deprecating "Since"

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The advice in MOS:SINCE is contradictory in its treatment of the word "since". The goal of the section is to avoid phrases that are likely to go out of date, but it includes "since" in its recommended examples despite its time-dependency. Saying "She has been the director since 2010" indicates she is still the director, and so will go out of date. I propose the following edits. This leaves "since" as recommended only in the sentence specifically about current and future events, where the use should be flagged for time-dependency.

Except on pages that are inherently time-sensitive and updated regularly (e.g. the "Current events" portal), terms such as now, today, currently, present, to date, so far, soon, upcoming, ongoing, since and recently should usually be avoided in favor of phrases such as during the 2010s, since 2010, and in August 2020. Wording can usually be modified to remove the "now" perspective: not she is the current director but she became director on 1 January 2024; not 2010–present or since 2010 but beginning in 2010 or since 2010. Terms likely to go out of date include best known for, holds the record for, etc.[a] For current and future events, use phrases such as as of September 2024 or since the beginning of 2024 to signal the time-dependence of the information; use the template {{as of}} (or {{updated}}) in conjunction.

(See the back and forth recent edits to MOS:RELTIME for background.)--Trystan (talk) 15:20, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think this is necessary or advisable. Since by itself doesn't imply anything about the current state. She has been the director of X since 2010 implies that she still holds that position, but because of the tense, not because of the since. Since 2010 she was the director of X, but she resigned in 2022 after a controversial tweet is perfectly possible too. Since by itself is no more likely to go out of date than in, during, or until. Gawaon (talk) 15:54, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That sentence reads strangely to me. I might say Roosevelt was president from 1933 until his death or Roosevelt had been president since 1933 if speaking about a particular point in time during his presidency, but never Roosevelt was president since 1933 until his death. Is this something that varies between dialects?--Trystan (talk) 17:28, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Possibly. The Cambridge Dictionary defines since as: "from a particular time in the past until a later time, or until now". I wouldn't use since ... until either, but the example I gave feels natural enough to me. Let's see what others think. Gawaon (talk) 18:14, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There are far too many unproblematic usages of this phrasing to deprecate.

  • "France had colonial possessions, since the beginning of the 17th century"
  • "Since the passage of [the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949], the House of Commons of the United Kingdom has become the dominant branch of Parliament"
  • Austria "inhabited since at least the Paleolithic period"
  • "'to the City', the appellation Greek speakers used since the 11th century to colloquially refer to" Istanbul
  • Association football "continued to be played by women since the time of the first recorded women's games in the late 19th century"
  • Mathematics "until the 16th and 17th centuries, when algebra and infinitesimal calculus were introduced as new fields. Since then..."
  • Boats "have been used since prehistoric times"

Beside that, in my experience, discouragement of time-dependent phrasing often merely causes the recentism of an article to remain present but buried in circumlocutions, making it harder to find and keep up to date. It is the recentism, not the specific wordings used to express time relations, that we should prefer to avoid. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:48, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I do agree with Trystan that "since .. until" reads strangely, and I wouldn't use it. Gawaon, Cambridge's "until a later time" surprises me (but Cambridge sometimes does); it's not supported by examples or shared by Merriam-Webster or Chambers online, or the old print OED, or Collins in print or online, and for your example I'd automatically avoid since and prefer e.g. "Beginning in 2010" or "From 2010 she was .. but resigned". David, those are all good examples but of matters that will remain so indefinitely, rather than something we can reasonably expect to end soon if it hasn't already e.g. "since 1980, the finance manager has been ...". Still, I take your point about recentism and that deprecating "since" wouldn't achieve much. On the other hand, might it not be better to stop recommending it as MOS:SINCE does now? NebY (talk) 19:46, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I admit there's a fairly strong "until now" tendency in since I hadn't sufficiently appreciated above. As for no longer recommending it, I'm sceptical since I'd say that it still has the very clear advantage of precision compared to words like currently and recently which that section is chiefly (and reasonably) advises against. And ultimately, articles that make some kind of statements about the present are more useful than those that don't, even if the risk of going out of date is the price they pay. Since 2019 she has been the director [and we believe she still is] may become outdated, but it's more helpful than In 2019 she became the director, which leaves the reader in the dark about what might or might not have happened since. Plus the first wording can easily be updated to something like From 2019 to 2023 she was the director if somebody realizes it's no longer true, while the other wording is somewhat less easy to update. Anyway, I think both wordings are fine in general and it's not the place of the MOS to discourage one in favour of the other. Gawaon (talk) 20:18, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A vast number of articles about people, places and organisations, start Name is.... Eventually, all of these will be outdated. I don't know how this is squared with MOS:NOW, but I don't think that changing these would make articles better. I certainly agree that it is more useful to say she is the director than she became the director leaving readers to wonder then what? So while since does imply a statement that will become outdated, I don't think that avoiding it would make articles better. Mgp28 (talk) 10:01, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
...might it not be better to stop recommending it... I would agree with just taking out the two recommended examples above, without adding in the cautions against using it. Some form of updating to recognize that it does have a strong "until now" implication that places it in the class of phrases that may need to be checked for currency (unless very long timeframes are involved).
I wonder if the "until a later time" captures uses like "He had been president since 1981", where both points of time are in the past.--Trystan (talk) 22:15, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
One specific unproblematic class of usage is when writing about longer periods: in the lead of Chinese characters I've written that Following the Han, [i.e. late antiquity] regular script emerged as the result of cursive influence on clerical script, and has been the primary style used for characters since. I don't feel like I can omit the hypothetical future datedness of this statement without explicating a slightly bizarre-feeling 21st century somewhere. Remsense诉 19:52, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There is specific guidance endorsing relative expressions for long time periods. I'm not necessarily opposed to their use for shorter periods where it is warranted, just think the guideline shouldn't suggest that "since 2010" is immune to going out of date.--Trystan (talk) 22:25, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Notes

  1. ^ See also this July 2022 RfC.

Using circa template only at first occurence

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Is there a reason why the c. template should only be used at the first occurence in an article? To me, this rule seems weird, and it also just looks quite inconsistent. I can remember reading the guideline a long time ago, when it wasn't like that (I checked the version history and saw this has indeed not always been the case). I'm asking out of curiosity, because I can't think of any reason for it. Thanks in advance. Maxeto0910 (talk) 21:51, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Because it brings up a tooltip to explain what it means. It's annoying to see that at every occurrence. (Honestly I think it's a little annoying to have it at all, but the one occurrence I can live with.) --Trovatore (talk) 21:54, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The dotted underline? I understand that by comparison as I said below, but this may truly boil down to a matter of taste. Different strokes and all. Remsense诉 21:57, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
To be honest I don't really like the tooltip interface for Wikipedia at all. The little floating question mark does not seem to be that much used these days (it reminds me of — Encarta, I think? Something of that vintage anyway). I don't think Wikipedia should be proliferating UI elements, particularly ones that show up only occasionally.
And I don't really think "c." needs explanation. Give readers some credit.
That said, I can live with the one occurrence. --Trovatore (talk) 22:11, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's not a Wikipedia thing, it's an HTML thing. And I imagine it's distinctly less pleasant reading for those using screen readers to hear "see dot" each time. (One can disable the tooltip, but I still don't think it should be the guideline across the encyclopedia to do so.) Remsense诉 22:13, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, do they hear "circa" when the tooltip is used? Is that true for other tooltips as well? I wasn't aware of that. --Trovatore (talk) 22:17, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Quite! See also the MDN doc for the <abbr>...</abbr> tag. Remsense诉 22:20, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Also, not to say it's a replacement for this discussion, but since you dislike it, you could add
abbr { text-decoration: none; } to your common.css to hide them all forever. Remsense诉 22:53, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It seems a reasonable rule, consistent with the MOS on overlinking and saving both readers and editors from a repeatedly cluttered experience. NebY (talk) 22:18, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I also think this shouldn't be the guideline. I imagine the reason is that it's visually obtrusive à la one of the reasons against overlinking—but I simply don't think they're comparable, especially given accessibility reasons. Remsense诉 21:56, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, and I fact I wasn't aware that we are supposed to use it just once per article (or per section, maybe?). In my experience, it's most often used in captions, where it's quite reasonable to treat each caption as fairly independent of the rest of the article. I'd suggest writing something like "the use of the {{circa}} template is preferred over just c., at least for the first occurrence in a section or caption. At later occurrences, writing c. (followed by a non-breaking space) or using the {{circa}} template is preferred over ..." Gawaon (talk) 07:03, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Or actually, because of the accessibility issue discussed above, the best course of action (and also a very simply one) is surely to recommend always using the template. Gawaon (talk) 07:08, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, if it makes the text more accessible for people using screen readers, that seems a good thing. Also, while many or most readers may not need an explanation of what c. means, the benefit of helping those who do need an explanation seems to outweigh any harm from using the template, especially as the text decoration can be hidden if particularly disliked. Mgp28 (talk) 09:37, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree it's exceptionally annoying and should be deprecated in all circumstances. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:48, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Just a reminder that mobile users are unable to interact with tooltips at all. For me, {{circa}} yields c. No amount of peering directly at the character seems to activate the onHover action. Folly Mox (talk) 01:36, 4 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Does it do anything if you tap it? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:04, 4 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"[Binary prefixes] are generally not to be used"... What? Why?

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The section on units for bits and bytes states:

  • The IEC prefixes kibi- (symbol Ki), mebi- (Mi), gibi- (Gi), etc., are generally not to be used except:[a]
    • when the majority of cited sources on the article topic use IEC prefixes;
    • in a direct quote using the IEC prefixes;
    • when explicitly discussing the IEC prefixes; or
    • in articles in which both types of prefix are used with neither clearly primary, or in which converting all quantities to one or the other type would be misleading or lose necessary precision, or declaring the actual meaning of a unit on each use would be impractical.

And the rationale behind this is:

...consensus on Wikipedia in computing-related contexts favours the retention of the more familiar but ambiguous units KB, MB, GB, TB, PB, EB, etc. over use of unambiguous IEC binary prefixes. For detailed discussion, see WT:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)/Archive/Complete rewrite of Units of Measurements (June 2008).

I find this ridiculous. Binary units never had any justification for decimal prefixes. Why are we using outdated terminology? Continued usage of the outdated "decimal prefixes with binary meaning" means that the already bad ambiguity is continuously perpetuated, and simply adds to the confusion. While many people will say "it's unambiguous but let's not use it because people aren't familiar with it", it's exactly these people who are preventing others from becoming familiar with them.

A rule I firmly live by and tell others is analogous to Hanlon's razor, and that is: "Never assume unnecessary complexity when lack of familiarity will suffice."

