Talk:radio-controlled car

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November 2014 RfD[edit]

The following information passed a request for deletion.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

radio-controlled car[edit]

Total SOP! radio-controlled car --Type56op9 (talk) 10:10, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. We need a policy to keep the SOP's from proliferating. --Hekaheka (talk) 12:51, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
We do. It should have some relatively objective means for determining whether an entry or definition should be included or excluded. I wonder what we should call it. The name should probably have a positive spin. Hmmmm, I wonder. DCDuring TALK 19:15, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The deletionist policy. Donnanz (talk) 20:01, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Like I keep saying, we have rules, just currently we don't apply them. Renard Migrant (talk) 20:25, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Equinox ◑ 19:01, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. DCDuring TALK 19:15, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
We should have R/C ("radio controlled") DCDuring TALK 19:19, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
That sounds like a good idea. Donnanz (talk) 22:50, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I always thought RC was "remote control". --WikiTiki89 23:18, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It's possibly synonymous in a lot of cases. Remote control is often achieved via radio waves. Donnanz (talk) 23:26, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I would go as far as to say "almost always". But still, how can we tell what the abbreviation actually stands for? --WikiTiki89 23:30, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Does it ever refer to actual cars, or just toys? Does it matter anyway? — Keφr 19:56, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Big (and little) boys' toys. Heaven help us if the roads were full of full-size radio-controlled cars. Donnanz (talk) 20:08, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I remember seeing a radio-controlled shunter (locomotive) in NZ. The loco was controlled by a railwayman on the ground. Donnanz (talk) 20:16, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Kephir It refers to larger vehicles, too, but not very often. I found one referring to a "large" one used somehow on a movie set, others referring to vehicles used to move nuclear fuel or other dangerous materials. Here is one from 1921, pictured.
It is highly unlikely to matter very often as context almost always makes it clear, but think of the translators. DCDuring TALK 20:20, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I am going to vote keep for that very reason, as a few translations would be nullified or orphaned. Think of the children indeed. I realise there's an entry for radio-controlled, but I don't want deletion of this entry to go through unopposed. Donnanz (talk) 00:10, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. PS we have radio-controlled. Renard Migrant (talk) 20:25, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l35sUu0u8bk. Renard Migrant (talk) 20:32, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Kept, no consensus to delete. bd2412 T 02:29, 22 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]


October 2016 RfD[edit]

The following information passed a request for deletion.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

radio-controlled car[edit]

