Talk:bus route

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bus route

Defined as "the route regularly followed by a bus". SoP.​—msh210℠ 20:31, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Probably delete, but I don't think you can have "car route", "train route" - but perhaps that doesn't matter. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:38, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

There are 83 nouns that collocate before route at COCA with a frequency of 5 or more. bus (at 53) is much more common than "car", "rail", "sea", "train", "air", "water", "transit", or "pipeline". If we are dumbing down to be not a good monolingual dictionary with translations, but instead only a learner's dictionary with collocations of use to students, this is probably the most useful of the common collocations. The more common ones at COCA are "escape", "parade", "paper", and "trade". DCDuring TALK 23:28, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Keep. (It's in the OED, have they dumbed down as well?) Ƿidsiþ 05:25, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Their criteria aren't the same as ours. I'm assuming their definition is "the route of a bus"? Mglovesfun (talk) 11:43, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

They list it as part of bus: "attrib. and Comb., as bus company, conductor (CONDUCTOR 7), conductress, crew, driver, load, queue (QUEUE n. 3), ride, route, station, terminal, ticket, time-table, top; " We should do the same, if we delete it. (I like including attributive collocations in main entries) Conrad.Irwin 11:58, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

It would certainly be one way to do it. Although most dictionaries list all kind of derived terms under the main entry, whereas we have always given them separate pages to allow for translations etc. Ƿidsiþ 12:14, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm unfamiliar with the OED's notational conventions, but if I'm reading that correctly (am I?), they don't list bus route at all, instead merely saying, s.v. bus, that bus, attributive, collocates with it.​—msh210℠ 18:07, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, and that is all I want us to record. But putting it on a separate page is better because a) it fits our conventions better (we always put derived terms on separate pages) and b) it allows us to provide proper translations, which are often unpredictable, as they are in this case, at least with the languages I know. Ƿidsiþ 19:32, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

If we are to be keeping common collocations, whether or not SoP (decoding), then separate entries are needed for translations. Run-in entries don't really do the job. We are gradually transitioning away from being a monolingual dictionary in our design choices. I hope we can remain adequate as a monolingual dictionary. It is difficult to reconcile the diverse pressures that result from having so many objectives. DCDuring TALK 23:43, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm puzzled. The first sentence on our main page reads: "Welcome to the English-language Wiktionary, a collaborative project to produce a free-content multilingual dictionary." --Hekaheka 04:42, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

• Keep. Many definitions of bus, many definitions of route, but only one overwhelming usage for each term in bus route. It is not the path a waiter takes to bus tables, and it is not the act of telling buses where to go. bd2412 T 17:44, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Delete. As long as you speak English, you know what a bus route is from bus + route. If you don't speak English, this won't help as it's written in English. Client-centered approach. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:34, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

The problem with that argument is that it applies to lots of terms which we obviously want to keep. If you speak English you know what a (deprecated template usage) tennis racquet is from (deprecated template usage) tennis + (deprecated template usage) racquet. But dictionaries record common collocations because their existence (as opposed to their meaning) is not predictable or obvious. They are also crucial for translating dictionaries, of which we are one. Ƿidsiþ 19:29, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

You're right, that is the problem with that argument. That's why I don't RFD a lot of stuff that's sum of parts, but still quite interesting. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:17, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't think we can write a good definition of it. The problem is, "the route of a bus" is of course, perfectly accurate and adding to it will only confuse matters. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:21, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I put "the set route taken by a public bus service". For an entry like this, weirdly, the definition is not that important, it just needs to disambiguate the componant parts properly. Ƿidsiþ 12:27, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I think school and charter busses also run along bus routes.​—msh210℠ 16:06, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

As is almost monotonously predictable with these, we were missing the pertinent sense of route ("regular path/itinerary"), now added. No opinion on the merits, but I do note that this passes the multilingual sub-entry lemming test, e.g. Albanian, German. In the past, many have regarded this test as a bridge too far, but this does suggest that this has as much or as little merit as Category:English non-idiomatic translation targets. -- Visviva 12:41, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