Thank you. DASL51984 (Speak to me!) 14:04, 15 July 2024 (UTC) DASL51984 (Speak to me!) 14:04, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Unhide "Binary prefixes" the little "Archives" box at the top of this very page, and you'll see that this topic has its own little series of 17 (count 'em -- seventeen!) pages of archived discussion on this. If, after reviewing those, you feel you have new arguments to offer that might change the consensus, by all means let us know. EEng 14:39, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I've read through them. It was painful beyond recognition from the get-go, and by the end, I felt like I had lost all my brain cells.
Not only that, those discussions were all made back between 2005 and 2010, and the binary prefixes weren't well-known back then. Now, however, they are much more widely known, especially with MacOS and Linux having changed over a decade ago so that they display base-10 units but with base-10 meaning. (When will Windows catch up with reality??) DASL51984 (Speak to me!) 15:03, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I fear that archive collection only includes discussions up to 2010. Some more recent ones can be found by searching for "binary prefix".[1] NebY (talk) 15:07, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Totally agree with you. However I think you'll have difficulty shifting the consensus whilst the big desktop players such as Microsoft continue to use decimal prefixes. It always amuses me that some of the editors who are most determined to implement SI proceed to baulk at following the advice given by BIPM: "The International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM), which maintains the International System of Units (SI), expressly prohibits the use of SI prefixes to denote binary multiples, and recommends the use of the IEC prefixes as an alternative since units of information are not included in the SI". Martin of Sheffield (talk) 14:55, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You might want to read this case against deprecation of IEC prefixes. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 15:12, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That was an excellent read. Thanks so much for bringing it up! DASL51984 (Speak to me!) 16:51, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My own opinion, for what it is worth, is that the present wording of COMPUNITS reads like a Luddite's handbook, and is used by editor's to justify introducing ambiguity into articles where clarity and precision is needed. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 18:10, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Your impressions on Locke Cole's point of view? DASL51984 (Speak to me!) 11:00, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And the contra essay for your consideration: IEC units are bad. —Locke Cole • t • c 04:53, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Much of your "essay" is spent regurgitating the exact same rotten excuses that myself and so many other people are absolutely sick and tired of hearing. Over the years, I've heard both perspectives countless times and tried my best to understand both perspectives equally, but none of the arguments I've seen from those against IEC units make any sense at all. DASL51984 (Speak to me!) 10:49, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The arguments given in favor of these prefixes seem to fall into two categories: First, "they're better"; second, "they're accepted by standards bodies". Both of these arguments are irrelevant. What matters is whether they're used in the wild. Wikipedia follows; it doesn't lead. --Trovatore (talk) 23:41, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Why do you think those are the only 2 arguments? Sources choosing to disambiguate use IEC prefixes. Those preferring ambiguity do not. Wikipedia has parked itself firmly in the camp preferring ambiguity. Is that really what you want? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 00:12, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's a "they're better" argument, and is irrelevant. --Trovatore (talk) 00:56, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Nonsense. I made no claims about why the source disambiguate in this way, only pointed out the fact that they do. That is clearly about usage. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 10:45, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Non sequitur. It's the usage you think is better, which makes it a "they're better" argument -- and irrelevant. --Trovatore (talk) 18:59, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
FYI: Repeating an incorrect statement does not make it any less invalid. DASL51984 (Speak to me!) 19:45, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That is certainly true, but I made no incorrect statement, nor did Dondervogel identify one. --Trovatore (talk) 21:07, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You certainly did make a completely nonsensical statement, and at this point all you have is "it's irrelevant" with no substantiation. And, when you were confronted about it, you merely repeated it as if it helped your case at all (spoiler: it actually weakened it severely). DASL51984 (Speak to me!) 21:23, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Your statement that I was making a "they're better" argument is objectively incorrect. I was making a statement about usage and you know it. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 22:57, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not following. Yes, it's about usage, specifically the usage you think is better, because it's less ambiguous. I don't know what's subtle about this. That's a "they're better" argument, and I can't make any sense out of your denial of that obvious fact. --Trovatore (talk) 01:13, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia has parked itself firmly in the camp preferring ambiguity. No, Wikipedia has "parked itself firmly" in the camp that follows what the reliable sources used on our project use more often than not. When the day comes that that changes, Wikipedia will change along with it. But we're a long ways away from that day. —Locke Cole • t • c 00:22, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If certain particular ways of doing things are erroneous and can be proven to be objectively incorrect, they remain incorrect, even if everyone does things in an incorrect way. Therefore, by "park[ing] itself firmly inthe camp that follows what the[...] sources used on our project use more often than not", as a side effect Wikipedia will inadvertently park itself in the camp that causes unnecessary confusion if those "reliable sources" follow outdated or incorrect conventions.
Basically, the entire argument propagated by gatekeepers like you can be boiled down to "we know this way of doing things is confusing, but let's do things that way anyways even though we know it's wrong." Do you seriously not realise how nonsensical this is? DASL51984 (Speak to me!) 02:44, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia takes the world as it is, not as we'd like it to be. SI wants to change computing units. 90+% of the world has decided to ignore that "standard" in favor of what has existed for decades. WP:DUE, WP:VNT and WP:BUTITSTRUE may help you understand this better.
In the end, your issue isn't with Wikipedia. Your issue is with Microsoft, Apple, The New York Times, CNN, and practically every other major software/hardware vendor and media outlet in existence. If you want to change the world, go make a nicely formatted letter and mail it to each of them. I wish you the best of luck, genuinely. —Locke Cole • t • c 04:46, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • 90+% of the world has decided to ignore that "standard" in favor of what has existed for decades.
The way I see it, the real reasons are: (1) There are still a lot of old heads who won't admit that they were wrong and want to justify their laziness, (2) people think they sound funny (I think they sound weird too, but I accept that this helps reduce confusion), and (3) the IEC's patch for this bug was only rolled out fairly recently.
I think that, rather than being ignored, a lot of websites simply don't know about the binary prefixes, so they don't realise that the units are wrong. But trying to gatekeep information with this "it's better, but no one is familiar with it, so let's not do it" only adds to the problem. So my issue is actually with both sides. DASL51984 (Speak to me!) 10:34, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No, your issue is with the entities I listed for you. Wikipedia reacts to our sources, we don't guide our sources to what is "correct". And to continue my WP:NPA recommendation below, calling people "old heads" who are "lazy" is a form of personal attack. Calling editors who disagree with you "gatekeepers" is likewise an attack. I've held my tongue with this so far, but if you're here to change minds, calling people names is a sure fire way not to accomplish that. —Locke Cole • t • c 04:00, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(paraphrasing) "If things are incorrect, they're incorrect even if everyone does them that way." I actually agree with that. But the issue here is that's not Wikipedia's call. Wikipedia doesn't decide what's correct. That would be too much power; Wikipedia doesn't want it. You have to go convince the wider world. Then Wikipedia will change. --Trovatore (talk) 07:13, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Trovatore: Applying your reasoning, Wikipedia would use kbps (or Kbps? who knows), but MOSNUM prescribes kbit/s. The reason MOSNUM prefers kbit/s, Mbit/s, etc is to remove the ambiguity associated with kbps, Kbps, Mbps, mbps, MBps and countless other permutations used by the computer industry. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 07:29, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Haven't looked into that one. Maybe that decision was wrong. --Trovatore (talk) 19:00, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If that decision was wrong it should be re-opened. And while we're at it we should clearly revert to "kt" for knot and "nm" for nautical mile. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 19:15, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Very possibly. Not under discussion at the moment. --Trovatore (talk) 21:09, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Do you really think that using "Mbps" (which is more common than Mbit/s for the same reason that MB is more common than MiB) would make Wikipedia a better encyclopaedia? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 23:03, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The best encyclopedia uses the terminology most familiar to our readers. That typically means the terminology widely used in our sources. Using neologisms does nothing but confuse our readers and is a disservice to the experience we want to present. —Locke Cole • t • c 23:06, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yup. This is very much still in the realm of "what do our reliable sources use"? And the answer, as ever, is predominantly the classic units. When major news articles use these units with regularity and they're used in more sources overall will be when Wikipedia can finally transition, not before. —Locke Cole • t • c 00:20, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, "MiB" is more accurate than "MB" when the latter means 1,0242 bytes, but the question is what the majority of reliable sources use. As Trovatore says, Wikipedia doesn't decide what's correct in such matters, annoying though the inaccurate use is to many of us. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:29, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My day job is as an embedded programmer. As such, I spend a lot of time reading datasheets for individual chips. Overwhelmingly, these datasheets use 32 KB to represent 32×1024 bytes and 1 MB to represent 1024×1024 bytes while still using 20 MHz to represent 20×1000×1000 Hertz. And this is not just like 60:40% majority, it's like 95:5% majority. For chip datasheets (as used by the industry itself) the IEC prefixes are almost completely unused.
It was mentioned that the IEC prefixes were relatively new. In this fast paced industry, 1999 is practically ancient times. In 25 years the industry responded to them with "meh".
The IEC prefixes have exact 2.4% error in them. In most cases this is negligible. Do you really care if you have 34,359,738,368 bytes of flash storage or 32,000,000,000 ? Be aware that you probably don't know how much overhead the file system uses , so you might only have approx 28,000,000,000 bytes available to you, the user. Or maybe less. Or maybe more. 2.4% is neither here nor there for most people.
Then compare it to Mbits/s vs Mbps. One is 8 times the other (1 byte = 8 bits). That is a significant difference to almost everybody. Practically anybody can tell if something is 8 times faster/slower. And it is so, so easy to mix up the 2.
There are very few rules in WP that are absolute. Instead, we give a certain amount of weight to each, stack the opposing arguments against each other and then see which side dominates. Sometimes it will be which has the least confusion and sometimes it will be which has the most use in sources. For Mbits/s and Mbps, both are well attested in use but Mbps has a very high probability for confusion - so we go for clarity. For MiB vs MB, there is a low rate of usage in the sources for MiB but meagre consequences of confusion, so we favour MB.
For what it's worth, I'm OCD and vastly prefer unambiguous statements (which is an asset in my job). But even I recognise that the industry simply did not embrace IEC prefixes.  Stepho  talk  23:55, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
While 1 KiB is only 2.4% larger than 1 KB, this discrepancy is not insignificant, and quickly grows (you most likely already know this by now, but still). 1 MiB is 4.9% bigger than 1 MB, 1 GiB is 7.4% larger than 1 GB, and 1 TiB is 10% larger than 1 TB.
For so long, storage was expensive and had limited capacities, so back in the day the 2.4% really wasn't that big of a difference. But today, there are many old heads that still do things wrong and many legacy systems that are still in use which display incorrect units, so the adoption has been slow. However, the sooner people start fixing the problem instead of grasping at straws and coming up with excuses, like you are doing here, the better. DASL51984 (Speak to me!) 00:41, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oops, my mistake. That should have been 2.4% per K. So G would be 2.4 cubed, which is about 14%. Not quite insignificant but in today's era of cheap memory, not a big problem either (you mentioned yourself that back in the day storage was expensive, implying that today's is cheap).
"grasping at straws" ??? "excuses" ??? I gave reasoned points, showed how we weighed up the pros and cons and did not get involved in name calling. In response, you insult anybody with a different view, put your hands over your ears and went "la-la-la-la-la...".  Stepho  talk  01:23, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm totally on your side, but you need a math refresher. 1G (or Gi, depending on your political tastes) is (1.024)^3 ~= 1.074. It's got nothing to do with cubing 2.4, or whatever you were trying to say. EEng 04:54, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Egad - I'm on a roll but its downhill :( As pointed out, it should have been 1.024 cubed, not 2.4 cubed, to make approx 1.074 -> 7.4%. So much for my maths degree ...  Stepho  talk  05:08, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Every argument I've seen defending the erroneous "KB = 1024" is always an appeal to tradition, some other logical fallacy, or has more invalid points than "valid" ones.
I called out what you said as excuses because that's pretty much exactly what they were and your attempt at presenting arguments in favour of not using binary prefixes was anything but "reasoned". For example, your first paragraph about "no one uses them" is an appeal to popularity, since the use of decimal prefixes with binary meaning is objectively incorrect and inconsistent even if everyone does things that way.
And finally, calling out an improper use of units and calling out people who refuse to acknowledge that a wrong use of units is indeed wrong is not "insulting anyone with a different view". I don't know where you got that from. DASL51984 (Speak to me!) 01:36, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Try reading WP:NPA and seriously consider your next words carefully. —Locke Cole • t • c 02:03, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
How does this fall under NPA? DASL51984 (Speak to me!) 02:27, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
DASL51984@: Your argument is mostly based around WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. As already pointed out, WP is not the place to right great wrongs but follows what the majority of sources say. The majority of sources said "meh" about IEC prefixes.
You said that we are just following tradition. Nope, we are following what the real world uses. If the world changes then we will follow. The world hasn't changed yet. Ask again in 5 years.
Re NPA: "the entire argument propagated by gatekeepers like you" and "the sooner people start fixing the problem instead of grasping at straws and coming up with excuses, like you are doing here, the better". Calling those of the opposite view as gatekeepers and grasping at straws could be considered as a (mild) personal attack. Or at least an ad hominem attack. We prefer that you address the issues rather than (mild) name calling.
We have presented our view as using the same units used in the real world and that the argument of righting great wrongs does not hold water here. These 2 principles are deeply ingrained in WP. Your arguments fly in the face of these 2 principles. You must either find new arguments or be prepared to overturn these 2 principles.  Stepho  talk  02:34, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for (finally) not being unreasonable.
I didn't mean to insult anyone, but I code and work with computer software and hardware on a regular basis, and things like this matter a lot to me. The whole 1000 vs. 1024 war was silly to me when I first got interested in coding and computing back in grade school, and it's still silly to this day. DASL51984 (Speak to me!) 02:53, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Mbps is an abbreviation for "megabit per second", the unit symbol for which is Mbit/s. There is no factor of 8. Are you confusing it with MBps? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 13:32, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I didn't say it properly. I meant that Mbits/s is very clear but Mbps could easily be confused with MBps, which is what I meant by an 8 times confusion.  Stepho  talk  20:40, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Stepho, when you said earlier that you're on a roll, was it this kind of roll ?EEng 21:35, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Certainly feels like it sometimes.  Stepho  talk  23:06, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ah yes, that makes sense. You seem to be acknowledging that Wikipedia's use of Mbit/s is justified because it is a less confusing symbol than the abbreviation used by the popular press and much of the computer industry (Mbps). Correct? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 05:12, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not quite. Mbits/s and Mbps are both well attested in the real world (I spend a lot of time programming communication protocols) but WP uses Mbits/s because MBps and Mbps are easily confused and the consequences are huge.
Whereas MiB is not used much in the real world and the consequences of confusing MiB with MB is small.  Stepho  talk  00:22, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I understand the nuance, but I did not phrase my question carefully enough, so let me explain better. Others on this page are arguing that the inherent value of a unit symbol is irrelevant, and that the ONLY thing that matters is how often that unit symbol is used. Your position differs from that by acknowledging that the value of the unit symbol (in this case its value in disambiguating the factor 8) is also a consideration, in addition to usage. I sense no dogmatic principle in your reasoning that ONLY the frequency of usage matters, and I find that helpful. That was my point. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 06:17, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I try to take a balanced viewed instead of looking only at a single point to the exclusion of all else - a distinctly unpopular view ;)  Stepho  talk  09:15, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Without wishing to put words in your mouth (please correct me if I take this too far), I imagine you apply a similar reasoning to the choice of nmi for nautical mile (avoiding confusion with the nanometre) and kt for knot (avoiding confusion with the kilotonne). Just as well no one ever uses the dB or MB ;-) Dondervogel 2 (talk) 09:27, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No, that would be taking my point too far. KiloTon and knot are unlikely to be mistaken due to context - weight vs speed. Nautical mile and nanometre are both distances but the difference is so big that wrong usage would also be obvious.  Stepho  talk  23:56, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Notes

