Talk:Information

Advanced status, some progress has been made since the stub status assigned (now over 450 words) Matt Mahlmann 17:04, 8 April 2007 (CDT)

Proper Workgroup?

The article begins by talking about information theory, which is a rather specific area of computer science. If this is to be the focus of the article, then I think the Computer workgroup ought to be the primary workgroup. Initially, I thought library science should not be included at all, but I'm open to the idea that it should be included. Greg Woodhouse 16:34, 22 May 2007 (CDT)

Obviously LIS needs to be included: It's called Library and Information Science, after all. They are the experts about information, taken as a general topic. --Larry Sanger 17:07, 22 May 2007 (CDT)

I'm not so sure. There is little resemblance between information science (which, in my experience, has primarily to do with metadata and categorization of information) and information theory, which has to do with the quantitative analysis of the information content of streams of bits (or qubits in quantum information theory!) That isn't to say there is no room for overlap. If you set out to write a computer program to find books or papers on a given topic, then you will (perhaps without realizing it) deal with both. Information science may provide you with guidelines on how to proceed (particularly if useful metadata is available), but information theory will provide you with a framework for determining how hard you need to work. Greg Woodhouse 17:21, 22 May 2007 (CDT)

I agree. Information theory is mainly applied mathematics and computer science, not information science. LIS programs do not cover information theory, at least as presented here. James A. Flippin 12:07, 26 June 2007 (CDT)

Rename?

As written, this article seems to be much less about information and more about a mathematical manipulation of information. I propse that it be renamed information theory. This article should be devoted to the much broader topic of information in general. James A. Flippin 12:07, 26 June 2007 (CDT)

That seems reasonable. Perhaps a bit of disambiguation text at the beginning of the article would be appropriate so that people who are really looking for information theory will be directed to the right place. Greg Woodhouse 12:38, 26 June 2007 (CDT)

Or perhaps, as with Information and Information theory at Wikipedia, we should summarize Information theory in Information and link to the full article. James A. Flippin 12:45, 26 June 2007 (CDT)