Talk:Informatics

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Contents 1 Interwiki 2 See Also 3 We got blogged 4 Lacking information 5 New article request 6 Multiple sets of information?

[edit] Interwiki

Interwiki links were removed by User:R._Koot on the grounds that they all link back to computer science or information science.

The french article, for example, is clear that "informatique" designates something broader than the English "computer science".

I think these interwiki links were useful, and informative. Can we have them back? Michael Fourman 17:21, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Interwiki links are not meant to point to articles in other languages which are related, but which are equivalent. Building many-to-many relationships with interwiki links creates a maintenance hell (and breaks all automated tools to assist with it.) While the French article indeed discusses more than the academic discipline of computer science, the German and Dutch articles do not. I do not see how the French article refers to informatics in particular (only to information technology in general, which can be explained by the fact that in many languages, including English, computer science not only refers to the academic discipline but also, colloquially, to anything related to computers and information technology.) —Ruud 17:50, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

The German article does have the section de:Informatik#Informatik in interdisziplinären Wissenschaften, but I do not believe this warrant creating an interwiki link between en:Informatics and de:Informatik in any direction. —Ruud 17:56, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I see the point. The problem is that "Computer Science" in English is narrower than "informatique" (fr) etc. In general, concepts don't match up nicely between languages, so equivalence (which is fine for concrete objects like Mt Everest) is problematic as a criterion for interwiki links for more conceptual subjects. I take it that you kept the japanese link as it refers back to informatics. I suspect that some of the other entries would be better making that link, rather than one to computer science. Unfortunately, my language skills don't let me check that! I still think that some links to these uses of (homonyms of) "informatics" would be helpful within the en:Informatics article. —Michael Fourman 18:39, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

The German article also says, "Die Künstliche Intelligenz (KI) ist ein großes Teilgebiet der Informatik " ( de:Informatik#Künstliche Intelligenz. English usage typically separates these. — a reason for questioning the interwiki link from de:Informatik to en:Computer Science — Michael Fourman 18:47, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I regard computational intelligence and machine learning as branches of computer science and I believe the German article refers to those fields and not, for example, the psychological and cognitive aspects. As a more concrete example, the book Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (which only treats the computational aspects of AI) is used at many computer science departments in Britain and the US and one of the authors, Stuart Russell, is a professor Berkeley's CS department. The same distinction is made at my university in the Netherlands, computational aspects are part of the CS program, but there is also a separate degree in AI in which cognitive and linguistic aspects are treated as well. 19:38, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I think that trying to draw a line between computational aspects of AI and psychological and cognitive aspects is a mistake, since the line has to move as science progresses. In the UK, I think that machine learning is indeed now regarded as part of computer science (it was not always so), but cognitive and psychological aspects are not - so we use the word "informatics" for the wider, inclusive view. My expectation is that the european (fr, de, it, etc) use of informatics is extending its meaning to be closer to en:Informatics, while the meaning of "en:Computer Science" cannot move too far away from the "computer". So I expect that in some instances the interwiki links should be to/from en:Informatics, and that the number of languages for which this is true will grow. The links you removed had been added organically, perhaps there should be a note explaining that such a link should not be added except in cases where it makes sense for he reciprocal link to point to en:Informatics. Michael Fourman 21:42, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] See Also

• Talk:Information science

[edit] We got blogged

We got [blogged http://uncoveringinformationlabor.blogspot.com/2006/04/informatics-information-science-and.html]. —Ruud 01:35, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lacking information

The entire article is about the word "Informatics" itself, and not the concept to which it refers. Almost all of the article is an etymology section. If there's nothing that can be said about informatics except for etymology, then maybe it belongs in a dictionary rather than an encyclopedia. Jibjibjib 09:42, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New article request

Hi there, I'd like to suggest a new article on the full history of information handling/management/techonology (details). I'm not knowledgeable enough to do it myself, but contributors here probably are. Thanks, JackyR | Talk 18:04, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Multiple sets of information?

Has anyone ever accomplished the task of using the complexity of changing information in a physical resource to arrange into something like a neural network, thereby creating a new virtual resource for a unique second set of data? MobyDikc (talk) 02:37, 22 January 2008 (UTC)