  1. ^ Wikipedia follows common practice regarding bytes and other data traditionally quantified using binary prefixes (e.g. mega- and kilo-, meaning 220 and 210 respectively) and their unit symbols (e.g. MB and KB) for RAM and decimal prefixes for most other uses. Despite the IEC's 1998 international standard creating several new binary prefixes (e.g. mebi-, kibi-, etc.) to distinguish the meaning of the decimal SI prefixes (e.g. mega- and kilo-, meaning 106 and 103 respectively) from the binary ones, and the subsequent incorporation of these IEC prefixes into the IEC 80000-13, consensus on Wikipedia in computing-related contexts favours the retention of the more familiar but ambiguous units KB, MB, GB, TB, PB, EB, etc. over use of unambiguous IEC binary prefixes. For detailed discussion, see WT:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)/Archive/Complete rewrite of Units of Measurements (June 2008).

Use of metric prefixes

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As someone with high functioning autism I find it all nice, consistent and straightforward to use the whole range of metric prefixes (see article on those) at every opportunity (even instead of non-SI units even specialists tend to use), this to me (forgive me for any slight inaccuracies here these are to rounded figures and are off the top of my head ), the mass of an electron is 9.109 qg, the mass of a proton is 1.69 yg the electronic charge is 160 zC, the the dialect of a proton is about 1 fm, the depth of the world’s planned deepest swimming pool would be 5 dam, the height of the Eiffel Tower is 3.24 hm, Everest is 8.863 km high, the earth has a circumference of 40 Mm and a surface area of 510 Mm2, the volume of water in the Pacific Ocean is about 1 Mm3, the distance to the Moon is 384 Mm, the distance to the Sun is 150 Gm, the distance from the Sun to Saturn is 1.4 Tm, the distance to Alpha Centauri is 40 Pm, the distance to Betelgeuse is roughly 3 Em, the diameter of the Milky Way is 1 Zm with Andromeda 21 Zm away, the diameter of the Observable Universe is a Comoving 880 Ym, the mass of the Earth is 5.98 Rg and the mass of Jupiter is about 2 Qg. To me, it would be much more consistent and straightforward if all Wikipedia articles used the full range of metric prefixes to get people using them more and thus making more sense to me. Perhaps that change could be made, with people being directed to the metric prefixes page as needed to help them understand the wider range of prefixes. From the age of 12 I started to use the full range of prefixes them known to me in my schoolwork, and at virtual astronomy society I tend to butt in with the distance or mass expressed that way instead of earth masses or light years, for example. Avenues2009 (talk) 09:13, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