A car that is controlled by radio (signals). Philmonte101 (talk) 21:47, 19 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, there seems to be a screw missing somewhere. DonnanZ (talk) 23:07, 19 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
"Down this road already" with a no consensus. No consensus doesn't seem good enough for me for this one. Philmonte101 (talk) 05:03, 20 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nomination. Note there was a majority delete vote last time, and one of the keepers wanted to convert it into {{translation only}} as a non-idiom. Renard Migrant (talk) 16:02, 20 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
There is no reason why {{translation only}} or similar can't be added, if that helps in keeping the entry. DonnanZ (talk) 09:46, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Still think it should be deleted, but it seems wrong to reopen the RFD so soon without a new argument. Equinox ◑ 11:22, 22 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
It's the easiest delete ever if you apply WT:CFI. But of course, it is just voting. Renard Migrant (talk) 14:41, 22 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Not just voting; the voters are supposed to provide a rationale for keeping, and once a rationale is provided, it is not "just" voting. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:46, 22 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Why keep it as a translation target? It seems very pointless to me. Even German doesn't use a compound to describe this word. The only translation in the box that uses it in one word are Chinese, Japanese, and Swedish, and the first two are scriptio continua languages. If we applied terms like this as translation targets, we'll soon be having "anthropomorphic animal" and other extremely SoP terms that only are compounds in like one or two languages. Because in the rest, they're just translated SoPs. Philmonte101 (talk) 06:59, 24 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • You say that you "find them worthwhile", but what is worthwhile about them? voiture téléguidée is an SoP, for example, because it just means "remote-controlled car", "a car that is controlled by remote control." All the examples you just named, except for Swedish radiobil, are two words. I am not going to speak as if I know for sure about Dutch and German, since these aren't languages I even began to learn, but even if these aren't SoP (which they probably are seeing how most of the rest seem to be), then that's only two examples of non-SoP terms described in multiple words (with spaces). I honestly don't see how this argument applies as a reason to keep radio-controlled car (which just means "car that is radio-controlled") as a translation target. Like I said before, if we kept terms like this because of that, we'd have police officer home (the home of a police officer), car joke (a joke about cars), monkey breath (breath that smells like a monkey), and countless more, (those were just off the top of my head), just because they are compounds in a few languages (namely just a few Germanic ones), and may just happen to not be an SoP two-worded term in one language. Philmonte101 (talk) 18:41, 24 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • They are worthwhile since they are not word-for-word translations: The translator cannot figure them out by translating the single words of the English original and stringing the translations together. Thus, they embody translation knowledge. Therefore, a translator benefits from such an entry. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:18, 31 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Completely SOP. Keeping as a translation target is a pretty weak argument in this case, as few of the translations appear to be non-SOP. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 19:16, 24 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Translations that I find worthwhile include Dutch autootje op afstandsbediening French: voiture téléguidée, and Swedish radiobil; by contrast, German funkgesteuertes Auto seems pretty word-per-word. Three European languages seem good enough for me to justify translation target. Our readers will benefit from these three, won't they? I can't imagine any reader being better served by finding no entry. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:18, 31 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The entry for radio-controlled already has téléguidé as a translation. Voiture téléguidée is no less SOP than radio-controlled car. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 18:48, 31 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe so, but you can't make the same point about Dutch autootje op afstandsbediening, and Swedish radiobil. And you have to question the accuracy of radio-controlled, which says that "remote-controlled" is a synonym, which is not obvious; remote-controlled could include infrared-controlled. Thus, French téléguidée is possibly inaccurate as a translation of radio-controlled. Swedish radiobil seems most resilient against any sort of argument like you brought. --Dan Polansky (talk) 21:18, 1 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
What I believe Dan is trying to say is that, since the term has several non-literal translations as well as one compound, then this is a good translation target, and the fact that those non-literal translations are non-literal means that SoP doesn't matter as much. I disagree; though it is a valid point, my point about many SoP English terms not being used as translation targets still stands. Some examples from Spanish: tener sueño and tener frío are not in Wiktionary, because it simply means "to be cold", or "to be sleepy". However, you can't just translate word for word to find those English translations. Literally, they translate to "to have sleepiness" or "to have coldness". But does that mean we should have entries for be cold or be sleepy just because of this? No, and we don't, or else someone would have made these entries by now. Also, if Spanish has phrases like these for "to be cold" or "to be sleepy", I am almost positive that at least some other languages have non-literal en->__ translations for these as well, especially other Romance ones. So, according to your point, if Wiktionary did this for every entry like this, we would have entries for be cold, be sleepy, be sad, kill a pig, cut down a tree, and a lot of other obviously SoP terms, and that would be silly. Philmonte101 (talk) 10:27, 2 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
