Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2018 February 15
February 15
Years in the Holy Roman Empire (1000-1500)
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Propose merging Category:1479 disestablishments in the Holy Roman Empire to Category:1479 disestablishments in Europe and Category:1470s disestablishments in the Holy Roman Empire
Support -- It might be helpful if the nom could provide some statistics to go with these merge noms on how many of the categories have multiple members. At the point where we start getting significant numbers with at least 5 members we need to stop. Peterkingiron (talk) 17:04, 18 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
For example the 15th century contains just over 40 articles (excluding establishments and disestablishments subcats), this will result in on average 4 articles per decade. Earlier centuries obviously less. It is a very conservative nomination after all. Marcocapelle (talk) 18:37, 18 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Category:Thanh Hóa F.C. players
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Category:Information storage
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
I don't believe there is any significant different between "information" and "data" in this context. Data storage starts with "Data storage is the ecording (storing) of information (data) in a storage medium" so it's using the terms as synonyms. I don't think museums should even be in the category: they may store data along with objects, but there are a lot of organisations that store data. I don't see any problem with Archives. As for Data vs Information, definitions vary and distinguishing them is splitting hairs. Data says at one point: "According to a common view, data is collected and analyzed; data only becomes information suitable for making decisions once it has been analyzed in some fashion", suggesting that information is a subset of data, yet Category:Data is a subcategory of Category:Information. ghouston (talk) 10:25, 14 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Ghouston: you make a good case, but I'm not entirely persuaded by that analysis, which seems to me to be possibly a little too tied to a computing perspective. I have no expertise in the field, so I maybe wholly wrong, but I think this needs a full discussion to allow other editors to contribute. If you like, I can do a procedural nomination which includes a copy of our discussion here; alternatively you could create the full discussion setting out your rationale at the head. Which would you prefer? --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 21:08, 14 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
It's information theory as much as computing. A bit is the basic unit of information, and is also the basic unit of data. It seems unlikely to me that data and information can be distinguished in any meaningful way in categories. But please go ahead with whatever procedure is required. ghouston (talk) 22:59, 14 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose (I hope I'm putting this in the right place--I'm an AfD person). Data storage is a type of information storage and retrieval system. When you look up articles in databases like EBSCO, for example, articles about data storage are considered to be part of the subject "Information Storage and Retrieval Systems" [4], [5], [6]. In general, I would argue that data storage is a subset of the subject heading: "Information Storage and Retrieval systems," so changing the name of the category wouldn't make sense. In addition, information storage doesn't have to be "data." It can be recorded in an analog form, such as microfiche. [7]Megalibrarygirl (talk) 19:34, 15 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately, those ebscohost.com links just take me to a login page. The question is probably how "data" should be defined, is it just digitised information that can be fed to a computer program, or perhaps tables of numbers, or can we use it in a wider context. I believe data can be analogue, can we also consider a microfiche to be data that contains information? ghouston (talk) 11:23, 16 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Ghouston: sorry that those didn't resolve for you. They're the permanent links that EBSCOhost provides and without access, they don't take you anywhere... even to a abstract. EBSCO isn't user friendly. Here are the citations:
Meng, X. (2018). A churn-aware durable data storage scheme in hybrid P2P networks. Journal Of Supercomputing, 74(1), 183-204.doi:10.1007/s11227-017-2125-4
Muthurajkumar, S., Vijayalakshmi, M., & Kannan, A. (2017). Secured Data Storage and Retrieval Algorithm Using Map Reduce Techniques and Chaining Encryption in Cloud Databases. Wireless Personal Communications, 96(4), 5621-5633.doi:10.1007/s11277-017-4437-3
Anyone who wants full text of the articles can ask me, but since I see that two have DOI, you may be able to resolve them in a different database. Please ping me or I won't know you need access! :) Megalibrarygirl (talk) 16:36, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support I agree with the sentiment BrownHairedGirl brings up that Data storage slightly alludes to computer data, but I think the explanation for the phrasing and the simple fact that the Information storage page redirects to Data storage is a good enough reason to rename this article as such. It's a little confusing at first, but in the long run won't impact much because not many articles exist in this category as it - most exist in sub-categories to this one. SEMMENDINGER (talk) 00:44, 15 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Comment In common language, data is the raw content one collects and analyzes to produce information. In the context of information theory, the data might be everything that comes through a communication channel, including noise. But the information is the signal that is extracted from that data. Based on that, I'd say that information storage is more specialized and different from data storage; information storage implies some sort of analysis, classification or annotation beyond raw data. Museum archives are a good example of this. Hence a mild oppose, but I don't have strong feelings on this, as this is a really broad type of category, upper ontology stuff. --Mark viking (talk) 00:57, 15 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
This seems reasonable, in the idea that data or signal is the substrate that contains information. But I'm not sure if "information storage" separated from data storage makes any sense. Information can only be stored by encoding it into a medium, such as written texts or binary files on a storage device. ghouston (talk) 03:08, 16 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: I wanted to clarify that the Commons category c:Category:Data storage can be linked to the wikidata item d:Q6484154, which has Category:Information storage as a site link, and that the main topic for this item is d:Q193395 which in turn has Data storage as a site link. It would be easiest if they were all named the same way, and I wouldn't care if it was Data storage or Information storage. Renaming the Wikipedia article would be fine too. Separating computer data storage from paper document storage can be done with subcategories, instead of by attempting to distinguish data from information. ghouston (talk) 01:02, 15 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The alternative to unifying data and information storage would be to have separate articles and categories for each, but I don't see this as very useful or workable. I'm not even convinced that separate articles and categories for data and information is useful.ghouston (talk) 01:07, 15 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
If I toss a coin, and record the value as "heads", I've just used 5 bytes (typically 40 bits) of data to represent 1 bit of information. Hmm. ghouston (talk) 01:50, 15 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support, four out of 5 current articles are directly about data storage, the 5th article refers to Data storage and is not about information storage. Category:Museums certainly does not belong here as a child category, other subcategories fit equally well (or equally poor) in Category:Data storage as in Category:Information storage. For the sake of the articles the category certainly needs to be renamed, for the subcategories either of the two names is fine, which sums up to rename. Marcocapelle (talk) 22:50, 15 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I think this would support the case for renaming it, since otherwise we need to put everything in the Universe under Category:Information storage. ghouston (talk) 23:36, 7 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the ping. After reviewing the "newer" posts I stand by my previous vote of support, though I find the name change to be rather unimportant in the long haul. SEMMENDINGER (talk) 17:13, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Its clear that people have varied concepts of data vs information storage, likely based on their background. My recommendation is still oppose, as I think they are different concepts. But Marcocapelle make a good practical argument for support, hence a weak oppose. --Mark viking (talk) 17:36, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Comment: I wanted to clarify that the Commons category c:Category:Data storage can be linked to the wikidata item d:Q6484154, which has Category:Information storage as a site link, and that the main topic for this item is d:Q193395 which in turn has Data storage as a site link. It would be easiest if they were all named the same way, and I wouldn't care if it was Data storage or Information storage. Renaming the Wikipedia article would be fine too. Separating computer data storage from paper document storage can be done with subcategories, instead of by attempting to distinguish data from information. ghouston (talk) 01:02, 15 February 2018 (UTC)