While I'm in favour of primarily using SI units whenever reasonable, we chiefly use the units that are most common in any given area, so general custom needs to change first before we follow suite. Hence we'll continue to use units like solar mass and astronomical unit in astronomy, nautical miles and knots in marine navigation (which fit the Earth's coordinate system better than SI units), and even feet for aviation. Also I'm pretty sure that years and centuries will remain more popular for expressing longer periods of time than mega- and gigaseconds, charming as the latter might theoretically be. Gawaon (talk) 09:44, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Could both then be provided (including use of exotic prefixes in case of one) so not only is everybody else satisfied, so am I. Perhaps this could be done by always providing the SI with the exotic prefix in brackets (you can tell I am British here). Even if SI is already used but with a common prefix, perhaps the more exotic prefix could be provided in brackets. That would again satisfy all round. Avenues2009 (talk) 10:03, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Template:Convert exists and can be used for such purposes. However, in less obvious cases or if you are reverted, it might be best to open a discussion on the talk page of the article in question. Gawaon (talk) 10:28, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
How does one use that to do two different conversions at the same time - eg thousands of kilometres to both miles and megametres, or astronomical units to both millions of kilometres and gigametres? Avenues2009 (talk) 11:24, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
One conversion should be enough, and units like mega- or gigametres that don't see any real world usage shouldn't be used at all. Gawaon (talk) 11:29, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But that’s the whole point of me having started this discussion. With my high functioning autism, to me they should be used everywhere because that means everything is all straightforward and consistent. That’s why I wanted to be able to do two conversions at the same time, to bring them into use as well as what others prefer. Avenues2009 (talk) 11:57, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Your high functioning autism doesn't mean the world will magically take the shape you would like it to take. Wikipedia is consensus-driving, and there is no consensus for the use of exotic SI combinations such as gigametres or megaseconds, even though they are theoretically valid. Gawaon (talk) 12:06, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And it is much easier to say a measurement when using all the prefixes not just the common ones. Avenues2009 (talk) 11:58, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I echo the other concerns mentioned in other replies. I'll add that from the time the metric system was created about 7 Gs ago until the introduction of the International System of Units (SI) about 2 Gs ago a variety of ad hoc units were added, such as mmHg. Also, some of the original prefixes were found to be inconvenient. So SI recommends that hecto-, deka-, deci-, and centi- not be used, and only coherent units be used. However, the prefixes for multiplication or division by 10 and 100 are still used in entrenched cases, such as centimeter or decibel. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:22, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Don’t you mean 7 Gs and 2 Gs? Avenues2009 (talk) 13:32, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You're right, I fixed it.
It is not Wikipedia's job to try to promote metric prefixes in contexts where they are not used in the wider world, even if some individuals do use them in those circumstances. Most scientists in many fields - including, since you raise it, astronomy - don't use them - particularly the more extreme ones - because they are obscure and serve to confuse rather than enlighten.
I'd also note that even the largest metric prefixes aren't large enough for some astronomical data. I note that you fail to mention the mass of the sun, which is around 2 (non-existent-prefix)-grams. And there's plenty of of masses you might want to express that are many orders of magnitude larger than the mass of the sun. Kahastok talk 15:20, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps a parallel example might be useful. I recently learnt a major reason why Americans keep rejecting the metric system. A major benefit of metric is the use of prefixes makes it trivial to convert from mm, to m, to km, and so-on. Except Americans are so used to the imperial (customary) system making it so hard to convert between inches, feet, yards and miles that they simple learn to not convert between units. So one of metric's major advantages is simply a non-issue to them.
The parallel here is that people use solar masses, AU, light-year, etc and just never convert them to other units. Only people writing software for things like interplanetary probes would ever do such conversions to kg, m, etc and they don't need Wikipedia for this info. So converting them to metric is not useful and the clutter it causes makes articles harder to read.  Stepho  talk  03:18, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For me, articles would not be too crowded with such conversions thrown in. To me, they would be quite useful, as well as educational for all those who live between 5 and 12 Mm away from me in the US. Avenues2009 (talk) 06:47, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The larger figure being included to encompass Hawaii by the way. Avenues2009 (talk) 06:50, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Do you see what I mean there? I live in the UK, hence the distance I gave. Avenues2009 (talk) 22:30, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't. Gawaon (talk) 05:54, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Therefore such unit conversions would be quite useful and not make articles too crowded, because then you might. It would help Americans understand how much more useful the metric system would be for them. Avenues2009 (talk) 06:55, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Nobody argues against the usefulness of commonly used metric units. However, Mm (as opposed to mm) is not one of them. Gawaon (talk) 07:05, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Er, I'm American, and the ease of converting metric units is refreshing compared to trying to remember how many ounces are in a pound or a gallon, and I think makes metric quite attractive. We have to convert between customary units (we don't use imperial units since that system came after US independence) frequently, and to do that I either ask a smart speaker or look it up online if I can't remember the conversion factor. Generally, I think Americans find the metric system difficult to learn simply because they (outside of STEM fields and certain industries) don't use it every day and have no intuitive sense of what various quantities (like 100 km or 10 degrees C) mean. I think trying to add more prefixes into common use like gigameters or whatnot, would just mean more to memorize about the metric system, and thus make it slightly harder to learn, not easier. -- Beland (talk) 07:05, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn’t take much to memorise 24 prefixes. Avenues2009 (talk) 07:38, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's why I say "slightly harder" and not "a lot harder". I'm an American who does have a feel for what a kilometer is, and if you start speaking in megameters, you'll just make me do extra mental work to convert back to thousands of kilometers. If you start speaking in megaseconds, I and my European friends are probably just going to stop listening, because it's too much work to figure out what that means in years, which is the conventional and intuitive unit for long time. I'm an enthusiastic promoter of the metric system and use it whenever feasible, but anything above "tera" or below "milli" I'd have to look up.
I think a much better way to get Americans to learn the metric system (and one which already has broad consensus) is to make sure that every time a US unit is given on Wikipedia, there's a metric conversion right there. Since Wikipedia is consulted so frequently, I expect this would increase American exposure to the metric system significantly, since it rarely comes up in the news or in everyday life (unless you work in STEM or a few other narrow areas). Eventually I hope people would generate an intuition for metric units by sheer exposure.
This is currently required by MOS:CONVERSIONS, but there are hundreds of thousands of instances violating the guideline. I am actually working on adding conversions in my spare time, using moss to scan database dumps and JWB to quickly add in {{convert}}. I have tens of thousands of articles in a queue to be fixed for feet and inches alone, if you'd be interested in helping out. -- Beland (talk) 08:07, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If you read the article on metric prefixes, there is a hint that at some stage in the future, double prefixes may return, with the restriction that the last one be quecto or quetta, but that has not happened her. That problem would be solved if they did return. Avenues2009 (talk) 06:23, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So they can’t be used before that time if it ever happens. Avenues2009 (talk) 06:24, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
How is it more convenient to keep swapping prefixes instead of just using a single unit with scientific notation if needed? I'd much rather compare 0.04 km with 2000 km than compare 40 m with 2 Mm. Double sharp (talk) 09:17, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well I find it more convenient, it’s easier to say the measurement for a start if the prefixes are used. And instead of saying 40 m, you’d say 4 dam. Avenues2009 (talk) 10:03, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Car power is expressed in 3 different units in Wikipedia articles, kW, hp and PS, so having 3 different units for astronomical distance could work. Some people do use these prefixes, look at the computer world, Gigabyte and PB are very common. When people see this it might open their mind to look into this unit and learn something, which after all is the reason for Wikipedia. Avi8tor (talk) 15:36, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What a good idea. It would be great if that was implemented not only in astronomy but other fields as well. Avenues2009 (talk) 16:41, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Different countries have different definitions of horsepower, including the German PS. I think the general trend is that kW is replacing horsepower in international commerce (and using kW as primary is now mandatory in the EU). It doesn't seem useful to encourage anyone to learn about horsepower or start using it when they otherwise wouldn't.
If you meant to reply to the question about light-years, this is the wrong section. -- Beland (talk) 17:02, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, when you say "3 different units for astronomical distance", you mean e.g. AU, km, and Gm or something? Having two meter-based conversions would seem to me to be adding clutter because a.) those conversions are easy for readers to do just by moving the decimal place, and b.) Gm is virtually unused, and thus not useful for conveying information about the subject of the article. The only reason to have it there would be to teach readers about obscure units in the metric system, which is not the point of Wikipedia articles except for Metric system and Metric prefix and friends. -- Beland (talk) 17:09, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Then let’s have two metre-based conversions then, for that very purpose of teaching readers those obscure units. And let’s do it for distances beyond the solar system as well. Avenues2009 (talk) 17:13, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia is not a textbook. Teaching is not our primary task, and we don't have a right to decide who should be taught what. Gawaon (talk) 17:18, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, and we convert to alternative units to communicate quantities to people accustomed to this or that set of units, not to train people in the use of an unfamiliar one. NebY (talk) 17:36, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But the more the unfamiliar ones were taught, the more they might catch on and become familiar. Avenues2009 (talk) 18:24, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS says, Wikipedia is intentionally "behind the curve"; I think it would happily adopt such a change if it had already substantially caught on, but does not itself want to lead that type of movement. Sorry that's unsatisfying, given that I'm sure using the obscure units makes you and the original designers of the system happier than watching people use the metric system as they actually do. 8) -- Beland (talk) 19:01, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I was thinking more AU or light years, miles and Gm or Pm for the 3 units. I've found that in general citizens of different countries use what they are fed, miles in the UK and USA and km elsewhere. The same with every other unit. The British empire used stones for weight, now only the UK used stones. It appears most younger people outside the UK have never heard of stones even though their mother tongue is English. Avi8tor (talk) 19:36, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Currently, it's not required to convert into miles for STEM articles. In many cases we don't, and in some cases we're actively removing them. -- Beland (talk) 19:57, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well for astronomy you could instead convert into Mm,Gm, Tm, Pm, Em, Zm or Ym as the case may be, or for the Comoving circumference of the observable universe at least, Rm. That would make a lot more sense than miles. Avenues2009 (talk) 20:25, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And the same with mass. It would make sense to have both kilograms, and the relevant prefix that would apply to a given value. Avenues2009 (talk) 21:34, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And for large objects like stars, galaxies etc the second figure would be the number of Qg until such time as double prefixes are allowed again. Avenues2009 (talk) 21:40, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Of the distance units mentioned, the units people actually use are AU/light years and kilometers. Ym might make more sense to you, but they don't make sense to hardly anyone else, and Wikipedia's goal is to communicate to as broad an audience as possible. -- Beland (talk) 22:58, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hence the suggestion of converting to both km and a more appropriate prefix so things make sense to me as well as to others. Avenues2009 (talk) 06:09, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
When I say people use kilometers, I mean people use kilometers, not Ym. How many people do you think actually use Ym or would understand them on sight? -- Beland (talk) 15:41, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I’ve met one or two actually. Avenues2009 (talk) 19:20, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And they even understand what it stands for - yottametres. Avenues2009 (talk) 19:21, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's not really enough information to get a handle on the overall ratio of English speakers. How many people have you met who would not understand Ym? What is your sampling bias compared to English Wikipedia readership? -- Beland (talk) 22:06, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The sampling size is the groups I belong to, including astronomy society, and all my friends. But it really does make sense to use the prefix just below a value. It makes measurements much easier to write or to say. Avenues2009 (talk) 22:14, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My astronomy society do not seem to understand Mm to Rm (megametres to ronnametres) so if these changes were implemented on Wikipedia that I am here asking for, we’d teach them. They’re technical and brainy enough, there are several of my fellow PhD holders among them, as well as a few teachers, so it would be very easy for them to learn and adopt any missing prefixes out of the 24 available. Avenues2009 (talk) 22:17, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If even a specialty audience needs to be taught how to read the units, the vast majority of readers will certainly not know them on sight. We've already established it's a non-starter if readers don't already understand the units Wikipedia would be using across tens of thousands of articles. -- Beland (talk) 23:15, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The goal is to communicate clearly with as wide a readership as possible. Do you believe that there are people who understand what a Ym is but don't understand what a km is? What then is the advantage of adding measurements in Ym (and the other obscure units you've proposed), other than satisfying your own personal sense of consistency? CodeTalker (talk) 22:12, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It would satisfy my desire for consistency. Having the obscure unit included besides km (or kg) in a double conversion, would do that as well as be educational and informative that there are many other prefixes people can use as well. Avenues2009 (talk) 22:20, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Although people can read the article on prefixes if they want to, they would be more likely to learn about them if they saw them in use, which such double conversions would enable. Avenues2009 (talk) 22:26, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You're just repeating the same arguments you've already made and which have already been objected to. I could make the same objections again, but we're just going in circles, so it seems there's no point continuing this thread. -- Beland (talk) 23:18, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The Manual of Style does ask for things to be in SI where possible and for unfamiliar units to be explained. So that is why I would like to see the full range of prefixes brought in using double conversions. Avenues2009 (talk) 07:55, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I thought double conversions would help explain them. Anyway, that is my view. Avenues2009 (talk) 09:43, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The MOS says that because unfamiliar units that must be used to explain the subject need to be explained. It's not asking to use unfamiliar units on purpose. Double conversions would add clutter which would make it slightly more difficult for readers to learn about the subject of articles. -- Beland (talk) 14:41, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ok. Avenues2009 (talk) 18:40, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I run with that, although I still feel that if a metric prefix has been devised, one might as well use it because that is what it was devised for. Avenues2009 (talk) 08:49, 28 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No, some were devised merely for completeness, at a time when there was no foreseeable use for them. For example, it appears that while ronna (10^27) and quetta (10˄30) were added in anticipation of the need to express ever-larger quantities of data, ronto (10˄-27) and quecto (10˄-30) were added simply for symmetry with the other two [2] -- no one envisions anything (yet) they might actually be used for. EEng 13:55, 1 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Two questions

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  1. Why fractions and mixed units are generally not used with metric units? I have seen some uses of fractions with metric units in articles such as Shoe size, but never seen any usage of mixed units.
  2. Do articles that have strong ties to both US and Canada use metric or imperial units first? I think that it would be stupid to use imperial units first in articles with strong ties to Canada. --40bus (talk) 15:22, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    For your second question, I typically use {{Convert}}, and place the unit used in the majority of sources first, i.e., if a source says six miles, I add {{Convert|6|mi}}, yeilding "6 miles (9.7 km)". If a source says ten km, I add {{Convert|10|km|mi}}, yielding "10 kilometres (6.2 mi)". The order in which the output is displayed can be manipulated by the "order=flip" parameter, i.e., {{Convert|6|mi|order=flip}} yields "9.7 kilometres (6 mi)". I don't really care whether "imperial" or "metric" displays first, as long as the unit used in the source is placed in the first parameter in the template to avoid rounding errors. Donald Albury 18:36, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    You might not care but the Wikipedia Manual of style does. People can pick cherry pick sources, it's what the authorities in that country want that counts. The EU requires that power in all car owner manuals be in kW since about 1980, this includes the UK. The MOS states in Units of measure: SI primary outside the USA and UK. Plenty of people in the US use metric, Space X, Tesla, the auto industry, John Deere, etc. etc. yet congress in the USA does not mandate SI, it's optional. There are lots of other examples. See what the law states [[3]] Avi8tor (talk) 19:51, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
People frequently do calculations with measurements, and usually perform the calculations with calculators and computers. These devices are much easier to use with decimal fractions rather than mixed numerals. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:35, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Conversion of light years and parsecs