If all these terms you redlinked above were good translation targets, we could have them; I do not know whether they are. As for tener frío, I find it in bab.la[1], spanishdict.com[2] and nglish.com[3]. We do not have be cold, but we have I'm cold as an ersatz. By the standards of a monolingual dictionary, translation target entries may look silly, but from the standpoint of a multilingual translation dictionary, translation target entries make sense. For those who really despise translation target entries, we have a template that can be put on the definition line that says the entry exists only for translation; I don't really like the template but if it reduces the opposition to translation targets a bit, I am fine with it. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:57, 2 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I think the solution is to have a designated section of the dictionary for SOP collocations, exactly for that purpose. I strongly agree that we need to cover those better, but I really don't like using the mainspace to hold them all, since it clutters it up. It's a pity that that didn't go through last time it was tried, but perhaps a few years down the road we will have a collocations namespace, if we push for it.... Andrew Sheedy (talk) 03:05, 12 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Am I the only one who considers it significant that the definition specifies a model, as opposed to a typical full-sized passenger car? Nothing in the definition of radio-controlled (or radio or controlled) implies anything about the size of the "car" involved, but the phrase is understood to refer to a miniature facsimile of a regular car, even though people can and do sometimes operate full-sized cars by radio control. bd2412 T 19:06, 9 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    Google Image and Books searches for "radio-controlled boat", "radio-controlled plane", "radio-controlled truck", "radio-controlled dragon" and "radio-controlled dinosaur" all also turn up mostly small rather than full-size things, although full-size radio-controlled boats and planes and trucks exist. Should we have entries for those phrases? - -sche (discuss) 20:42, 9 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    Can we get some data on the relative frequency of these terms? I would say that as to "dragon" and "dinosaur" at least, it would be intuitively understood that we were not speaking of any actual "life-sized" version, because these don't exist at all in our modern world. As to the others, I would bet that "car" is far more frequent, and less likely to be used in the literal sense of the full-sized thing. bd2412 T 21:44, 9 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    # User:BD2412 I don't think frequency really matters. The only "frequency" we really need to know is does the term have 3 durably archived sources that attest it? And do "radio-controlled dinosaur", etc., have 3 attesting citations? If so, and if "radio-controlled car" is not deemed SOP in this discussion, then radio-controlled dinosaur and all the others that -sche named above, should theoretically be added, since they wouldn't be SOP either. PseudoSkull (talk) 22:06, 9 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    Maybe it's just me, but I would understand anything remote-controlled and regularly large to be a miniature version, and/or a toy, unless context dictated otherwise. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 23:54, 9 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    Dictionaries are for people who don't understand words, though. One test I use is to imagine a foreigner with no more than elementary knowledge of the language coming across a word or phrase, and trying to make sense of it. If we do not have this entry, then we need a sense at "radio-controlled" that indicates that a "radio-controlled foo" is expected to be a model rather than the real thing. bd2412 T 02:30, 10 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    Delete. If I mention a radio-controlled dune buggy, Porsche 911, Mini Cooper, fire engine, dump truck, yacht, hovercraft, air boat, battleship, P-51 Mustang, Cessna 150, B2 stealth bomber, John Deere tractor, front-end loader, cement mixer or Sherman tank, how many people are going to assume I'm talking about full-sized vehicles (if you can callany Mini Cooper full-sized)? Chuck Entz (talk) 05:11, 10 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    What about people who are not native speakers of English? Should we add a sense to radio-controlled to specify a small model? bd2412 T 16:47, 10 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, do you think we need to add a sense to plastic or car or have plastic car to account for the fact that most plastic cars are miniatures rather than full-size? IMO no: the restriction is practical, not lexical. There are probably far more toy remote-controlled cars and boats than full-size remote-controlled cars and boats, and the toys are more widely known. But full-size ones can also be (and be called) remote-controlled, and that's what makes this phrase SOP -- it refers to any remote-controlled car like "remote-controlled plane" refers to any remote-controlled plane, even if one type (e.g. small, propeller-driven) happens to be more commonly produced than another (large and/or supersonic). - -sche (discuss) 17:16, 10 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. You can have heaps of radio-controlled vehicles, and sometimes it's expressed as remote-controlled. Nibiko (talk) 04:04, 3 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: By my count, there are nine editors (including the nominator) favoring deletion, and six editors favoring keeping this entry. Policy-based arguments have been made on both sides. Absent further participation, I would deem this an absence of consensus, but given my participation in this matter, I would like to know if anyone disagrees with this reading of the discussion. bd2412 T 00:09, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Going once...
I agree that no consensus is the result of this discussion. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:04, 27 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No consensus to delete at this time. bd2412 T 15:39, 28 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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