Talk:Truthiness

Still missing
The usage of the terms truthy/falsy for... umm, exactly that... in computing contexts has stuck, if anything better than the Colbertian sense. I'm not saying it belongs here, but a "For ... see ..." template might. 76.73.175.43 (talk) 09:41, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

Did we forget what this was all about?
How is this an article without referencing that this word was created to discredit Wikipedia? — Preceding unsigned comment added by SarkamW (talk • contribs) 07:56, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

"Truthy" and "falsy" in programming: pre-Colbert or post-Colbert?
As a non-American I'm wondering: do these terms actually pre-date Colbert's penning of the gut-truth definition or are they obvious references us foreigners couldn't possibly spot? In programming the adjectives "truthy" and "falsy" refer to values which evaluate to the booleans "true" and "false" (rather than the boolean values themselves). In JavaScript, for example, the numerical value "0" or the empty array "[]" would both be "falsy", other numerical values or non-empty arrays on the other hand would be "truthy". The terms are probably limited to dynamically typed languages, though some statically typed languages seem to allow using non-booleans as booleans (though this may be related to how booleans and boolean comparisons are implemented, so this may be very different). --- 78.35.107.83 (talk) 16:41, 7 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I added a paragraph on this, but it needs a bit of help (eg, with citations). FWIW, here are some relevant links: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/116883/is-truthiness-a-legitimate-programming-term,

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/713894/Truthy-Vs-Falsy-Values-in-JavaScript RichMorin (talk) 04:45, 26 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Truthiness (as an intensively discussed topic) has a long history in coding, particularly in weakly-typed languages like JavaScript, SQL or Visual Basic. Crockford would be a solid ref for this. Unlike strongly-typed languages (Pascal being one of the first popular ones to have a specific Boolean type) or like C, where programmers counted every bit mentally, JavaScript and especially the varying notions of false / 0 / null / empty / void made a robust abstract model of their interpretation as truthful essential for reliable coding. I doubt the word truthiness is etymologically any older than Colbert, but the concept certainly is. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:44, 26 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Hm -- this paragraph seems to have been cut. Strange. Does anyone know why? I've found uses of "truthy" going back years before Colbert. --winterstein (talk) 12:18, 14 July 2016 (UTC)


 * Just the regular edit-warring from, who is equally omniscient on all technical topics.
 * For sources, Niklaus Wirth might be good as an early one, as he had some heated debate with Kernighan and Ritchie over C's fairly free-wheeling use of truthiness for a wide range of values - probably the first time that such behaviour had been codified in a language spec and encouraged as best practice, rather than being an accidental side effect. Pascal of course took a strictly typed approach with an explicit Boolean type.
 * The concept of "truthiness" has at least 40 years well-documented and sourceable history in computing, with a meaning of, "That which evaluates as true, no matter its actual value or representation." The specific word used here probably dates from Colbert. I'm in the UK, I've heard the term in use since around 2006, but still don't know what a Colbert is.
 * For a recent use, Crockford's slim JavaScript book (O'Reilly, Butterfly cover) uses the notion and term. Andy Dingley (talk) 18:07, 3 August 2016 (UTC)


 * None of which has anything at all to do with the topic of the article, which is when a human being believes in something irrespective of facts. The other definition of 'truthiness' is only there because it's been connected to the topic via an on-topic reference saying that the word truthiness already existed, and that was done specifically in context. That doesn't mean you get to list every other definition of truthiness in the article. That's OR, and violates WP:NOT. Even if you reference it, that's not sufficient to some javascript book or whatever; you have to reference it in context.GliderMaven (talk) 19:45, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
 * In your opinion. However RS use this word, as a derivation post-Colbert, in the context of computer science.
 * Why are you against truthiness for CompSci appearing here, but you're OK with "Mathiness" being included? Andy Dingley (talk) 21:09, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm opposed to off-topic and unreferenced material appearing in any article, and I would hope you would be too, but apparently not. I hadn't noticed mathiness, but that appears indeed to be off-topic, and I have now tagged it. This contrasts with the pseudoword "trustiness", which is linked by the references.GliderMaven (talk) 22:42, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
 * @GliderMaven please show respect for your fellow editors. You say that CompSci-truthiness" is separate from Colbert-truthiness -- I expect you're probably right there. But CompSci "truthiness" is a notable topic, arguably more notable than Colbert-truthiness. I think having this article handle both uses is the best solution. An alternative would be to have two articles and a disambiguation page -- that feels like overkill to me, but you could make the case. To resolve this, please could you say: Where and how do you think CompSci "truthiness" should be covered? I think if we answer that, we'll fix this issue. Thanks. --winterstein (talk) 16:34, 8 August 2016 (UTC)


