Talk:Bandwidth (computing)

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was no consensus on new destination, if any. JPG-GR (talk) 05:00, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Bandwidth (computing) → Bandwidth (digital) — The current name for this article is not broad enough. Digital bandwidth is also widely used in telecommunications, since much of it is now digital. The misnamed article is confusing the editors who are busy disambiguating links to Bandwidth. I've seen several links to Bandwidth (signal processing) that should have pointed here. —Srleffler (talk) 00:25, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

I am doing a lot of the disambiguation, so I thought I should ask which instances there is disagreement about in my choice for the bit rate sense (computing/digital) and the frequency range sense (analog/signal processing). I hoped I was doing more good than harm, but if I am causing consternation, I want to work together to come to a consensus. CosineKitty (talk) 00:31, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

You're definitely doing more good than harm. If there are any you're not sure about, feel free to leave a note on my talk page and I'll see if they are clearer to me.--Srleffler (talk) 00:38, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's naming conventions.

• Oppose. In textbooks on digital communications, digital electronics, digital wireless communications, etc, bandwidth would be measured in Hertz. Measuring bandwidth in bps is only common in books on computing and computer networking, and perhaps some books on modern telecommunications, not dealing with electrical engineering aspects. The term "digital bandwidth" is not very common, but I like it. It is mainly only occuring in a few books about computer networking, for exampel Data Communications and Networking By Behrouz A. Forouzan, section "Digital versus analog bandwidth". Mange01 (talk) 02:34, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

Any additional comments:

Hi. It is usually a noun, not an adjective, that is used in parentheses. WP:DAB says the word in parentheses should be "the subject or context to which the topic applies". It also says "Rarely, an adjective describing the topic can be used, but it is usually better to rephrase the title to avoid parentheses." Would Digital bandwidth be better? or Bandwidth (digital communications)? Sam (talk) 20:38, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

The original suggestion was based on the assertion that computing was too restrictive, and thus was confusing people into disambiguating links improperly. I was doing a lot of this disambiguation, and there has been one case where I definitely did make a mistake. But it was not because I didn't understand the difference between signal processing and computing. Another reason offered for the article move is that computing is too restrictive, because transmitting bits of data over a fiber optic line is not necessarily computing, but it is digital. It is also digital communications, but digital bandwidth also applies to, say, transferring data on a bus between memory and CPU, which is closer to computing than communications. With this in mind, maybe something like Bandwidth (data transfer) or Bandwidth (bit rate) would make sense? There are many other possibilities where we could follow the convention and make it a generic enough noun, and still distinguish this sense of the word from the range-of-frequencies sense. CosineKitty (talk) 22:17, 24 June 2008

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.