Talk:Demography/Archives/2017

Lack of citation

There seems to be no citations at all in direct methods. There needs to be credible sources referenced for this section. Huynthom (talk) 07:06, 27 February 2017 (UTC) Huynthom (talk)

Merge discussion (2012)

KimberHM1 (talk) 15:54, 6 November 2013 (UTC) === merge and redirect to demography ===

Merge This is article is much lower in quality compared to demography. I'm not sure much can be done to fix it, and suggest that it makes more sense to redirect to that page. Declanscottp (talk) 08:15, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Merge I believe there's a strong amount of redundancy between demographics and demography, making a merge appropriate. It's true that these are two different concepts in a dictionary sense, but they're as highly interrelated. I think they complement each other well in providing readers with context. Demography is the study of population, and demographics is what such studies produce. Vcessayist (talk) 20:19, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Oppose the merge: "Demographics" remains a colloquial term for "demographic data," and is used especially by people working in advertising, market research, the media, and polling. Professional demographers scarcely ever use the term "demographics". One could verify this by doing a scan of mainline professional journals in demography, e.g., Demography, Population Studies, and Population and Development Review. What WP has done in providing a section labelled "demographics" in every country article (rather than, say, the label "demographic profile") is to apply jargon from market research and the media, not the professional terminology of the field of demography.~Mack2~ 07:52, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Merge it! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.74.62.252 (talk) 08:34, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

• Merge and move I was opposed at first due to the slight difference in meaning, but after looking at both articles I suggest (if this is feasible—I've done some merges and some page moves but never both together yet) merging Demographics into Demography and then moving the page to Demographics (the more-common word—this will probably entail first deleting the redirect resulting from the merge). I may be able to help if needed. All the best, Miniapolis (talk) 16:02, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

I strongly Oppose this solution. Demography is an academic field devoted to the scientific study of population. Demographics is not an academic field. It is not a science. People don't take courses in it in college. Demographics are certain types of population data, not a field of study. They are typically synoptic, descriptive data summarizing a few key characteristics of a population, audience, or subjects/respondents (participants) in a study or report. It would be a serious mistake to retitle the current "Demography" article as "Demographics."~Mack2~ 04:27, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

• Merge. As clear cut a case as I've seen of namespace muddling. Note mack2 has voted twice above, there's only 1 opposing voice ATM. Don't see why mack2's position can't be accommodated and this merged into the other, especially if e's going to do it.Lycurgus (talk) 06:10, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

• Nope and here's why. Please note my opposition to the last proposal was motivated above all by the proposal to "disappear" the topic of demography and to use the supposed "more common word." That is about as misinformed as one can be. Demography is a scientific discipline. The "more common word" ("demographics") is not a scientific discipline. That kind of proposal is akin to saying Wikipedia doesn't need an article on "meteorology" because "the more common word" is "weather forecasting". Nope.~Mack2~ 02:13, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Move on, you're the only voice opposing the move and everybody is saying the merge target should be demography. Lycurgus (talk) 15:15, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Actually, it's like saying that an article on "meteorological" should be merged with "meteorology." "Demographic" is an adjectival form of "demography," and "demographics" is indeed just slang for "demographic information," which is information having to do with "demography." Merge it already. Nnebeel1 (talk) 20:45, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Don't Merge, They are two different words in the Dictionary so they should be two different articles on Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.184.19.94 (talk) 13:13, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

• Merge Demographics & Demography are basically two forms of the same word. It's like seismogram and seismograph. They are different words, but they have very similar definitions. It is a science and the result of said science. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:C:AD00:CE9:999:CA56:D377:2F51 (talk) 23:10, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Merge topics under Demography; keep Demographics as sub-heading. Demography is the scientific collection and study of demographic data, which the majority of non-scientists refer to as "demographics." Use the merged topic page as a vehicle to educate readers on the difference.

• Merge Agree, merge with Demography; have small subsection explaining the use of the word "demographics" as a colloquial term for demographic data. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.226.118.217 (talk) 04:43, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

I agree with this approach. Demographics as section within Demography article, with reference/link to the present "Demographics" article as the main article on the topic "demographics". What I opposed before and still oppose is that the title of the original article on Demography be changed to Demographics. Among other things, WP renaming an entire academic/scientific field would throw professional demographers into a tizzy.~Mack2~ 15:12, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

• Merge Perfect idea. Simple, yet genius.

• Agree, merge. Why hasn't it been done yet? ----Ehrenkater (talk) 14:37, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Request assistance; link history and demography, to automatically make demography statistics appear in the pages giving historic overviews e.g. when clicking a particular century, decade or year

This would very helpful to bring insights. There are already (semi-)automated tools to generate pages summarizing the notable events of a particular centuries, decades and year. Just try it: the next article you read and you see a year, decade or century mentioned, put it between square brackets and enjoy being lead to a page with an overview of the most noteable events. Also the portal Wikipedia:WikiProject_Statistics has quite some "navigational boxes" that do quite a bit of automation. The quest for developing such a tool was brought up in the portal talk article on "History" Portal_talk:History#How_about_automatically_making_human_population_evolution_numbers_appear_in_the_pages_giving_historic_overviews_e.g._when_clicking_a_particular_century.3F and I've linked to the Wikipedia:WikiProject_Statistics.

Enjoy your day, like me :) --SvenAERTS (talk) 14:21, 8 April 2017 (UTC)