Ian Woollard wrote: > There's recently been a change to the naming disambiguation guideline. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conflict#Common_subsets_versus_less_common_supersets_with_shared_names > > I'm interested in whether that is considered a good idea or not. > > For example the term 'internal combustion engine' usually refers to > piston engines and wankel engines, but the term technically actually > covers gas turbines and jet engines as well, in a less common sense. > This is actually the way the Encyclopedia Britannica defines the term, > it defines it in the most general sense. If you try to define the > everyday sense you end up with an arbitrary definition that is > difficult to defend, it's this or that only. Presumably that's why the > EB does it the general way. > > Another example is jet engine, again, it normally covers turbojets and > turbofans, but also ramjets, and in the most general (less common > sense) it covers rockets and water jet powered boats. That's the way > the jet engine article currently goes. > > The term 'aircraft engine' very often refers to, in aviation usage, > just piston engines and Wankel engines used for aircraft, but not to > jet engines, however it's easy to find jet engine manufacturers that > refer to their jet engines as 'aircraft engines' as well, and the term > would lead you to expect it to be more general than just piston > engines. > > The same discussion has in the last two weeks or so recently cropped > up in 'glider'. A lot of people use the term to refer to what can be > termed sailplanes, and some don't even really consider, for example, > 'hang gliders' to be gliders. I agree that people will usually imagine > a sailplane when they are asked what a glider is, but I find that they > will also usually agree that other things are gliders also. > > I'm not sure there's a right or a wrong exactly, but the wikipedia is > probably a general publication and therefore, it seems to me, gets > forced in a lot of cases to use general terms, (and this is the catch) > even if they're somewhat less common, because the general term is > synonymous with the specific term but a superset and usually easier to > define. > > I'm just wondering what people here think about this issue in general > and the ongoing 'glider' one in particular. Is 'glider' more or less > anything/an aircraft that glides, or is it specifically a (for want of > a better name) a sailplane. >
This is probably not the response you are looking for, but for me a glider is the "hacker emblem", or any one of ASCII, or graphical representations of the pattern oxo oox xxx Being a representation of a pattern in John Conway's game of Life, which will travel in a diagonal line, unless it comes up on territory with other content. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
