Wikipedia talk:Key information
"Defining data" as a term
[edit]I am not sure what technical term is already established, if any, for describing the kind of information which Wikipedia puts in infoboxes. I used the term "defining data" because I thought it was clear enough, I liked the alliteration, the shortcut WP:DD is not in wide use and can be usurped, and because I am not aware of any term for this purpose in Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, any Wikipedia, or anywhere. If anyone knows of a more established term then please share. Other possible terms:
- implicit data, but see also Implicit data structure and Implicit data collection
- basic data
- basic facts
- infobox data
- basic facts
- fundamental claims
- orienting info
- defining facts
Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:56, 24 November 2019 (UTC)
Infoboxes and defining data
[edit]Wikipedia defined the concept of a digital infobox. While infoboxes existed in books and non-digital formatting, Wikipedia made infoboxes of all sorts available and popular to everyone everywhere in the world.
In popularizing infoboxes Wikipedia also developed the culture of expectations around what an infobox is, what it is not, how people should react to them, when anyone should expect for them to exist, and when an infobox ought to be at the subject of conversation. All of this culture leads to the concept of "defining data", which is the information that humanity and culture wants an infobox to contain at the exclusion of all the information which the infobox will not contain.
My personal opinion is that Wikipedia alone reinvented the infobox for the digital era and popularized it as a concept with which every individual must engage to orient themselves in the world. Even moreso, Wikipedia originated the concept of "defining data", which is the global participatory human reaction in which everyone who is a consumer of infobox information is also a decision maker who decides what everyone else in the world who follows thereafter gets to see as defining data when they request an infobox.
I have been hearing people talk about infobox data continually for years. I am less aware of anyone giving a name to the data in an infobox, especially in the context of the data which everyone wants excluded as excessive beyond the initial human attention span which Wikipedia targets as a general reference encyclopedia. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:06, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
Wikidata, schemas, and English Wikipedia
[edit]In October 2019 John Cummings and NavinoEvans organized this WP:RfC in Wikidata:
This pertains to
- Wikidata: Q29377880 (Scholia)
- d:Wikidata:WikiProject Schemas
- Schema.org
- the experiment of generating a Wikidata-based infobox at {{Infobox telescope}}
- and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Infoboxes in general
- the recent establishment of schemas as a namespace in Wikidata, such as with d:E42
The general consequence is that we will be able to look at collections of articles and identify which outliers are different. For example, if we have a million biographies, we will be able to detect which ones lack date of birth or nationality. In some of those places we will be able to guess, perhaps by estimating date of birth to points within 50 years, and place of birth in a region or continent.
The advent of schemas could change lots of things. Seeing the developments with Wikidata schemas inspired me to draft something on English Wikipedia to guide policies.
I could be underinformed about what is happening here, but all of this seems related to me. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:33, 24 November 2019 (UTC)