Talk:quadball

Etymology is lacking

1. Presumably the initial qu derives from that in quidditch, because they wanted it to sound somewhat similar.
2. The purpose of rebranding quidditch at all (i.e. the reason for the coinage) seems to be dislike of J K Rowling over her views on transgender.

Equinox ◑ 13:36, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

I've speculated as much on the first point. That they deliberately sought a coinage beginning with the letter q so that organizations and teams could retain acronyms they've been using for a long time. But the articles cited don't mention this as a factor in the decision. Thus I limited the information in the etymology to what was given in the news reports ("quad" is a reference to the four balls and positions). The surrounding circumstances re: the Harry Potter fandom collectively distancing itself from Rowling didn't seem materially relevant to the etymology. It may mean opening an unnecessary can of worms that will result in continual low-grade edit wars without increasing the quality or clarity of lexical information in the entry. Better leave it to the encyclopedia side where it can be handled with greater depth. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 23:46, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

It is etymologically relevant, like why "ultimate Frisbee" became merely "ultimate" (in that case: to avoid infringing a trademark). But okay, we can leave it for posterity, in years when this debate has cooled down. Equinox ◑ 23:49, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

I prefer to construct entries to elide areas of conflict wherever possible. GC discourse is directly relevant to GC-related terminology. I don't feel it's something that needs to freight every Harry Potter-related entry. (That said I have a strong hunch that posterity will remember Rowling for her writing career as much as people today remember Anita Bryant for her music career.) In any case I modified the etymology because the news reports do make a point of mentioning the intentional-distancing-from-Rowling angle. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 04:50, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

Also possibly an object in computer graphics

There are "quadballs" in some Autodesk software, e.g. [1]. Not sure whether any other software uses them. A quadball is apparently something like a sphere; I don't know how it differs. Equinox ◑ 13:37, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Here's a non-Autodesk use: [2]. It seems a quadball is a sort of rounded cube that only approximates a sphere. Equinox ◑ 13:39, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

 Done Equinox ◑ 23:20, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Does this sense really count as a separate etymology? Isn't it still just quad (four) + ball? Evidently, it's been around longer, and should thus be the primary sense. But I'm not sure this warrants a separate etymology section. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 23:48, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

I've certainly got no objection if you want to merge them! Having said that, the meaning of quad in the graphics term is probably the informal noun quad which is short for quadrilateral (it isn't four balls!), so we could call it a compound. It seems like nit-picking really. Equinox ◑ 00:14, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

I rolled both definitions into one section. Also modified the etymology to include both prefix and compound templates. (Swerve the controversy!) Would be nice to have a date of first attestation for the computer graphics sense. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 04:56, 9 August 2022 (UTC)