Talk:mechanical mouse

RFD discussion: March–November 2018

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mechanical mouse

SOP. @John Cross, maybe hold off on creating entries relating to your upcoming vote, especially ones that other people say probably shouldn't have entries... —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:32, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

Comment: Aside from the vote that is currently in place about retronyms, let's talk about this entry as if that doesn't exist. Can someone please explain the lexical nature of this lemma? Is it deducible from its parts (i.e. mechanical + mouse)? The current definition (as of the time of this post) says "A pointing device which uses a ball to detect movement." That's the part that's leaning me right now towards a keep vote, since no sense at mechanical very specifically covers the usage of a ball to detect movement (as I expected). Does what is now called a mechanical mouse specifically and only include this feature, as suggests the current definition (as I've loosely gathered from my bit of reading up on the topic)? If so, I will vote keep (later), since this can't be assumed just by looking at the two words mechanical and mouse as fit together in that order. PseudoSkull (talk) 06:56, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

A mechanical mouse is just a mouse operated through mechanical means. The details of what these means are will vary from one contraption to the other, but this has nothing to do with lexicography; "mechanical" doesn't have ten thousands different senses... --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 15:03, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

• I first thought "clockwork mouse", but reading the entry more closely it dawned on me, it's a computer mouse... DonnanZ (talk) 10:24, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

I enjoy contributing to Wiktionary and I think that the community behind the site matters. With that in mind, I will refrain from creating new entries related to the vote for the remainder of the month. I thought that the mechanical mouse entry would be acceptable irrespective of the retronym vote as it appears to satisfy the so-called Lemming test - the term appears in specialised dictionaries. John Cross (talk) 20:17, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

The formulation "Terms with little of their own merit for inclusion except that they have entries in specialized dictionaries" (italics mine) is wrong as per Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2014/January#Proposal: Use Lemming principle to speed RfDs. So you have been mislead. This discussion allows general, not specialized, dictionaries to be used, as per "Initially, I would suggest that we include only general monolingual dictionaries and exclude idiom dictionaries, phrasebooks, technical glossaries, and WordNet." I have edited Wiktionary:Idioms that survived RFD to correct the issue, and it now says "Terms with little of their own merit for inclusion except that they have entries in general monolingual dictionaries." --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:32, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. I was misled. I expect others are confused also. There seem to be two versions of the Lemming Test (A) that allows for specialised dictionaries and possibly even prefers them to general dictionaries and (B) that only allows general monolingual dictionaries. This is all before my time but looking back I can see that in September 2007 there was an 'if your dictionaries jumped off a cliff test' that refers to specialised dictionaries and predates the lemming 'general dictionaries' vote in January 2014 by about six years. [1] See also talk pages of technological unemployment (discussion references "Dictionary of Business Terms" and of "The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy") and genuine issue of material fact (discussion references Black's law dictionary). There does seem to be some precedent for the approach I have taken but it is not as solid as I thought based on reading Wiktionary:Idioms that survived RFD. John Cross (talk) 07:10, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

• Keep for the interim. I think the vote starts tomorrow, and wannabe deletionists should hold off RFDing any more SoP entries for the time being. DonnanZ (talk) 10:31, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
• Keep and clarify community policy. The main aim of the Lemming Test seems to me to be reducing the need for long debates/detailed analysis - clarity is essential to achieving that. John Cross (talk) 07:13, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
• Delete, SOP. --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 13:00, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
• Keep. The optical mouse that I am using uses mechanical buttons rather than, say, touch buttons. The term mechanical mouse is understood when brought in contrast to optical mouse. In the quote "A mechanical mouse is a computer hardware input device comprised of a metal or rubber ball in its underside", it does exclude hypothetical pointing devices that use a mechanical principle for motion detection but do not use a ball. For reference, a related vote is Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2018-02/Allow retronyms, which failed. --Dan Polansky (talk) 21:06, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

Kept. bd2412 T 01:43, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

RFD discussion: February–March 2020

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mechanical mouse

SOP. Canonicalization (talk) 11:52, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

• Keep - it has a specific meaning in computing. This has passed rfd previously. John Cross (talk) 15:17, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
  • Your argument(s) then was (were): "Keep and clarify community policy. The main aim of the Lemming Test seems to me to be reducing the need for long debates/detailed analysis - clarity is essential to achieving that". The community policy has since been clarified: Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2018-02/Allow retronyms ended in no-consensus, and Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2018-12/Lemming principle into CFI also ended in no-consensus. The same answer can be made to Donnanz vote. Canonicalization (talk) 11:58, 15 February 2020 (UTC)
• Delete Looks SoP to me too. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 23:53, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
• Keep It has passed RfD recently, so restarting it now is questionable. It is not obvious to me that a mouse that has a mechanical wheel and buttons but uses a laser is less of a mechanical mouse than one that has a ball.--Prosfilaes (talk) 05:00, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
  • Similarly, there are clockwork mice that are used as toys for cats.John Cross (talk) 07:28, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
  • How is optical mouse an antonym of mechanical mouse? DCDuring (talk) 18:39, 11 February 2020 (UTC)
    • You put emphasis on "antonym", but I'm not sure what you're getting at. "PCs for Dummies" (2009) says "Also, optical mice don't need a mouse pad, which is necessary for a mechanical mouse's ball to...". The Best of BYTE (1994) says "Figure I: In an electromechanical mouse, a rubber ball drives the encoders, which make and break electrical contacts. ... The "opticians" also point out that the optical mouse is maintenance-free, unlike mechanical mice, which require periodic ..." Project Arcade: Build Your Own Arcade Machine (2011) says "Mechanical mice are getting harder to find as optical mice have become popular." The Winn L. Rosch Hardware Bible (1994) says "The first mouse was a mechanical design based on a small ball that protruded through its bottom and rotated as the ... Instead of a rotating ball, the optical mouse uses a light beam to detect movement across a specially patterned mouse pad." Does that answer your question?--Prosfilaes (talk) 22:54, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
  • To Prosfilaes, I don't think it's questionable. This entry was practically kept on a technicality. See my answer to John Cross above. Canonicalization (talk) 11:58, 15 February 2020 (UTC)
    • Dan Polansky offered a keep argument in that RFD that was not technical. I would have appreciated mentioning the original discussion and responding to it.--Prosfilaes (talk) 22:54, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
• Keep per Talk:mechanical mouse, which has a RFD closed in November 2018. --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:10, 14 February 2020 (UTC)
• Keep on the assumption that the entry is correct, that it is a retronym created to differentiate a ball mouse from an optical mouse. Mihia (talk) 00:26, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
• RFD-kept (yet again). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:08, 21 March 2020 (UTC)