I know that this page was created before we had the ?fixing misdirected links after making disambiguation pages? policy, but looking at the articles that link here, it is very obvious that the great majority actually want to link to biological virus. The term ?biological virus?, in addition to being a misnomer (because viruses are not really considered to be biological organisms) is not at all used by biologists or by any lay persons I?ve ever come in contact with. Therefore, I will move the text in biological virus to virus and turn biological virus into a redirect to virus. If anybody disagrees they better have a very good reason to do so and be willing to fix all the misdirected links. Oh, and computer viruses are almost always called just that computer viruses and not just viruses (especially in the context of an encyclopedia). --maveric149
oh, just to say I am a 100% with you. I just read the page "biological virus", was readying myself to add something about the title choice on the talk page, and found your note :-) I never heard that term biological virus being used, and was rather taught to consider these organisms not to be alive in the sense usually given to life. Hum, I have no idea what a lay person is, but you might consider my support as the one of a biologist. -- anthère
- Thanks for the support. BTW;
Lay \Lay\, n.
The laity; the common people. [Obs.]
In a Google search on "virus", of the first 20 hits, all are referring to computer viruses rather than biological viruses. Of those, 1 uses the term "computer virus" and 19 use "virus" without the "computer" before it. A Google search on "biological virus" turns up 1500 hits. Looking at the first few, they all seem to be used in a context where both kinds of viruses are being discussed and there is a need to distinguish them. It looks like:
- people just say "virus" to mean biological virus in a biology context
- people just say "virus" to mean computer virus in a computer context
- people say "biological virus" and "computer virus" in contexts where the two concepts might be confused.
The terms aren't really misnomers. A biological virus attacks biological systems. A computer virus attacks computer systems. A biological virus is not an organism. A computer virus is not a computer.
If no one objects, I'll fix the links that currently point to virus to point to biological virus or computer virus. --LC, Monday, June 24, 2002
Unfortunately, "biological virus" is incorrect for the reason I stated above. There is no other valid term for the viruses that attack living cells other than simply "virus". There is, however, a valid, widely used and known alternate name for the viruses that attack computers. That term is computer virus. Support for my reasoning can be found by simply looking at "pages that link here" for this article -- almost every one wishes to link to the viruses that attack living cells. This trend in what people natually assume that article should be, will only continue into the future and would be a maintenance problem if we kept the biological virus setup. --maveric149
According to the dictionary, the proper term for that type of software is virus, not computer virus. According to Google, almost everyone calls it a virus rather than a computer virus. By destroying the disambiguation page, 7 links were just broken. Even if we fix those links now, the problem is going to get worse in the future, because most people talking about software will naturally type in the link as [[virus]]. Although the Wikipedia currently has more virus links for biology than computers, Google suggests that the reverse will become true as it grows. Especially since the computer section of the Wikipedia tends to grow quickly. This is exactly what disambiguation pages are for. -LC, Monday, June 24, 2002
I agree. There are two very different things which people can refer to as a virus, and the mere fact that a debate can be had over which one is "more proper" suggests that we can't trivially pick one of them over the other. I don't think that two meanings have to be equally "important" before they warrant a disambiguation page. Bryan Derksen
- But there is no valid alternate name for viruses that attack living cells! There seems to be far more people who naturally link to computer virus when when they want to go to that article than just virus. There is no need to give the type of viruses that attack living cells some weird title that is non-intuitive and difficult to link to, just because there is such a thing as computer viruses. That last sentence alone should be proof enough --- there simply is not another word in the English language that could act as a natural disambigution term for the viruses that attack living cells. There is a valid alternate for viruses that attack computers (let me say it again "computer virus"). And the term computer virus was derived from virus. The preservation of free linking here is far more important than disambiguating for 7 article links out of 50. --maveric149
- There are plenty of disambiguation pages in which one or more of the disambiguated articles have titles that aren't "valid alternates" (all those parentheticals, for example). How about Virus (biological)? As for the convenience of free-linking, there's nothing at all that stops an article author from linking to virus anyway and offloading the effort of disambiguating onto the Wikipedia user instead. That's what disambiguation pages are for. Anyway, my opinions on this matter are not particularly strong, so whatever happens I'm unlikely to actually change anything; I'll just present my arguments here and then wander off for now. :) Bryan Derksen, Monday, June 24, 2002
- I fully agree with Bryan here. jheijmans
- There are plenty of disambiguation pages in which one or more of the disambiguated articles have titles that aren't "valid alternates" (all those parentheticals, for example). How about Virus (biological)? As for the convenience of free-linking, there's nothing at all that stops an article author from linking to virus anyway and offloading the effort of disambiguating onto the Wikipedia user instead. That's what disambiguation pages are for. Anyway, my opinions on this matter are not particularly strong, so whatever happens I'm unlikely to actually change anything; I'll just present my arguments here and then wander off for now. :) Bryan Derksen, Monday, June 24, 2002
Why should viruses that attack living cells have to to be parenthetically disambiguated when computer viruses can live at computer virus? Who the hell wants to have to write [[Virus (biological)|virus]] each and every time they want to make a direct link to that article? There is also nothing particularly biological about viruses (if anything, the disambiguation would place the discipline that studies them in parenthesis: virus (life science)). And who is going to automatically think of that disambiguation or even about the fact that there would be disambiguation at all? Instead of treating the two terms fairly, viruses that attack living cells get the shaft. If anybody places viruses that attack living cells in some weird disambiguation they better also fix each and every misdirected link and continue to do so in the future as people make links to virus and expect that link to go directly to an article about viruses that attack living cells. --maveric149
- Just a note: I re-read LC's comments and have given a good deal of thought (after I let my blood pressure drop) -- if a move is still felt to be warranted I guess following the logic of the name computer virus and having the other noted "virus" at biological virus would be fine (even though this is reinventing the wheel, so to speak, by making a term that is only used to distinguish between the two terms in the context of talking about both of them in the same paragraph). Just make sure all the links to virus are redirected to either computer virus or biological virus and the derivation of the word itself is placed back at virus with links to the two uses. "Biological virus" is an ugly made-up term that can give the wrong impression about the life status of these things, but it is at least better than having a parenthetically disambiguated term (which wouldn't have any chance of ever being directly linked without pipes). --maveric149
- Maveric, I can understand your feelings on this, but you yourself seem the biggest promotor of naming articles after what they are commonly called (for example our discussion on the "Games of the Olympiad" articles). And even though computer viruses are named after the real thing, that doesn't mean we should follow that here; Venice, California is also named after Venice, Italy (and most people in Europe will not even think of the US city) but the same construction is done there. --- jheijmans
I understand the issue, but, I'm troubled. I just made a search on google on "biological virus". On the 10 hits I got, 2 were from wikipedia, the other 8 were just stressing out that (computer) virus (20 years old ?) was named because of similarity of behavior with something that was identified 103 years ago and existed for millions of years. Because of the very concept of google, it is obvious it will favor computer words over the other ones. But google is only a mirror of real life, it should not be the final authority to completely rely on to decide whether a word exist or not or whether it is used by the majority of the world or the majority of langages. One day, it will be 8/10 that will come from Wikipedia maybe...
Deciding to "rename" one term virus (computer) and virus (life science) would be fine, because it would relate concept/object to a field. Deciding that virus is gonna be called biological virus from now on because it suits some calling conventions is rather inappropriate imho. There is no such word in the naming conventions of people who daily deal with viruses. And no really justifiable reason for us to change a good word. -- anthère