This falls under a vague Pawley criterion that we haven't quite summed up objectively for our own use. This is what the thing is called. What else would you call it besides a bus route? Just "route" is possible but doesn't always sound as right, whereas one would have thought "bus route" to be redundant in the contexts in which it's commonly used. Plus it's not always just "route", often it's "its route" with reference to the bus! If this were a technical term we would have kept it no problem, but because it's used by professionals and by laymen we have to delete? Why isn't that more justification to keep? DAVilla 08:11, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

(Sigh.) Kept as no consensus (with the crowd leaning to keep). I've removed "public" from the definition per my comment above.​—msh210℠ (talk) 18:36, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

RFD discussion: September 2018–February 2019

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bus route

Previously kept (in 2010, with a sigh). Still shit --XY3999 (talk) 15:04, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

They're very handy (hardly shit), I travelled on two today. It's a translation target, keep. DonnanZ (talk) 16:44, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

WF is talking about the entry, you're talking about the thing the term refers to (at least in your first sentence). I took Metro bus line 4 in downtown Los Angeles yesterday, but I wouldn't want to have a dictionary entry for it. Chuck Entz (talk) 19:00, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, I knew that, a typical WF comment; I wouldn't have entries for individual bus routes either, that's Wikipedia material (if you're lucky). DonnanZ (talk) 22:11, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

Keep per WT:COALMINE via busroute: [1], [2], [3]; bus route,busroute at the Google Books Ngram Viewer.. More, written before I found coalmine: With the help of translations entered in Wikidata's bus route (Q3240003), perhaps someone would be able to find the kind of translations that support WT:THUB. A similar entry is tram route, also in RFD. “bus route”, in OneLook Dictionary Search. does not find the kind of dictionaries required by WT:LEMMING. M-W has bus line[4]; is bus line a synonym of bus route? I guess an indirect lemming card could be played via M-W:bus line. However, the M-W justification for bus line could have been related to 2b sense, the company, or the 1st sense. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:57, 29 September 2018 (UTC)

Delete because I don't think you need to know anything beyond 1. knowing what a bus is, and 2. knowing what a route is, in order to understand this phrase. I know Donnanz wants to keep it just because he likes buses/routes. But even so this is phrasebook territory at best. Equinox ◑ 02:34, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

From your comment, I gather you're more of a trainspotter, Eq. BTW, what kind of shit phrasebook phrase is "bus route", anyway? --XY3999 (talk) 08:25, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

Delete. It is clearly SOP, and as a translation target can be given in parts. For a phrasebook phrase, "bus stop" is more useful. Kiwima (talk) 20:20, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

That's right, make users work harder. Having a bus stop without a bus route serving it is like having a railway station without a railway. DonnanZ (talk) 17:22, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Kiwima: Can you please clarify whether your vote has the intent to override WT:CFI's WT:COALMINE (also in WT:CFI#Idiomaticity)? --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:25, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

I am happy to keep if it is put in as an alternative form of busroute, but not as a stand-alone entry with no entry for "busroute". Kiwima (talk) 00:52, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

@Kiwima: But that is not the idea of WT:COALMINE: the idea is to have the more common term as a full entry. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:21, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

Fair enough, but we need to have busroute as an entry, even if it is the alt form. Kiwima (talk) 09:13, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

@Kiwima: That is not what WT:CFI says. It says "Unidiomatic terms made up of multiple words are included if they are significantly more common than single-word spellings that meet criteria for inclusion". Thus, the single word spelling has to meet WT:CFI, but it does not need an entry; and I showed that to be the case in my first post, by providing three links. Anyway, I went ahead and created busroute. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:59, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

Delete. Fay Freak (talk) 22:34, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

@Fay Freak: Is this an intentional override of WT:CFI? --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:52, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Keep Ƿidsiþ 07:24, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

RFD kept as no consensus for deletion (3 keeps, 4 or 5 deletes) after many months elapsed. As for WT:CFI, this entry is protected by WT:COALMINE. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:49, 16 February 2019 (UTC)