Talk:Billiard

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[edit] Billiard (number)

[This discussion was moved from the orphaned Talk:Billiard (number).]

Is this an English word? If not, should it be in the English Wikipedia?

If it's used in European countries other than the UK and Ireland it's presumably being used by people using English as a second language.

Not in Chambers dictionary (Edinbugh 2003)

Not in MW online.

[- anon.]

It has been used in English, but rarely, and is definitely obsolete. Anyway, the fact that names for large numbers are nearly identical in different languages, but with meanings differing as explained in Long and short scales, is a good reason why this article should be allowed to exist. Check the "what links here" list to understand why. By the way, I've just been through that list for Billiard and Billiards to fix references to the number so they now link to Billiard (number), not to one of the other two. I may have failed to fix a few articles from those lists, e.g. personal names (most of which are billiards players).--Niels Ø 13:59, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of long-scale number from the DAB page

I recently removed the "quadrillion" definition of "billiard" from the article on the basis that the word "billiard" has not ever been used in English in this way. The article said formerly:

The long-scale name for the number 1015 in mathematics (called "quadrillion" in short scale)

Another editor restored the deletion, with this angry-sounding comment:

READ THE LONG-SCALE NUMBERS ARTICLE. Disambiguations pages are not sourced; that's why they link to real articles.

I had read the long-scale numbers article; it gives no reputable source for "billiard"; it refers to Russ Rowlett's web site. Web sites are not normally considered verifiable sources, and Rowlett gives no backup citation for his assertion.

Before I made the change, I also consulted both the second and new editions of the OED, which might be expected to cite "billiard" if it was used to mean "quadrillion". Neither does.

I understand that the word could be understood to mean 10¹⁵, analogous to the way that "milliard" is understood to mean 10⁹, but it appears that it never has been used in this way in English.

A user above asserts that it has, but provides no citations, no references, nothing. I would be happy to be proved mistaken about this, but I have spent some time looking into it and have not yet found even one example outside of purported dictionary definitions.

-- Dominus 13:44, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Wasn't angry, just attention-getting (italics and bold don't work in edit summaries).

Anyway, the word is French, basically; long-scale number are virtually unused in English, but when they are they use the French terminology, since there is no native English equivalent. An example of when such numbers are used is when writing a paper for a journal that accepts and publishes submissions in English as well as French, German, etc., but requires that the numerical system be consistent between articles.

To see that someone on WP didn't just make it up, all you have to do is spend 30 sec. on a Google search for billiard quadrillion long-scale -Wikipedia -Wiktionary; I'm not sure why you didn't just try this yourself instead of assuming it was bogus. I can't explain why the OED doesn't have that word in it, but oh well. The OED is quite authoritative, but neither it nor anything else in the world are completely, unquestionably authoritative in every instance. The OED is written by real people with real time limitations, and it has to go to press when it has to go to press no matter how many words are missing from it.

Way more to the point from my stance is this is not the venue for this discussion. This simply is not how disambiguation pages operate; if it is in WP, it is a valid DAB page link target, no matter how disputed it is at the target article, so long as it remains in WP. If you have a problem with "billiard" as a valid long-scale number, you need to take that up at Long and short scales, not lop a valid (in its context) link out of a DAB page. DAB pages are not articles (cf. your introductory sentence above; you are treating this as an article to be weighed on verifiability, and that is a mistake. :-)

— SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:20, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

PS: I think you may be not understanding that WP is not limited to only having articles about English-language terms and concepts. Cf. chimichanga, chalupa and wu wei; if it is notable it can have an article (or be mentioned in one). Whether it appears in any English language dictionary at all is of zero consequence. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:40, 19 April 2007 (UTC)