Talk:CL

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rfd-sense Prefix for Canadair aircraft models. We have government aircraft prefixes, but not DC, as in DC-3, for the fabled twin-prop. DCDuring TALK 20:47, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm clueless about the topic, so please bear with me. By "we" do you mean Wiktionary? Can you give some examples of "government aircraft prefixes" that we include? What are CL and DC instead? (Canadair used to be nationalized; would that make its prefix a government one, at least during that time period?) Why does this distinction bear on inclusion here? (I'm not saying that it doesn't, I'm just really clueless about this). —Ruakh_TALK 00:28, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

The Imperial Wiktionary we, yes. Both are arguably "private". If government enterprises are exempt from our rules on things like trademarks and such, do we have to keep track of shareholdings to know whether an item should be included? How much government ownership would get an entity over the hump? I really hope that government ownership will be a red canard.

DC stood for the Douglas Commercial, Douglas being Douglas Aircraft, the leading commercial aircraft company until Boeing came from their second position at the onset of the jet age. DC-3 through D-10 were their model numbers. The MD-80 is a descendant of the DC-9. US military prefixes are abundant. There are many, many naval ones, ranging from USS, to CVN, similarly for armored vehicles and helicopters. Surprisingly the Air Force hasn't gotten very many of their designations in. I don;t know about the government equipment designating prefixes. Our standards for abbreviations might allow them. The manufacturers' designations seem different to me. Mind you, I'd think we'd be better to have more trademarks, place names, etc. in Wiktionary, but rules is rules. DCDuring TALK 00:57, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

So are "CL", "DC", etc. assigned by some external authority, or is it just something the manufacturers do? If the former, I'm inclined to think of it as a meaningful and neutral unit that may be worth defining here; if the latter, I'm inclined to think of it as low-grade spam — not a big deal, but not something we'd want to encourage. —Ruakh_TALK 02:59, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

And, thanks for explaining so patiently. :-) —Ruakh_TALK 03:04, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Manufacturers. The manufacturer's don't care enough to spam us. But there are plenty of fans for all kinds of boys' toys, especially "heavy metal". I have not been immune to the fascination of some of this. The two-letter airline codes (now augmented by additional codes), the three-letter airport codes, military equipment designations, .... Lists galore. The idea that we limit ourselves to product and brand names that convey more meaning than what they directly designate seems like a good idea, if we are going to exclude brands and company names. I'm not so clear whether we have drawn the line in the same place for abbreviations. It probably warrants some clarification of how our existing standards apply to determine if we need more. I see a lot of low-quality material in abbreviations. Not every government program and agency really merits inclusion of its abbreviation. I haven't seen terribly many RfV challenges to it. I don't find most of the abbreviations on Ullman's not-counted list to be worth fixing. I also don't think we should swamp the RfV/RfD with challenges without clarifying CFI for abbreviations. DCDuring TALK 04:19, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Kept as no consensus. --Rising Sun 12:26, 10 August 2009 (UTC)