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Hi, all. We're trying to harmonize the units used in astronomy articles by building consensus for Wikipedia:WikiProject Astronomy/Manual of Style. It currently seems to be general practice to convert interplanetary distances and smaller to km, but not convert interstellar distances measured in light-years (and to show conversion to parsecs). Given that these units are not used outside astronomy and astrophysics, this contradicts the part of MOS:CONVERSIONS which advises converting "units of measure that are ... obscure outside of a particular specialty or geography". Would it be OK to add an official exception noting interstellar and larger distances should be given in light-years and parsecs and not converted to SI units? -- Beland (talk) 07:11, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Can you give an example (point to a page) where that conversion to km doesn't happen? Gawaon (talk) 07:15, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I see that in all the infoboxes of the first extrasolar objects I could think of, namely Alpha Centauri, Betelgeuse, Wolf 359, and Andromeda Galaxy. -- Beland (talk) 07:28, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. As someone who's not a editor or expert in the field, but an occasional reader, I'm not in favour. I find 0.024 AU (3,600,000 km) much more helpful than a naked distance in AU, and I find 7.86 light-years (7.44×1013 km) more relatable than 7.86 light-years (2.41 parsecs). Light-year and parsec essentially just mean "unimaginably long" to me, but I know what a kilometre is and 1013 allows me get a better understanding of the dimensions involved. Gawaon (talk) 09:12, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well you're lucky then, because there's no way I'd relate to 1013 km in any remotely sensible manner. I can at least think of a light year as about a quarter of the distance to the nearest star to the Sun. Praemonitus (talk) 18:21, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You quite have a perspective there, because "1013 km" is essentially meaningless to me. It is very hard to think about that number in terms of human scale alone. You will not encounter that number on a daily basis except perhaps when discussing countries' GDP or debts.
7.86 light-years (2.41 parsecs) is much more sensible on my perspective. That means light reaches that star in just under 8 years time, and that it makes a parallax angle of 1/2.41ths of an arcsecond every six months in the sky. It is more than just being "unimaginably long." SkyFlubbler (talk) 11:41, 28 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Would it be better to say that distances given in light-years should only be converted to parsecs and vice versa? Looking at Proxima Centauri and Antares reminds me that distances between binary stars may be appropriately given in smaller units such as AU and billions or trillions of kilometres, which would technically be contrary to an unqualified "interstellar". NebY (talk) 08:47, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Good point; I mean distances between stellar systems, rather than between stars in the same system. We could say "between stellar systems" or "distances typically measured in light years by reliable sources" to clarify. -- Beland (talk) 16:29, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No, that would not be OK. That would be like saying it's OK not to convert knots to m/s because nautical people are familiar with knots. What unites all of us is the SI system, so a conversion to SI is needed. Always. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 12:16, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Would you be in favor of converting from light-years to km only, and dropping parsecs, as in Gawaon's examples above? Parsec says light-year is more common in popular science and general media, which aligns with my experience. I have always found parsecs redundant to light-years and confusingly different. -- Beland (talk) 16:34, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would support making a choice between light-years and parsecs (I don't care which, but both would be overkill). Once that choice is made, convert to SI and we're done - in the sense that everyone can then comprehend the distance. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 17:21, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, that sound reasonable. Among the two, light-year seems to be better known, as Beland noted. Gawaon (talk) 17:26, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Dondervogel 2 as well. Avi8tor (talk) 19:56, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I see little reason not to. Most of the units that aforementioned policy in MOS:CONVERSIONS refer to are still "human-scale", or at least close to it. When one furlong is thrown out, for example, its conversion to 220 yards/0.125 mi/~201 m is easy to visualize, as such lengths are encountered frequently in life. People generally have first-hand experience with distances that long.
One light-year is nearly 1e13 km. I can't speak for everyone, but personally that figure is almost completely meaningless to me; 1e13 km simply is not a comprehensible figure. Even 1 AU (~1.5e11 m) is difficult to comprehend. This is why internet demonstrations of the "true scale" of the Solar System and interstellar space often go viral: people just do not intuitively grasp these distances and scales very well, and no conversion will change that. As Praemonitus mentioned in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomy/Manual of Style#Conversion of light years and parsecs into km, this issue only gets worse for intergalactic distances on the order of megaparsecs. Ultimately, I fail to see how useful such conversions really would be. ArkHyena (talk) 17:24, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for writing this comment, that's precisely my opinion and you saved me the work. Tercer (talk) 17:29, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I was not aware of this attempt to write a specific MOS for astronomy; I imagine you'd get more informed input at WT:AST than here. Astronomical distances are measured in au within a star/planetary system (including the Solar System), and in parsecs for everything larger (extending to kiloparsecs for galaxies, megaparsecs for galaxy groups etc.). Converting either of those to km would not be useful to readers - the numbers are incomprehensibly vast, which is one of the reasons why astronomers don't use km in the first place. Light years are used only in popular science accounts and press releases, where they do have some utility, but are essentially never the original astronomical measurement. I think it's fine to provide a conversion of pc to ly, but pc should be the primary unit. Converting to km is generally pointless, unless there's some unusual situation. Linking the au or pc unit on first appearance would be more useful to readers. Modest Genius talk 17:48, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
PS. There's some relevant discussion in the archives at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Astronomy/Archive_12#Should_we_decide_on_a_default_unit_to_use_across_WP? and Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Astronomy/Archive_11#Units_to_be_used_for_distances_and_sizes_in_infoboxes Modest Genius talk 17:54, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The previous discussions linked above seemed to concern whether light-years or parsecs should be used for large distances, and the general consensus seemed to be that astronomers use parsecs, readers are much more likely to understand light-years, and we should just use {{convert}} to display both. That has since at least mostly happened, but no one suggested converting to kilometers, and at that time the language about "obscure outside of a particular specialty" was not in MOS:CONVERSIONS. Hence the current question about resolving the conflict.
Per WP:JARGON, Wikipedia articles are written for the broadest possible audience, and we are advised to "write one level down" if necessary to make technical articles understandable to non-specialists. So if we need to pick two units and one of them is km, then parsecs may have to get the boot because it's mostly only specialists who use them. Fortunately, astronomers should be able to convert from light-years to parsecs easily, unlike the general public, so we don't need to sacrifice level of technical detail.
In other unit-related discussions, we've decided to use {{convert}} to display Wikipedia house style to readers and in some cases hide the units used by sources. Using a parameter like disp=out can do that while preserving the original units for verification against the cited source, and to avoid losing precision if someone comes by later and adds a second conversion. -- Beland (talk) 18:52, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree, as noted above. 1013 km means something to me, even if (admittedly) the dimensions involved are hard to grasp, while throwing "parsecs" or "light-years" around is essentially meaningless. (I agree one of them should be used too, but not exclusively.) Gawaon (talk) 18:16, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I wonder then how many lay readers are familiar with distances expressed in exponential notation? Because that isn't everyday usage. If you saw 1×1013 in a lay readers article, it would be more likely to be written as "10 million million kilometers". I look at the public facing NASA article The Galaxy Next Door and it gives distances and dimensions in light years, so NASA is expecting the public to be familiar with that distance scale. The distance to the Andromeda Galaxy is something like "25 million million million kilometers", surely a cumbersome statement. Praemonitus (talk) 22:01, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I must agree with this, I—anecdotally—would not expect most laypeople to understand what 1e13 km really means. To my knowledge, most educational platforms do not convert lyr or pc to km/mi (some examples: [4] [5] [6] [7]). It is clear that science communication as a whole deems conversions of lyr into km/mi as unhelpful and unneeded for most purposes. ArkHyena (talk) 22:20, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I checked my state's curriculum standards, and exponential notation is required to be learned in eighth grade. So I would guess this has been taught to anyone who has completed their primary school education in a country with a decent education system. That doesn't include all our readers, and some people will have failed math or completely forgotten this concept. On radio broadcasts for popular consumption, I have definitely heard constructions like "billion billion" or "6 with 20 zeroes after it" in lieu of exponential notation, and also light-years.
Based on editors' personal reports here, it seems there are some people who think in light years and some who think in large numbers of kilometers. Why not have both to maximize accessibility and intuitive understanding? Anyone who knows what a parsec is almost certainly has a firm grasp on what a light-year is. -- Beland (talk) 22:38, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The issue is that there are situations where this may introduce clutter with arguably marginal benefit, especially in infoboxes. I suppose introduction of conversion in main article text is fine, so long as km values are given in exponential notation to limit clutter. A potential compromise would be to add a note upon first mention of a lyr/pc in an article that provides km values for one lyr/pc; this is broadly similar (though not perfectly analogous) to how hurricane articles handle major hurricane status (e.g. at Hurricane Beryl). ArkHyena (talk) 23:27, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's an interesting idea...you're thinking light years converted to parsec in infoboxes, light-years converted to kilometers in article prose (and maybe only at first mention)? -- Beland (talk) 04:47, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm opposed to the latter. If we're expecting students to know what a kilometre is and to grok out exponential notation, then it's reasonable to expect that they will also understand a light year. I see no need to provide a conversion to km in most cases. A link should suffice. Praemonitus (talk) 14:47, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What do you mean with "understand" here? I know what a light-year is, in the abstract sense: It's the distance light travels in a year. And I, and guess most people, also know that light travels "very fast". But how much is "very fast" times one year? I don't have the foggiest idea, to be honest. Never having travelled at the speed of light, it is very hard to fathom for me, and as such essentially meaningless. Exponential notation, on the other hand, is not very hard to get, if you know how to do basic addition and multiplication. If I read 1013 km, I know I have to take one kilometre, multiply it with 1000, and again, and again, and again, and then finally with 10. Still abstract, admittedly, but now I have a much better sense of the dimension involved compared to "unimaginably fast times one year". Which is why I'm in favour of using exponential notation in addition to light-years or parsecs (I don't care which of them is chosen). Gawaon (talk) 15:09, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would perhaps prefer 10 Pm to 1013 km, but other than this detail I strongly agree with Gawaon. I can accept 1013 km if that is the consensus. I cannot accept omitting the conversion to SI - to do so would suggest that astronomy is beyond metrology, when it clearly is not. Notice the link to petametre takes the reader directly to an equation stating that a petametre is about 0.1 light-year. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 15:20, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh come on. It suggests nothing of the sort (about astronomy being beyond metrology). Metrology is a whole discipline; SI is just a system of units, roughly as arbitrary as any other.
That said, I don't have a hardened objection to including an SI conversion, at least in infoboxes, though I wouldn't be thrilled to see them repeated over and over again in the running text. --Trovatore (talk) 16:18, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
OK, so I was exaggerating, for effect. A more measured remark would have been that even the IAU defines its units in terms of the SI, so why mark it unnecessarily hard on the reader by omitting that conversion on Wikipedia? I accept the SI is arbitrary, but it is THE single arbitrary system that we all (including Americans) learn at school, is used in day to day scientific work and is defined by international standards (BIPM).
