Talk:Endianness - Misplaced Pages

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"Bytesex" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Bytesex and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Misplaced Pages:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 November 25#Bytesex until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Veverve (talk) 15:39, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

It was relisted several times, ending up at Misplaced Pages:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 December 9#Bytesex, which indicates it was closed as "Keep". Guy Harris (talk) 22:49, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Bytesex?

Does the term "byte sex" deserve to be in the first sentence? It has about 60,000 bing hits, and most of the first page isn't even discussing it in the endian sense. I've never heard the term before. 2A00:23C5:321B:BB01:241C:9873:FD0F:C101 (talk) 21:26, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

As above, it is in active discussion. Yes, I suspect it shouldn't be in the first sentence, if at all. Gah4 (talk) 22:24, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

The removal of the "bytesex" redirect is no longer under active discussion. It was relisted several times, ending up at Misplaced Pages:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 December 9#Bytesex, which indicates it was closed as "Keep". Guy Harris (talk) 22:48, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Just because the term 'byte sex' can redirect here doesn't mean this article should discuss it in the first paragraph. This is a bit of obscure historical jargon which is no longer in current use. At best it belongs in a footnote. –jacobolus (t) 18:18, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

For all practical purposes the term is extinct, most younger practitioners will not recognize it, linux.bytesex.org notwithstanding, and we are WP:NOTDICT, so the lead is a bad place for this synonym (I have no objections against the redirect, and, most likely, some anchor in the text). I agree that even now the term is WP:UNDUE that high in the article, unless the section is expanded to cover much more widespread terms: "network byte order" is currently relegated to mid-article, "host order" is even lower and has no coherent definition whatsoever. Dimawik (talk) 05:28, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

No objection for a month to the removal from the lead. Per Guy Harris I am changing it to an anchor so that the redirect will stay operational. Dimawik (talk) 08:43, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Bit endianness

Regarding the removal of "bit endianness": the term is easy to find in the literature (e.g., , a book by Springer). The deleted text about the error-correcting codes was also factually correct (I expect it to be hard to find a source for the latter, though). I happen to like the new text more, and think that the error correction minutiae are out of scope here altogether, but, probably, it is worth adding back the "bit endianness" term somewhere in the text (not in the section header)? Pinging @Kvng: Dimawik (talk) 03:58, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Bit endianness is less of a problem, but still exists. Some hardware has the ability to address bytes. Even when it doesn't, hardware descriptions don't always number bits the same way. Yes it happens at a lower level, but for those working at that level, it is important. Gah4 (talk) 05:06, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes, anyone who tried to code bit fields in a portable way knows the problem well. The issue here is a terminological one: should we mention the term "bit endianness" or be happy with a more popular "bit order"? Dimawik (talk) 07:25, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. We do have a Bit endianness redirect (which I broke) so I should restore that (with a ref). There is Dimawik's question about preferred terminology here. Any opinions?

There is discussion of bit order (and byte order) at Cyclic redundancy check so I think it would be valuable to restore that tie in. ~Kvng (talk) 13:49, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Potentially problematic edits

Thumperward has recently made some bold edits. Some of these don't appear to be well justified. I have not reverted any of this yet.

cite quotes are almost always pointless. I assume they're helpful to readers who don't have ready access to the cited source. What's the harm?
one day people will get over this completely wrong-headed notion that any time a term might ever possibly refer to the current article, it needs to be bolded. Some of the boldface is per MOS:BOLDSYN and should be restored.
ascii art is a bad way of representing anything, and the text should be clear enough already, likewise. text does a perfectly good job here. These are tables, not ASCII art. It is very often useful to have both visual and written descriptions as different presentations work better for different readers.
just link this. I don't see a problem summarizing a closely-related topic here.
more jargon file crap. A quick search finds NUXI problem in fairly widespread use. This may need to be tagged for a better citation. I don't think it should be removed. This bold edit also draws into question some of the work done a little earlier in ...remove "byte-sex" nonsense from ESR's jargon file, which is nothing more than ESR's own list of personal neologisms.
cite needed, not code. So let's find a citation. Meanwhile, let's keep the code as provides some level of verifiability to anyone who knows the language in question. WP:DEMOLISH.

~Kvng (talk) 15:37, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Let's go through these in order.

The "harm" is massing up both wikitext and article text with large paragraphs which by definition simply repeat what is in the article. A citation should point the reader to the relevant source. Unless it is lost to time, including the actual content here is overkill. There may occasionally be grounds for this but that should be the exception.
BOLDSYN refers to the article's lead, and very very very very very very obviously does not justify bolding the phrase "big" 75% of the way through this article.
Any table content not intelligible with a screen reader is harmful, and the meaning of these tables can (as demonstrated) be perfectly encapsulated in text form without causing readability issues to unsighted readers.
Disambiguation belongs in the article headers. Occasionally a similar but distinct topic might deserve some coverage in the body, but this was overkill for what is basically a dissimilar concept that happens to occasionally be known by a similar name.
If there are good, reliable sources for NUXI then so be it. Removing content which is sourced solely to Eric Raymond's Jargon File, which is pretty much the definition of an unreliable source (it is a self-published work which pretends to be authoritative, and has legions of examples of pushing ESR's own opinions) should not be controversial.
Using uncited material to verify a fact is the very definition of original research. The vast majority of readers are not coders, and using code examples is therefore one of the worst ways to provide evidence for a given statement.
Lastly, WP:DEMOLISH refers to the notion that articles should not be subject to the same rigorous standards as established articles during their creation. This article is fully 21 years old, making it more than mature enough to finally receive some serious editing (which by necessity will involve removing pieces of it).

Feel free to attempt to suggest alternative solutions to the issues highlighted. I do appreciate that they weren't reverted. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 04:25, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

The harm you see and the benefit I (and presumably the editor that added these quotes) see need to be balanced somehow.
There is a mix of good and bad in your edits. That's why they have not been reverted. Do you agree we should restore bold to redirected terms?
OK so there's potential harm and benefit here too. These are standard wiki tables. I was not aware there was a screen reader issue with these.
You think it is overkill. I think a bare link is overly terse. Maybe we can find some middle ground.
Yes, I'm happy to find a source for NUXI but I'm currently busy arguing with you. It's a common pattern on Misplaced Pages and not much fun for me.

~Kvng (talk) 16:09, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

The mantra that redirected terms must be bolded has metastasised into something it was never meant to be. If a term is unique and commonplace, then it should be bolded in the lead. It is categorically not necessary to treat article subsections as if they were mini-leads and to apply this all over again. And the subject of whether or not various minor synonyms deserved placement in the lead was already settled in previous discussion. So if a random search term happens to have a redirect to an anchor in an article, there is no mandate to bold it. Never was.

I am aware that the subject might benefit from a graphical demonstration, but it is very important to be sensitive on this front. Readers might not be using desktop browsers. They might be using screen readers. The article might be in audiobook format. Or any number of other issues. This is why we try to avoid presenting material in images or tables if there are alternative options. This article previously swung too far in the opposite direction. That's been holding it back.

With regards to NUXI, this (not a reliable source, but still) does claim it predates Raymond. Though to be quite honest, any source from that period would almost certainly be more valuable for general discussion of this article's content than specifically for one synonym. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 03:46, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

So where do we stand? To me it looks like we're at 0 for 6 toward resolution of these issues. Hopefully we'll get some comments from other editors to help us through this. ~Kvng (talk) 14:55, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

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