Wikipedia talk:Informative

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Contents

[edit] Testimonials

Not a bad summary of the criteria --Morven 01:48, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Quotes and humour

Quote: "George W. Bush is an illiterate moron - obvious."

O Brits and their dark humour.... :-D --Menchi 02:20, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I felt the humour made the page less dreary, but it is something of a hairy arm - I'm not expecting it to last... :) Martin
Sorry, I really felt bad about deleting that. Really doesn't need to be here though. LittleBrother 13 Jan 2004

[edit] Data vs. information

I do copywriting. Sometimes clients want me to include statistcs because, well, they have these statistics here (and sometimes they commissioned to polls themselves, meaning they spent good money to get these here statistics). Now, when these requests come up, I can quote (the current version of) this page and say "Information is not the same as data. If you want data, get a random number generator." --Charles A. L. 18:23, Dec 8, 2003 (UTC)

Glad to be of service, Charles! Raw data can sometimes be forgiven in a work in progess, because it might eventually become information after it's worked on. But on a finished product like an advert, it's unforgivable! Martin

[edit] Title

"Informative" is a bad title. Here are a few reasons why:

  1. Informative is an adjective meaning providing information. There is no need to complicate things by making another page for providing information besides the one on information.
  2. If someone is looking for what an informative wikipedia article is (or what informative content is) they will not be expecting to find it on a page entitled "informative" they will expect it on a page such as "informative subject" or "information". Bensaccount 22:55, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

"Uninformative subject" is a bad title, IMO, because the title is cumbersome, and because the content relates to both uninformative content and uninformative subjects.

I typically use this word as "this material is not informative", so the adjective name is useful, in my opinion.

I don't think this page is redundant with information: that is an encyclopedia article, while this is a policy page. They thus serve very different purposes. Martin 23:18, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The only difference between the two pages is the statement: "Wikipedia must be informative". Everything else attempts to define informative. Bensaccount 14:18, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Martin. This is a policy page. For policy, Wikipedians look to pages in the Wikipedia namespace, not to articles. Isomorphic 21:51, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

That may be true but this page is still just saying one statement. The statement that wikipedia must be informative should be put on Wikipedia: What Wikipedia is not (Uniformative). There is no need for a whole policy page for that one statement. Bensaccount 02:56, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

[edit] From VFD

Template:VfD-informative

[edit] Actionable

Who is it who "often" defines "knowledge" as "actionable belief"? It sounds like someone's jargon, but whose? What distinction is actually being drawn? Which beliefs aren't "actionable"? There's lots here that is misleading, such as comparing data with random numbers. -Nunh-huh

Philosohers. Cf knowledge (philosophy).
raw data is about as useful and meaningful as random numbers.
This article is the place to learn about Wikipedia's policy on uninformative content. To learn about information itself, in an enyclopedic manner, see information. Martin 14:12, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Which ones? The page you cite suggests that "actionable" in philosophic use is a synonym for "useful". I'm not sure this page helps make the subjective determination of what is "useful" more objective. Even so, if this is a policy page, plain language rather than philosophic terms should be used. And raw data is certainly more meaningful than random numbers! That's the essential difference between them! Random numbers contain no information. Data does. - Nunh-huh 20:58, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

You are trying to make Information mean something other than information when used on the Wikipedia project namespace. Wikipedia is not a common enough context to warrent its own definition of words. Its hard enough to try and explain rules on Wikipedia using the standard definition of words. Bensaccount 15:18, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Furthermore, there is no need to use the philosophical definition of knowledge here. The general definition is better suited. Knowledge. Bensaccount 15:22, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I think this page is suffering from a surfeit of philosophy. Perhaps we should edit it. A novel concept, I know... ;) And I must admit that I don't entirely get the explanation of what is "actionable". We have:

  • "The birthday of Lev Borisovich Kamenev is actionable, as something that has been written about in his biography, and in discussions of his age relative to contemporaries."

Right... So everything that has been written about is also actionable, yes? After all, writing is an action. It seems to me that this is already covered by "No original research". Not including original research implies that everything in Wikipedia has been written about before, which in turn implies that it has been "actioned". So it seems to me that we don't need to worry about this "actionable" concept at all.

  • "The birthday of Alicia's cat is not actionable, as the cat's been dead for two years, and even Alicia would struggle to remember it if she hadn't written it down."