Providing a conversion to SI in info boxes seems a good compromise. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 18:47, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would argue for the inverse, actually. Providing SI conversions in maintext whilst omitting them in infoboxes seems to be the best practice besides not having any. Infoboxes, especially those of astronomy, are already crowded with numbers; it would not help readability to shove yet more in them. ArkHyena (talk) 18:55, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Right now light-years and parsecs are typically presented side-by-side in infoboxes. If one of them is replaced with a different unit, that wouldn't result in any additional clutter. Gawaon (talk) 19:04, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Per SevenSpheres: The astronomical literature almost exclusively uses parsecs, because distance in parsecs can be derived directly from parallax, which is used to measure stellar distances. So it makes sense to use both units. I don't think I've seen interstellar distances expressed in kilometers much if at all before today ... On the topic of deriving distance from parallax, {{Starbox astrometry}} can do this automatically and is used this way in most star articles. So even if parsecs aren't used in the text, it doesn't make sense to remove them from the infobox
If we are to implement SI conversions, they are better-suited for the maintext (either as first mention or throughout), since that is presumably where most readers read. Astronomy infoboxes typically hold information about more obscure/technical (even if still very much relevant) properties for their respective objects. ArkHyena (talk) 19:32, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"So I would guess this has been taught to anyone who has completed their primary school education in a country with a decent education system." - And most people don't work in science-related fields, and so never use scientific notation and thus have forgotten it. "10^13 km" and "1 light year" both translate to "very, very large", but the latter can at least allow comparison of distances--"it's only a few light years to the nearest star, but a million light years to the nearest galaxy."--whereas 10^13 km and 10^19 km are both equally meaningless as "very large", because they don't think in subtracting exponents. The prefixes are even worse, as anything beyond giga or tera are completely unfamiliar to most (and even those just mean "big" to many). - Parejkoj (talk) 06:50, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No one is suggesting we stop using light-years (or parsecs if you prefer those - take your pick). We just prefer to include a conversion to SI, because we are all taught SI units. It's called the International System of Units for a good reason. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 07:08, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree. In this field of astronomy the governing body would be the International Astronomical Union, and the SI would only be focused on standardizing units relevant to common everyday measurements (and perhaps those in technology). And parsec is specifically defined in the notes of Resolution B2 in 2015. SkyFlubbler (talk) 12:02, 28 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not everybody is an astronomer though, and our articles shouldn't be accessible to specialists only. Gawaon (talk) 12:58, 28 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But this is still a topic of astronomy, so of course we have to use units used by astronomers. By your logic we should not use radians as an angle measurement despite countless mathematical areas using it because "not everybody is a mathematician."
If they are seeking astronomy topics here in Wikipedia, the article for parsec is as simple as a mouse click. SkyFlubbler (talk) 23:31, 30 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In general, we don't use radians for angles, such as when discussing bicycle frames or sports or flowers). We use the much better-known degrees, unless there is a specific reason that radians make calculations or geometric expressions easier (which is why they exist). Radians are also much better-known than parsecs. I checked the Massachusetts curriculum standards; radians are part of the secondary school math requirements. Parsecs are not a requirement, and I would expect them to be first taught in undergrad astronomy classes (which obviously hardly anyone takes, though I did) or picked up as an extracurricular interest.
Certainly linking unfamiliar units like parsecs helps a lot of readers make more sense of them, but not everyone using Wikipedia has a mouse. Sometimes articles are printed out. Sometimes they are read out loud by a text-to-speech system - quite common for blind and visually impaired people, and also among people like me who use TTS to read articles while doing something else like yard work or doing the dishes. All of us screenreader users potentially have to listen to conversions for every single field in an infobox, which can get a bit tedious and make things harder to follow, especially if we don't know the definition of one of the units. -- Beland (talk) 02:55, 31 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What do you mean by "your logic"? I'm in favour of using parsecs, but against using only parsecs (or only non-SI units). Gawaon (talk) 05:58, 31 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This astronomy MOS was announced at WT:AST and considerable discussion has already happened there, and I already posted there a link to this discussion. I started this discussion because I wasn't comfortable creating an exception to MOS:CONVERSIONS without consulting the wider editor community beyond the WikiProject Astronomy. -- Beland (talk) 18:31, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Light-years are not an obscure or specialized unit; along with parsecs, they are the standard units used to measure interstellar and larger distances. While it's true that they're only used in one field, astronomy is the only field that deals with such large distances! This is different from, say, furlongs, which are on the same scale as kilometers.
  • My thought is that interstellar distances expressed in kilometers are meaninglessly large numbers, while such distances expressed in light-years are more accessible to the general reader. Surprisingly though, there are comments saying the opposite! I find it hard to believe this is representative of the average reader though; surely most people who understand scientific notation also understand what a light-year is? That if a star is 100 light-years away, its light takes 100 years to reach us and so we see it as it was 100 years ago?
  • In terms of common usage, sources aimed at the general public (like the NASA pages linked above) almost exclusively use light-years, presumably because, again, this is the most accessible unit to the general public. The astronomical literature almost exclusively uses parsecs, because distance in parsecs can be derived directly from parallax, which is used to measure stellar distances. So it makes sense to use both units. I don't think I've seen interstellar distances expressed in kilometers much if at all before today.
    • (On the topic of deriving distance from parallax, {{Starbox astrometry}} can do this automatically and is used this way in most star articles. So even if parsecs aren't used in the text, it doesn't make sense to remove them from the infobox.)
  • A proposed change of this kind that would affect so many articles should be more widely advertised; I suspect everyone who's commented here watches either this page and/or WikiProject Astronomy where this was mentioned.
SevenSpheres (talk) 00:21, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If we decide to suppress parsecs from reader view, {{Starbox astrometry}} can simply be changed to convert to light-years or whatnot. It's actually a lot easier to do that than change 1,000 articles that are not using a template feature like that, which I am sadly already doing for a lot of problems. -- Beland (talk) 04:51, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There's no way a light-year is a standard unit. It is not defined by international standards bodies, and according to the IAU, light-years are "mostly confined to popular publications and similar media". And I suspect there are more readers who think the light-year is a unit of time than ones who would be confused by use of the metre (or kilometre) as a unit of distance. If there is a standard unit in astronomy, it is the parsec, not the light-year. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 11:21, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't there exists anyone who thinks light-year is a unit of time but understands what a parsec is. Ironically enough, the creators of Star Wars thought parsec was a unit of time. Tercer (talk) 12:32, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@SevenSpheres: FYI 1 furlong is 201.168 m, so not quite the "same scale". Martin of Sheffield (talk) 14:14, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Corrected. SevenSpheres (talk) 15:10, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Where would you like to see this discussion "more widely advertised"? -- Beland (talk) 15:57, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
WP:RFC? SevenSpheres (talk) 16:16, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If we're doing that, we should summarize the discussion into some clear options. How about this for a question with neutral background material:
----
How should distances between stellar systems and longer be presented in infoboxes? (These are often calculated automatically from different units presented in astronomy sources, such as parallax.)
Examples from Local Interstellar Cloud, Andromeda Galaxy, Proxima Centauri, and Betelgeuse.
A.) Light-years and kilometers only in infoboxes:
  • 30 ly (2.8×1014 km)
  • 2.50 Mly; 2.36×1019 km
  • 4.2465 ± 0.0003 ly
    4.0175×1013 ± 2.8382×109 km
  • 408–548+90
    −49     ly     (3.86×1015–5.18+0.85
    −0.46    ×1015     km)
B.) Light-years and parsecs only in infoboxes
  • 30 ly (9.2 pc)
  • 2.50 Mly; 765 kpc
  • 4.2465 ± 0.0003 ly
    1.3020 ± 9.1980×10−5 pc
  • 408–548+90
    −49     ly (125-168.1+27.5
    −14.9     pc)
C.) Light-years and meters with larger prefixes in infoboxes
  • 30 ly (280 Pm)
  • 2.50 Mly; 23.6 Zm
  • 4.2465 ± 0.0003 ly
    40.1750 ± 0.0028 Pm
  • 408–548+90
    −49     ly
    3.86–5.18+0.85
    −0.46     Em
D.) Light-years and parsecs only in infoboxes (like B), with conversion to kilometers on first mention in prose
E.) Something else
If conversion to kilometers in infoboxes is not required, this would be added as an explicit exception to MOS:CONVERSIONS.
Previous discussions identified that parsecs are used by professional astronomers and light-years are used in popular news and educational media. Editors disagreed on whether light-years or kilometers with exponential notation were easier to read and understand intuitively for most readers.
----
-- Beland (talk) 18:10, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(Edited to link units.) -- Beland (talk) 18:16, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
How about "Parsecs and kilometers only in infoboxes" as further option, since that combination has been mentioned as well? Also, if you suggest 5 or 6 different options, it's quite likely that none of them will gain an absolute majority, resulting in an unclear outcome.
An alternative question might be something along the lines of "Since it's cumbersome to present more than two alternative units, which two should preferably to used for interstellar distances?", with the options being:
A. Light-year
B. Parsec
C. Kilometre with exponential factor
D. Metre with SI prefix
And every editor asked to pick their two favourites. Gawaon (talk) 18:54, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
OK, maybe we should ask the "pick two" separately for prose and infoboxes, since there seems to be a stronger leaning toward different practices, and it would be nice to get a clear result for both if we're bothering everyone to consider the question. -- Beland (talk) 22:02, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, why not, though personally I see no good reason to treat them differently. Gawaon (talk) 06:11, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Some editors have expressed different preferences for prose vs. infobox...at this point I've thought about all this too much and don't know how I feel about anything. Revised draft RFC posted in subsection below; everyone feel free to tweak or critique. -- Beland (talk) 07:32, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If you're referring to my comment, I haven't expressed different preferences for prose vs. infobox, only a stronger preference to retain the status quo in infoboxes. SevenSpheres (talk) 14:55, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I was thinking of ArkHyena's proposal to convert to km on first mention in prose but not infoboxes. -- Beland (talk) 19:48, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
IAU definitions are about as standard as you're going to get in astronomy. Per the IAU style manual, the "unit known as the light-year is appropriate to popular expositions on astronomy and is sometimes used in scientific papers as an indicator of distance".[8] "The light-year is roughly equivalent to 0.3 parsecs, and is equal to the distance traveled by light in one Julian year in a vacuum, according to the IAU."[9] The parsec does have a standard IAU definition, although it is a much less well known unit in the public space. Praemonitus (talk) 14:54, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Looking again at MOS:CONVERSIONS, I think In some topic areas [...] it can be excessive to provide a conversion for every quantity applies here, though unlike light-years the examples given are at a scale where metric units are typically used. As I've said, I don't think For units of measure that are [...] obscure outside of a particular specialty or geography applies; not part of the SI or US customary systems may apply but that's not the part that was mentioned. SevenSpheres (talk) 18:22, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Are you arguing for leaving some quantities in infoboxes unconverted from the preferred unit, or are you thinking of omitting conversions only in prose? -- Beland (talk) 18:39, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The opposite, as per e.g. [10] I would more strongly prefer to retain the status quo in infoboxes than in prose. SevenSpheres (talk) 19:03, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
OK, that looks like a vote for light-years and parsecs in infoboxes with kilometers in prose but not to excess. I consider the status quo to be "SI conversions are required in infoboxes" because of MOS:CONVERSIONS, but in practice for the ones I've seen, the status quo is light-years and parsecs. -- Beland (talk) 22:01, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
All I will say is that this discussion seems to connect with the one I began about prefixes. Looking at this thread it seems I might not be alone here. Avenues2009 (talk) 23:18, 29 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sure; feel free to share your preferences in the RFC thread. -- Beland (talk) 01:19, 30 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Draft RFC question

