Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2018 August 28

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August 28

Why do companies run "cash back" promotions rather than just making the items cheaper?

I have seen a number of cashback promotions where a a purchaser can send off the receipt for something they buy and get money back via a cheque through the post. Why don't they make the item cheaper instead? I wonder if it's to collect the personal information for marketing, or perhaps they hope that some people won't claim! -- Q Chris (talk) 16:24, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Read this. --Jayron32 16:29, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm surprised that only 40% of people claim the cashback! -- Q Chris (talk) 08:54, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

I'm surprised for the opposite reason. I find it amazing that as much as 40% send these things in. --Khajidha (talk) 19:03, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

It might be influenced by the size of the rebate. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:06, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

In Jayron's link, what does "UPC" mean? 86.133.58.87 (talk) 11:48, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

Universal Product Code, the barcode that allows products to be scanned by cash registers. --Jayron32 12:46, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

Another reason that hasn't been mentioned yet is that these promotions are often run by the manufacturer, not the retailer. It would be virtually impossible for a manufacturer to convince the myriad retailers that carry their product to all reduce the price at the same time to the same value or by the same discount. Especially since the retailers had bought the items earlier at prices based on the regular suggested retail. Mail-ins allow manufacturers to offer a discount directly to their consumers, no matter where those consumers shop. This increases consumer approval of the manufacturer's brand, making them more likely to buy the product again later at the normal retail price. --Khajidha (talk) 12:55, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

Similarly, a manufacturer might not want their product to be associated with "cheap"; so, advertising the normal retail price with a "rebate" sounds better than a discounted price which implies (perhaps subconsciously) that its not worth the asking price. 2606:A000:1126:4CA:0:98F2:CFF6:1782 (talk) 02:41, 2 September 2018 (UTC)

Sum total

How many wikipedia pages will it take to contain the sum total of human knowledge? And will the pedia be able to cope with all this data? Or will people decide that 10 million pages (say) is enough? 86.8.202.125 (talk) 22:15, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia will never contain "the sum total of human knowledge", regardless of how much space is allocated, because the deletionists will keep paring it down. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:38, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

If or when humanity goes extinct or evolves into something else, then the knowledge will cease increasing. Until then, it's a moving target. We deletionists prune the garden to keep the weeds down. Clarityfiend (talk) 02:38, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

But one person's weed is another person's flower. Weeds are subjective. Richard Avery (talk) 08:20, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

WP:NOT#Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, so it will never contain all human knowledge, nor is it intended to. --ColinFine (talk) 10:14, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

Yes. We are not, after all, the Brainspawn. Deor (talk) 15:27, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

Could Wikipedia contain the list of all things not in Wikipedia? 2A01:E34:EF5E:4640:60FB:4442:102D:A126 (talk) 10:58, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

No. because that list would be infinite. For example, list of items on Dismas' desk. List of items not on Dismas' desk but could still fit on the desk. List of items not on Dismas' desk that could not fit. Etc. There are an infinite number of things that can be on that list. †dismas†|^(talk) 16:00, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

It would not be infinite; though. It would be very large but finite. Those are different things. There are a finite number of things in the observable universe, though a very large number of things. Infinite is not "big enough that I stopped trying to count". The concept of infinity is different than that. --Jayron32 17:36, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

"things" don't have to be something in the observable universe. For example, there are infinitely many prime numbers so a complete list of prime numbers would be infinite. We give the first 1000. Table of prime factors and Table of divisors also stop at 1000. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:05, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

That depends, I suppose, on what your definition of a thing is. If you choose a definition that makes your conclusion forgone, then you can have infinite number of things, so long as you make "a thing" something which can be infinite. If you define "a thing" as a tangible object, then that has a limit. If you define a "thing" as something which can be expressed, that is also finite (everything which can be expressed, or thought of, must be stored as information somewhere, which still requires tangible matter to do so). So again, what do you mean by "thing". --Jayron32 18:17, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

I suspect the question was a joke reference to Russell's paradox about "the set of all sets that are not members of themselves". If Wikipedia had "the list of all things not in Wikipedia" and that list was itself in Wikipedia then any addition to the list would no longer belong there. By the way, "the sum total of human knowledge" refers to a quote by our founder Jimbo Wales. See e.g. Wikipedia:Purpose. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:26, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

Yes, that was Wales' vision, which was thwarted by the deletionists here. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:58, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

It was a slogan. Not all information is knowledge. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇} 16:00, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

So it was meaningless. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:19, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia could contain a list of all "topic areas", loosely defined, that are known not to be on Wikipedia. Most articles for deletion contain some degree of validity but they are deleted because they fail some required parameter—often notability. Were a record kept of all articles eventually deleted—that would be a good start in compiling a list of all things not in Wikipedia. Bus stop (talk) 18:28, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

Some user has tried to make an estimation: According to that page it would be 104,701,020 articles. Still quite a lot of job to do :-PPacostein (talk) 08:56, 1 September 2018 (UTC)