 * You have to find a place to put your edits. I don't know off-hand where it should go. Generally speaking where it's a 'usage' thing it should be in wiktionary, not wikipedia, or covered in a compsci specific article. It should not go in a non compsci article like this.GliderMaven (talk) 17:13, 8 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Maybe add it to Boolean data type.GliderMaven (talk) 17:23, 8 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Truthiness is the opposite of a strongly typed Boolean type. It is the working principle that a pragma of regarding some definable set of values as "truthy" is workable and reliable, even without a strictly defined type system. A "truthy" value is not necessarily True, and cannot (correctly) be compared to a Boolean True. It may be though, and is, assumed to stand in for one. This has much more in common with Colbert's logic than Boole's. Andy Dingley (talk) 19:04, 8 August 2016 (UTC)


 * I am understating the case to say that I have considerable difficulty in understanding how anyone could ever seriously think that a reader would expect the programming-related definition of the word 'truthiness' in this article, as opposed to in boolean data type, an article which also covers C-related languages, which have no boolean type per se.GliderMaven (talk) 19:24, 8 August 2016 (UTC)
 * A page that states, "the effective identity between Booleans and integers is still valid for C programs." is dangerously wrong. People have been killed by that assumption. Andy Dingley (talk) 19:29, 8 August 2016 (UTC)
 * That whole article could be completely and dangerously wrong in the extreme, and it would still be the better place to put programming-related information than putting it in this completely unrelated article.GliderMaven (talk) 19:41, 8 August 2016 (UTC)
 * I came to this article expecting to find information about truthy/falsey in programming and was surprised to find a long article about Stephen Colbert. Korn (talk) 15:08, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Crockford refers to "truthy" in an article The Elements of JavaScript Style — Part Two: Idioms from 2005-09-21 ... Sept 21, just under a month before Colbert uses "truthiness", however Crockford does not use "truthiness" itself in that article. Sdp61 (talk) 06:27, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

Truthiness in particle physics
On a similar vein, I could swear we referenced "truthiness" as an alternative to "topness" in my particle physics class from older papers. Might anyone know more? SamuelRiv (talk) 20:39, 15 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Off topic because wikipedia is not a dictionary; what are we going to do, add communism to the red article?GliderMaven (talk) 19:45, 3 August 2016 (UTC)


 * You mean that thing that totally exists? Onceuponajooks (talk) 18:00, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

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Relevance of Bruno Latour to this subject
Is his concept of the "faitiche" ('factishness') not somehow related? See his 2010 book listed in the bibliography here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Latour — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.17.179.75 (talk) 18:39, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
 * If you find a reliable source discussing Latour re "truthiness" bring it here and we might have something to add. - Sum mer PhD v2.0 01:21, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

FA status concerns
As a part of WP:URFA/2020, I am reviewing this article. I have quite a few concerns regarding the FA status of this article. Currently, it needs significant work to retain that shining bronze star: – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 14:05, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
 * The most major concern is the sourcing of the article. For FAs, we expect the sources to not just be secondary and reliable, but also of the highest quality available.
 * There are various places where a non-primary source is needed.
 * What makes BookLocker.com, Firedoglake, YouTube!, Salon, Vox, languagemonitor.com., Today.com, etc. even reliable sources?
 * There are various inconsistencies and other source formatting issues
 * Another major concern in the prose
 * There are too many blockquotes used in the article. Per MOS:QUOTE, "While quotations are an indispensable part of Wikipedia, try not to overuse them. Using too many quotes is incompatible with an encyclopedic writing style ... It is generally recommended that content be written in Wikipedia editors' own words. Consider paraphrasing quotations into plain and concise text when appropriate".
 * Lots of duplicate link throughout the article.
 * The article needs a copy-edit; currently, its prose it not upto FA standards.