Eh? Kamenev has been dead for a lot longer than two years, and I don't suppose many people would know his date of death if it hadn't been written down. If the cat's death has been written down, then it is actionable, since writing is an action, yes? I honestly can't see a significant difference in terms of actionability (is that a word?) between the two cases here. There may be a reason not to include the cat's date of death in Wikipedia, but I can't see how it can have anything to do with this "actionable" concept. So can we just ditch it? :) -- Oliver P. 05:07, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I've clarified the Kamenev example - mentioning it in his biography was a bit of a red herring. What is actionable is that (several) people read his birthdate in his biography and do something based on that.
It's not a duplicate of "no original research". My granddad's birthday is recorded in a census somewhere, so it is not original research, but it's still not particularly actionable. Martin 00:42, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Dead people

Removed: "Because Wikipedia is so incredibly generous, we don't even mind if the primary people interested in some fact are now all dead. For example, the 38 people with a special interest in knowing that the Hale-Bopp comet was just a comet."

This is quite amusing, so perhaps it wasn't meant seriously. However, if it was, I think it misses the point. We'd only include information relevant to the beliefs of the Heaven's Gate cult if those beliefs were potentially interesting to someone who was still alive. Of course, there are lots of living people interested in that cult, so we would include the information for their benefit, not for the benefit of the people who are now dead! -- Oliver P. 05:29, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I guess I wanted to avoid folks deleting stuff that used to be interesting , merely because it isn't currently interesting - mainly because tastes change, and there might be a sudden revival of interest in it. Martin 00:42, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] So, what's happening?

What's the next step on the road to making this official policy? The term 'notablity' is banded about a lot on the VfD page, but this page is the closest thing to a definition. Dan100 10:56, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC)

I don't think there is a next step as this proposal has been dead for months. - SimonP 21:03, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)

Can't quite see that myself - it seems a lot of things happily chug along on Wikipedia, then just stop. Dead. But then mysteriously pick up again... Waiting for the New Year, then will put it on RfC, VP etc Dan100 21:07, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)

Well, I wouldn't count much on those like I did with Preliminary Deletion. I fully support this as policy, though — I'm actually surprised this isn't policy already. Johnleemk | Talk 13:09, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

OK, I'm going to move to make this official policy. Dan100 09:31, Jan 8, 2005 (UTC)

Woot! Martin

[edit] Wikipedia:Importance

This seems to me to be a vague variation of the older proposal Wikipedia:Importance. "Interesting" is covered there, and I don't think "actionable" is actionable :p, because it is vague, inherently POV and hard to understand. ··gracefool |☺ 05:24, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I think you'll find that this page is the older, and that wikipedia:importance postdates it by eleven months.
Informative - (cur) (last) 23:33, 25 Nov 2003 MyRedDice
Importance - (cur) (last) 22:55, 26 Aug 2004 Gracefool
No Respect For History...
Anyways, if you would like to merge the two articles in a single page, please be bold in doing so. Don't forget to update the links. :)
-- user:MyRedDice
Oops. I've moved the policy to Wikipedia:Informative/Old, and the main page now redirects to Wikipedia:Importance. ··gracefool |☺ 09:47, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I don't understand this redirect. How is being important the same as being informative? Also, Wikipedia:Importance links to Wikipedia:Informative, so it doesn't make sense to redirect Wikipedia:Informative back there. The two concepts seems very different to me. Surely something can be informative without being important? Angela. 14:46, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)
I hadn't removed the links from Wikipedia:Important yet. Since both policies try to define what should and should not be included in Wikipedia, and Wikipedia:Important tries to be a complete definition, they are the same thing (or, at least, Wikipedia:Informative is a subset). As I said above, "interesting" is better defined in Wikipedia:Important, and "actionable" is "vague, inherently POV and hard to understand". ··gracefool |☺ 04:54, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Removing Wikipedia:Informative altogether would seem better than redirecting it to Wikipedia:Importance since they're two different concepts. Angela. 23:38, Jun 7, 2005 (UTC)
I agree that they are different concepts. As I mentioned on Wikipedia talk:importance I think the best solution is to merge all these pages to Wikipedia:Encyclopedic, which is a broad enough term to cover everything. - SimonP 00:14, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)