Talk:Yard
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This looks a lot like the dreaded dictionary definition to me. (Wikipedia_is_not_a_dictionary)
Does anyone see how this could become a useful encyclopedia article? --AdamW
It's really an index of three yards- it's just that all three of them don't really justify separate pages, so they're all grouped together. Maybe the measurement yard could direct people to a page about the imperial system? - Mark Ryan
I still don't see any of these entries (together or alone) becoming encylopedia entries, and therefore it seems to me the whole page is inappropriate --AdamW
OK I guess Scotland Yard makes a reasonable encyclopedia entry - but then it already is one..... --AdamW
- I think the first point is too dictionary-like, and probably should go. The second two can probably stay... maybe point 2 should be replaced with a link to a page discussing the Imperial/U.S. Customary system of units... (though if you ask me it ain't much of a system, it's a mess...) -- SJK
This is a disambiguating page; a pointer to one or more encyclopedia articles that would otherwise share a title. Such a page is likely to look like a dictionary entry (except for not having pronunciation, etymology, and usage), and that's OK. What we don't want is for people to make dictionary entries in lieu of encyclopedia articles. In particular, I think it is important that such a page should list and briefly define every sense of a word, even if there is no longer article for one or more senses yet. "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" is a nice slogan and a good rule of thumb, but let's not let it get in the way of our actual goal, which is writing a useful encyclopedia. If that goal is best served by having a few entries that look suspiciously dictionary-like, then sobeit. --LDC
- Whats the point of listing senses for which we don't have articles, and woul'dn't want to? I'd only list senses for which we have, or might want to have, articles. We certaintly have or should have articles on senses 2 and 3. I don't think we should have one on sense 1, although some parts of sense 1 (e.g. dockyard) might do with articles. -- SJK
(1) To encourage people to write articles about them; and (2) general completeness and avoiding confusion. In this case, as you point out, it's a handy way to link to multiple articles about uses of that sense of the word. What I'm trying to point out is that a disambiguating page is a tool, and a useful tool. The fact that it happens to resemble a dictionary entry should not prevent us from using that tool.
1. A land lot used for some specific purpose, e.g. churchyard, dockyard, railyard, graveyard. The word is related to guard, garden, Scandinavian "gård" (homestead), Russian "gorod" (city).
- Removed from 'yard' page as not pointing to something we'd be likely to want an :encyclopedia entry on -- AdamW
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- I believe guard comes from a strange french usage, where borrowed(?) frankish or norse words beginning with "w" turned into words beginning with a "gu". Thus, it is not a cognate to garden or yard...
I don't know about the rest of the world (so I won't make any edits right now) but in Australia a yard also refers to the garden (or paved area, etc.) either at the back or the front of your house. So, to say "Tommy is in the yard playing" means pretty much the same as "Tommy is in the back/front yard playing". - Mark Ryan
Well in the UK if a house has a small, paved, walled area at the back it would be called a yard. But as I may have mentioned once or twice ;) I still don't see how you write an encyclopedia entry on yards. History of the yard? Great yards of our time? But I'm willing to be proved wrong! --AdamW
And don't forget Yard as in Yardies -- The Anome
The story I was told is that the yard as a unit of measure was invented by tailors, and was accepted as the distance from the tip of a man's outstretched hand to his opposite shoulder. Hence the use of the phrase "to draw a clothyard" as a metaphor for drawing a bow. Just do a Google search for 'clothyard,' and the relationship should be evident.
It seems that the etymology bit was written by someone who knew what he was writing about, so I was hesitant to stick this in. Smack
For what it's worth, most of this kind of stuff would be grouped together in most real encyclopedias under Weights and measures --Random|832 02:45, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Revised lead paragraph(s)
I've removed this from the lead paragraph:
A yard is always exactly 36 inches (this is stated in the next section). And you can't use it to measure anything other than distance -- we've already said it's a unit of length. I've reordered the rest into a more logical progression. Finally, should it be 0.9144 metre or metres?--Dr Greg 11:54, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Declining use
Does anybody notice that the foot is preferred over the yard? It seems to be going the way of the rod and the furlong. This might have to be noted.--SirChan (talk) 22:13, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
- I think it depends where you live and in what context. In Britain we use feet, yards and metres in different contexts and I haven't noticed much of a decline in "yards". --Dr Greg (talk) 13:00, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
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- The yard retains use in some sports. American Football fields are invariably measured in yards. Golf courses in the US are usually measured in yards. baseball's always feet, though. Sometimes land measurements are given in yards. It's still understood by everyone, even if it's not the first measurement we think of using. Schoop (talk) 20:17, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
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