Should it be SI as international standard or local because it is more important on product market? Then what to do if this product is available on 2 markets with 2 different preffered standards? Or should I store both at the same time as one entity? Then which format should be used?
hello @Libra I think it’s best using the weight/volume unit of the principal language, normally the main market, of the edited product.
The problem, it is not always clear, what is main product market and how to find it
- I’d expect whichever unit comes first to be the main one for the product’s main market. So “1. oz (40 g)” → “1.4 oz” and “40 g (1.4 oz)” → “40 g’”.
- I’d also expect the imperial units to be used only when they are the default for the product"'s main market.
Sound logical, thanks!
Isn’t that simply “300 ml”?
I was need to explain that " מ"ל " is “ml” in Hebrew script ![]()
So, it has “ml” and " מ"ל " on its packaging
I’d always put the units in their ‘international’ form, so ‘ml’ rather than the russian (which I see regularly in OFF) or hebrew name.
Regarding volume vs weight, it depends on which one is more natural for the product. This is mostly an issue for ice cream (because the values are quite different), and for those I think volume is more natural.
International is SI? Then instead of “oz” I need to prefer “gr” according to your opinion? Or you only mean it should be in English?
The guidelines are problem here as well:
In the app, for instance, quantity has brilliant abstracted instructions “Don’t forget the units” without any proper explanation if it should be formatted in some proper way. So it is not strange, everyone edits according to their own vision. The project doesn’t have any proper standards at all and literally says “just add your product and edit it”. So, yeah, this is what we have because of this permission
- 100g
- 100 g
- 100gr
- 100 gr
- 100grams
- 100 grams
- 100г
- 100грамм
- 100 грамм
- 100 граммов
- 100гр
- 100 гр
- 100ג
- 100 ג
- 100גרם
- 100 גרם
- 4x25g
- 4x25 g
- 4x25gr
- 4x25 gr
- 4x25grams
- 4x25 grams
- 4 x 25g
- 4 x 25 g
- 4 x 25gr
- 4 x 25 gr
- 4 x 25grams
- 4 x 25 grams
- 25gx4
- 25 gx4
- 4 servings x 25g
- 4 servings x 25 g
- 4 упаковки по 25г
- 4 упаковочки по 25 грамм
- 4 штуки по 25 г
- 4 штуки по 25 грамм
- etc, for hundreds of languages, thousands and perhaps tens thousands possible combinations that every user can create based on user’s vision and understanding
I don’t think it is possible to handle all of them… And don’t understand how can someone excpect the data can be reused for some researchers when it is SO unstructured, which makes it almost useless without manual clecking of every product. OK, you can handle most basic cases, but a huge part of products will be uncovered, if you ignore all other cases.
To be honest, I don’t really know why this information is even free text field, when it can be stored as international digital value and be converted to other systems automatically according to user’s settings. And name of units can be translated based on user’s language and similar. OK, theoretically, it can be interesting for some potential random researcher how producers specify weight values exactly on packaging, but this is so narrow and too specific usecase that it doesn’t overweight standartized numeric values because they can be used for tons of goals (research of standard portions in different countries and categories of products, shrinkflation etc), while this field can be used only for one goal in its current realization. And even if we have standartized numeric values, we always can have folksonomy property or something else for storing product quantity credit as is. So I don’t see any one reason to store quantity as free text field…
For servings, in addition, the app allows localized units:
And many users can start to use this recommendation for quantity as well.
Or even these values for quantity of non food products:
- 3, because it has 3 hair brushes? Is so, should it be just 3, “3 (hair) brushes”, “1 hair brush type a, 1 hair brush type b, 1 hair brush type c” etc
- 1, because it is 1 set?
- 1 x 3, 1 set of 3 hair brushes
- other variations
- ערכה 1 עם: 6 פדי אלכוהול לניקוי וחיטוי עור ופצעים, 4 פדים סטריליים, 4 אגדי חבישה מתמתחים …
And similar “fun” things because I still didn’t get any answe to my question about quantity of non food products…
Which category is more to natural to which category and why? Is there any list?
No "‘oz’ is fine if that’s the unit used on the packaging. By “'international”’ I meant essentially the English unit abbreviation. Note : for grams that’s ‘g’, not ‘gr’.
This is OFF so of course there is no list ![]()
That said I suspect it may be hard to come up with a universally correct list as there is probably regional variations on the edges. I think it’s a case where the packaging should be the guide. So if the quantity is listed in ml first, then that’s the defacto ‘natural’ unit for that product in that region and thus what should be put in OFF.