[edit]

Version 1

[edit]

How should distances between stellar systems and longer be presented in astronomy articles? (These are often calculated automatically from different units presented in astronomy sources, such as parallax.) Previous discussions identified that parsecs are used by professional astronomers and light-years are used in popular news and educational media; those two units are currently the most commonly used and converted to each other. Editors disagreed on whether light-years or kilometers with scientific notation were easier to read and understand intuitively for most readers. If conversion to SI units (like kilometers) is not required in certain contexts, this would be added as an explicit exception to MOS:CONVERSIONS.

More than two units per quantity is cumbersome, so we're asking folks to pick their TOP TWO from:

Infobox examples using quantities from Local Interstellar Cloud, Andromeda Galaxy, Proxima Centauri, and Betelgeuse:

  • ly and km:
    • 30 ly (2.8×1014 km)
    • 2.50 Mly; 2.36×1019 km
    • 4.2465 ± 0.0003 ly
      4.0175×1013 ± 2.8382×109 km
    • 408–548+90
      −49       ly       (3.86×1015–5.18+0.85
      −0.46      ×1015       km)
  • ly and pc:
    • 30 ly (9.2 pc)
    • 2.50 Mly; 765 kpc
    • 4.2465 ± 0.0003 ly
      1.3020 ± 9.1980×10−5 pc
    • 408–548+90
      −49       ly (125-168.1+27.5
      −14.9       pc)
  • ly and ?m:
    • 30 ly (280 Pm)
    • 2.50 Mly; 23.6 Zm
    • 4.2465 ± 0.0003 ly
      40.1750 ± 0.0028 Pm
    • 408–548+90
      −49       ly
      3.86–5.18+0.85
      −0.46       Em

Please let us know if you prefer the SAME or DIFFERENT for INFOBOXES vs. PROSE (or if you prefer some other solution). We assume that for prose the "unless this would be excessive given the context" rule from MOS:CONVERSIONS will still apply.

Version 2

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How should distances between star systems and galaxies be presented? These are measured in light years (ly) in popular news and educational media; professional astronomers use parsecs (pc). Articles currently use a variety of units (some only ly and ly converted to km) but most commonly use ly converted to pc in infoboxes (often automatically from technical data). If conversion to SI units (like kilometers) is not required in certain contexts, this would be added as an explicit exception to MOS:CONVERSIONS. The maximum distance in the observable universe is under 100 billion light-years, and interplanetary distances (inside a star system) are a fraction of a light-year and are measured in astronomical units (AU or au).

Two formats are needed: an expanded format for use in article prose (especially on first mention), and a compact format for infoboxes, tables, and prose where the expanded format would be excessively long. The "unless this would be excessive given the context" rule from MOS:CONVERSIONS will still apply when the units are used several times in prose.

The units nominated in previous discussion are:

Units can be written in words or symbols, but if symbols are used, MOS:NUMNOTES says the number part must be written in numbers (e.g. 12 million km, not twelve million km). First use of light-year/ly and parsec/pc must be linked to their articles, per MOS:UNITS.

The notations that can express very large quantities are:

  • Words (million, billion, trillion, and so on in names of large numbers)
  • Metric prefixes, namely: Gly, Mly, kly, Gpc, Mpc, kpc, Ym, Zm, Em, Pm, Tm
  • Scientific notation, often used with km (which already have a metric prefix), e.g. 8.8×1020 km
  • Long numerals, e.g.: 93,000,000 ly (88,000,000,000,000,000,000 km)

Formatting details are delegated to {{convert}} and {{val}}, which may be helpful in expressing your preferences below.

The chosen formats need to accommodate simple cases and complex expressions of precision like:

  • 30 ly (2.8×1014 km)
  • 2.50 Mly (765 kpc)
  • 4.2465 ± 0.0003 ly
    4.0175×1013 ± 2.8382×109 km
  • 408–548+90
    −49     ly (125-168.1+27.5
    −14.9     pc)

Please specify which order the units should appear in, if you have a preference.

(sample votes shown)

Compact format (specify preferred units, notation, and order)

  • ly only, with metric prefixes. "34.5 Mly ± .3Mly". Infoboxes get overwhelmingly numbery if they have conversions. - User 1
  • ly converted to pc, both in exponential notation. "34.5×109 ly (1.06×1010 pc)". Astronomers need parsecs for convenience. - User 2

Expanded format (specify preferred units, notation, and order)

  • "Light year" converted to km, in exponential notation. "34.5 million light years (3.26×1023 km) " - User 1
  • "Light years" converted to "kilometers" then "parsecs", in words, but no higher than trillion. "34.5 million light years (326 billion trillion kilometers; 10.6 billion parsecs) plus or minus .3 million light years." - User 2

Version 3

[edit]

What units should be used for distances between star systems and galaxies? These are measured in light years (ly) in popular news and educational media; professional astronomers use parsecs (pc). Articles currently use a variety of units (some only ly and some ly converted to km) but most commonly use ly converted to pc in infoboxes (often automatically from technical data). If conversion to SI units (like kilometers) is not required in certain contexts, this would be added as an explicit exception to MOS:CONVERSIONS. The maximum distance in the observable universe is under 100 billion light-years, and interplanetary distances (inside a star system) are a fraction of a light-year and are measured in astronomical units (AU or au).

Two formats are needed: an expanded format for use in article prose (especially on first mention), and a compact format for infoboxes, tables, and prose where the expanded format would be excessively long. The "unless this would be excessive given the context" rule from MOS:CONVERSIONS will still apply when the units are used several times in prose. First use of light-year/ly, parsec/pc, and rare meter prefixes (e.g. zettameter) must be linked to their articles, per MOS:UNITS. The chosen formats need to accommodate simple cases and complex expressions of precision (examples below).

The choices nominated for inclusion are:

  • Light-year (ly) with SI prefixes (kly, Mly, Gly) and large number words (million, billion) in prose
    • 34.6 ± 0.3 million light-years (ly) [first mention in prose]
    • 34.6 ± 0.3 Mly [compact]
    • 408–548+90
      −49       ly       [compact]
  • Parsec (pc) with SI prefixes (kpc, Mpc, Gpc)
    • 765 ± 2 kiloparsecs (kpc) [first mention in prose]
    • 765 ± 2 kpc [compact]
    • 125-168.1+27.5
      −14.9       pc [compact]
  • Kilometer (km) with scientific notation
    • 3.27×1014 km [compact, secondary in prose]
    • 3.273×1014 ± 2.8×1012 km [compact, secondary prose]
    • 68.1+7.5
      −4.1      ×1014 km       [compact, secondary in prose]
    • 3.27×1014 kilometres [primary expanded]
  • Meter with SI prefixes (Ym, Zm, Em, Pm, Tm)
    • 68.1 zettameters (Zm) [first mention in prose]
    • 68.1 Zm [compact]
    • 68.1+7.5
      −4.1       Zm       [compact]

You can of course advocate for as many or few options as you find appropriate, or assert multiple options are equally good, but previous discussion has assumed at most two units would be used because many editors find three to be excessive. Please specify your preferred order; "primary" units come first and other units are converted to (typically in parentheses in prose, sometimes on a new line or after semicolon in infoboxes).

(sample votes shown)

Your preferred units

Please note your preferred units for both compact-in-infobox and expanded-in-prose if they are different.

  • Light-years only. Conversions make science overwhelmingly numbery. - User 1
  • Light years converted to parsecs in infoboxes for astronomers, kilometers in prose for general audience. - User 2

Discussion

[edit]
  • For clarity I would suggest using the same format for all examples (always put the second unit in brackets or maybe always use a semicolon between them, instead of semicolons, brackets, and line breaks mixed). Otherwise it looks fine to me. Gawaon (talk) 08:07, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm afraid it's hard to decipher your illustrative possibilities; I think it's better to say explicitly that you are displaying the same data using the three combinations (ly, km), (ly, pc), and (ly, ?m). Also, it might be worth noting that (ly, pc) is already a de facto standard. Tercer (talk) 08:35, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Tweaked to add headers for clarity. -- Beland (talk) 09:27, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    And added note about the status quo in articles, per your suggestion. -- Beland (talk) 09:28, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In articles, I see semicolons, parentheses, and new lines in infoboxes. -- Beland (talk) 09:24, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Okay. Gawaon (talk) 10:28, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have two comments

  • I object to using megalight-years in the examples. While light-years are commonly used, megalight-years are not (and the unit in any case should be light-megayear, not megalight-year). Saying "2.5 million light-years" is fine. Saying "2.5 megalight-years" is not.
  • I'm not sure the question is well posed. Surely we are all assuming the primary unit is either light-year or parsec, and the question should then be "what are converting it to?"

Dondervogel 2 (talk) 09:59, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's not true. Mly is commonly used. "light-megayear" is non-existent. Tercer (talk) 10:31, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I meant that in a relative sense. In other words, use of the megalight-year is less common than that of the light-year. I accept that light-megayear is rarely used, but if one uses light-second, light-minute, light-day and light-year, the obvious next steps are light-century, light-kiloyear and light-megayear. That was my point.
That said, my main objection to use of megalight-year, gigalight-year is the absence of an authoritative/standard definition of these units. The IAU does not define them, so who does? Perhaps the same question applies to the megaparsec, but that seems somehow less controversial. I'm not sure why. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 16:44, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'd say if Mly is used in existing pages, it's okay to use it in an example too. Gawaon (talk) 17:36, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I mean, why would the IAU have to define them when mega- and giga- prefixes are already well-defined? This doesn't seem to be a very good justification to not use them; AFAIK, no organization "officially defines" what a kiloton or megaton is, but articles about nuclear tests and volcanic eruptions use them all the time in TNT-equivalent units simply because kt and Mt are useful and widely used. ArkHyena (talk) 17:40, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'll pay you 10€ if you can find a single example of light-megayear used in a peer-reviewed paper. I see your point about the logical progression of the units, but the fact of the matter is that this is not how astronomers use it. Tercer (talk) 17:54, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hmmm ... that's an interesting challenge. I can't guarantee to find light-megayear, but I would be surprised if a search for light-kiloyear, light-megayear and light-gigayear doesn't come up with something. Watch this space ... Dondervogel 2 (talk) 19:20, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
... I found this mention of a light-gigayear. See also [11] Project Astronomy Archive 17, where it appears the same question arose 9 years ago, and with the same outcome. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 19:37, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Light-gigayear is fair enough, but I did specify a peer-reviewed paper. Tercer (talk) 20:08, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You did indeed, so I am not claiming my 10 EUR just yet. I'll keep watching out for an example :P Dondervogel 2 (talk) 20:13, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It just dawned on me that the reason I can't find light-megayear in peer-reviewed papers is that peer-reviewed papers use the parsec (and megaparsec), not the light-year. The light-year is used in popular literature only, where it does not need a rigorous definition. Perhaps that explains why Mpc seems less controversial (to me) than Mly. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 20:23, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
While parsecs are clearly the unit of choice, plenty of peer-reviewed astronomy papers do use light-years: [12] [13] [14]. Tercer (talk) 20:44, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sometimes I really do wish astronomers and science communicators would use just one unit instead of two... ArkHyena (talk) 20:50, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I see those articles use the light-year (though in one case only in the title). Do you know one that uses the megalight-year? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 20:56, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It looks like Morrison and Sartori 1965 might use the light-kiloyear. I can't be sure because it's behind a paywall. Does anyone have access to Phys Rev Lett? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 21:19, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I found it and yes, they talk about "R ~ 10 light kiloyears". Gawaon (talk) 22:07, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have checked, and indeed, that's a light kiloyear. Not a light-megayear, but I think it's good enough. Please email me your IBAN through Special:EmailUser/Tercer so that I can pay you what I owe. Tercer (talk) 08:33, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Light-year#Definitions has citations to textbooks for kly, Mly, and Gly, kilolight-year, megalight-year, and gigalight-year. English isn't always a logical or consistent language, but we use it as it is. There doesn't seem to be any disagreement about what these units mean; they adopt the SI prefixes straightforwardly. Mly, Gly, kpc, and Mly are currently used in a lot of articles, but I also see constructions like "70,000,000 ly" in infoboxes and "70 million light years" in prose. These units are a lot more compact and a lot cleaner when there are ±, and they have commonly-used prefixes people are familiar with from computer hardware. Beland (talk) 17:56, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We can ask this question two ways: 1. pre-discuss possibilities and offer up the most popular (among astro-enthusiast editors) and logically coherent choices in an effort to make the question easy to answer and consensus easy to discern, or 2. open voting to arbitrary combinations and have faith that The People will Do the Right Thing. I started with approach 1, but Gawaon requested approach 2. If we're sticking with approach 2, I'm inclined to let the wisdom of the crowd decide which unit they want as primary. If 70% of people vote to make kilometers primary, then that's surprising but useful information to make the encyclopedia more readable to the general public, and no one can complain the question was biased and we need to do another RFC. We've been talking about two units of measure as the optimal number, but the more articles I look at, the more I wonder if 1 or 3 wouldn't be better, depending on whether we want to make things clear and easy to understand (which some articles already do) or give everyone immediate handy access to a number in the units they are thinking or calculating in.
I was originally thinking of this only as a question for infoboxes, but the more articles I look at, the more I realize that quantities are presented very differently in prose. For example, "72 million light-years" is much more reader-friendly than either "7.2 × 106 ly" or "7.2 Mly", and the friendly version is often used in prose. Perhaps we should frame the question as asking people to define "compact" and "expanded" formats. In prose, we often use an expanded format on first mention of an unfamiliar-to-everyday-life unit (like light-years), and then compact formatting for later uses to avoid excessive length. We also use compact formats for tables, not just infoboxes. MOS:NUMNOTES has some things to say about this already, but doesn't make all the choices we have questions about.
When we write $2M in prose, we write two million dollars, not two megadollars, and I agree 2Mly should be written as two million light years, megatons notwithstanding. I'll add some prose examples showing the default interpretation of choosing certain units. Beland (talk) 18:23, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't mean to ask about "primary" and "secondary", only about the preferred combinations of two units (considering that regularly using more would be impractical). I think the only truly "odd" result from the astronomers' viewpoint would be if kilometres and prefixed metres were chosen, with both light-years and parsecs discarded. But I think that's a very unlikely outcome, hence I believe we can trust the "wisdom of the crowd" to find a reasonable combination. Gawaon (talk) 19:08, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(Also I didn't mean to "request" anything, it was just a suggestion to make the multiple logical possibilities easier to handle.) Gawaon (talk) 19:12, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, it was a good suggestion! BTW, I've drafted a second version of the RFC question making the variables more explicit and connecting to some existing rules so hopefully we don't have to re-debate those. Too much? -- Beland (talk) 19:37, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Beland: I question the assertion that there is no dispute about the meaning of megalight-year. According to this unit converter, a megalight-year is equal to 999315.53730322 light-years. Is that the conversion you would expect? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 19:25, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Seems like a floating point error. SevenSpheres (talk) 19:35, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I doubt it's a floating point error. More likely a consequence of the ambiguity between a megaannum (precisely 365.25 million days, following the IAU convention, using Julian years) and one million years (approximately 365.2422 million days). I don't think the arithmetic works out to explain that weird conversion, but my fundamental point is that such units are undefined, and therefore ambiguous. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 19:52, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This website is clearly suffering from rounding errors. It converts 9999999999999 mm to 9999.999999999001 Mm. It's pretty clearly a not-so-carefully semi-automatically created SEO honeypot. -- Beland (talk) 19:56, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Somebody used "365.5" when entering one unit into the database, and "365.25" for the other: 999315.53730322 / 365.25 = 365.5×10−6. Indefatigable (talk) 19:58, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Nice catch! Tercer (talk) 20:11, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
...hmm, it does actually say that in the text though... but it also says One megalight-year [...] is one million light-years. That website is probably not the most reliable source in any case. SevenSpheres (talk) 19:37, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Shitty websites making mistakes prove nothing. If you want to demonstrate that there is a dispute about the definition of megalight-year you need to find reliable sources saying so. Tercer (talk) 19:50, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Uh-uh. The unit remains ambiguous until it is defined. And there is never a justification for using this particular ambiguous unit when we can easily write "one million light-years", with no ambiguity. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 19:54, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I fail to see how "megalight-year" would remotely be ambiguous, unless the metric prefix "mega-" itself is ambiguous. ArkHyena (talk) 20:01, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But the prefix mega- (as in megabyte) IS ambiguous. I suspect you realised that before adding the "metric" qualifier. For the definition we rely on a handful of sources from the light-year article. Is that really enough? And I repeat we can always write "one million light years" (or "one billion light years" for giga), so why confuse our readers with the prefix? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 20:10, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That particular case is does seem to be exceptional due to its usage within compsci, but honestly I doubt people who are aware of that oddity would apply it to other units. "Mega-", regarding units, seems to be universally understood to mean 106 unless specified otherwise, regardless if the unit it is applied to is SI or not. A megatonne of TNT equivalent is one million tonnes of TNT equivalent. A megaelectronvolt is one million electronvolts. And so on.
The one possible point of confusion is that "mega-" in colloquial usage does not strictly refer to the metric prefix, e.g. "megadonor", but TMK people generally recognize that, when affixed to a unit of measurement, "mega-" indeed means 106. ArkHyena (talk) 20:22, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Can we agree to write "6.7 million light years" instead of "6.7 mega-light-years" and "9.8 megaparsecs" (which seems standard) and 6.7 Mly and 9.7 Mpc for short? I don't think anyone is going to be confused into thinking that the "M" uses the 1000x scale instead of 1024x for light years but not parsecs. Certainly not people who know enough to need the numbers for precise calculations, who seem to be using Mly in technical papers with zero confusion. 1000x is what everyone in America is taught in school when we learn the metric system. Almost anyone who knows about the 1024x scale should know it's only used for computers. Our main audience is the general public to whom we're giving these numbers just to get a general sense of things (at which point 1000x vs. 1024x doesn't matter). -- Beland (talk) 22:19, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Reliable sources do define Mly as exactly one million light-years, as cited at light-year. Definitions of units don't need to be blessed by a government or professional body to have a clear meaning, any more than "straight up" needs an English equivalent of the French Academy to legally define which vector I mean by that. This web site is unambiguously making an error. -- Beland (talk) 20:01, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Since some votes will differ in options for infobox vs. prose (or some contributors may want to add notes specific to one or the other), it may be best to set up two separate surveys (e.g. survey for infoboxes/survey for prose) once the RfC is pushed out for organizational reasons. ArkHyena (talk) 10:56, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Excellent suggestion; implemented in Version 2 of the draft above. -- Beland (talk) 19:38, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    My preference (and I don't think I am alone here) would be
    • primary unit: parsec or light-year
    • converted unit: any SI unit
    I don't see this preference represented in the choices offered. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 19:59, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    That seems like a perfectly valid not-vote. We didn't say you couldn't pick multiple items off the menu as equally good in whatever slot. I assume "any SI unit" means you don't care if we use m or km, and don't care if we use exponential notation or metric prefixes or long numerals or words. -- Beland (talk) 20:06, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, that is a correct interpretation. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 20:17, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    While I see the ideas behind Version 2, I think it's too complicated. We can't expect everyone to express separate preferences for compact and expanded format, and nobody should have to think about which prefixes for light-years they prefer. I'd keep it simpler, more in line with version 1: You have four possible units (ly, pc, km/scientific, m with prefix) – pick the two you prefer. Maybe Preferably ask for first and second unit too. My choices, similar to Dondervogel 2: ly or pc as first, km/scientific as second. Gawaon (talk) 20:08, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I'd also argue for this. More complex options would probably prolong discussion and make things messier than they need to be. This discussion here is already quite protracted. ArkHyena (talk) 20:13, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    OK, so to clarify:
    • We're limiting this RFC to the compact format intended for infoboxes and tables, and after we get a clear answer on that discuss what to do about prose?
    • Are we pre-selecting a notation for extremely long distances for ly and pc? According to parsec, Gpc, Mpc, and kpc are standard. Despite the one-editor objection above, Gly, Mly, and kly seem to be used and understood, and seem a lot more compact than 93,000,000 ly (especially if there's an error margin) and more comprehensible and less cluttery than exponential notation.
    -- Beland (talk) 22:10, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    We can probably survey for infoboxes and prose simultaneously, especially since I'd figure someone would bring up prose conventions at some point if it is not included in the first place—we'd just have to partition the survey as aforementioned to hopefully keep things smooth. And yes, Gpc, Mpc, kpc; and Gly, Mly, and kly seem to be well-established standards in relevant articles. ArkHyena (talk) 22:35, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Should we then assume the expanded form (prose first or infrequent mention) would use unit names instead of symbols?
    Should we also assume we're not using scientific notation for the expanded form and we'll use the words for multipliers greater than "thousand"? For example, "34.5 million light years (326 billion trillion kilometers)" if those units win the not-vote? ("Sextillion" isn't even in all dictionaries listed by Names of large numbers; when English Wikipedia uses it, it tends to be accompanied by exponential notation or other -illion words to explain what it means.) -- Beland (talk) 02:49, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]