Talk:coerce

in spanish: coaccionar

Persuasion
Coercion is not persuasion. -- TexasDawg 15:42, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Bribery
Bribery is not a form of coercion. It is a form of persuasion; one that is often either illegal or commonly viewed as immoral. -- TexasDawg 15:42, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Not familiar with this site, but wouldn't it be better to use an example that isn't about recent (controversial) political events, as in the Coercive (no talk page) article were it says "The Bush administration is studying options for military strikes against Iran as part of a broader strategy of coercive diplomacy to pressure Tehran to abandon its alleged nuclear development program, according to U.S. officials and independent analysts." I'd replace it but I don't have anything to put in its place.


 * Yes, that would be preferable and you are welcome to change it if you can find a suitable NPOV substitute. —Stephen 15:08, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Webster 1913: coerce compared to compell
Webster 1913 compares coerce and compell as follows; boldface and bullet formatting of examples is mine:
 * To compel denotes to urge on by force which cannot be resisted. The term aplies equally to physical and moral force; as
 * compelled by hunger
 * compelled adverse circumstances
 * compelled by parental affection.
 * Coerce had at first only the negative sense of checking or restraining by force; as
 * to coerce a bad man by punishments or a prisoner with fetters.
 * It has now gained a positive sense., viz., that of driving a person into the performance of some act which is required of him by another; as
 * to coerce a man to sign a contract
 * to coerce obedience.
 * In this sense (which is now the prevailing one), coerce differs but little from compel, and yet there is a distinction between them. Coercion is usually acomplished by indirect means, as threats and intimidation, physical force being more rarely employed in coercing.

--Dan Polansky 10:33, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

meaning in the field of computing: room for improvement?
I question the wording of the third "verb" entry, -- the 3rd "numbered" list item at coerce -- which currently says:


 * 1)  To force an attribute, normally of a data type, to take on the attribute of another data type.

I would suggest a more carefully worded explanation, such as


 * 1)  To force a variable or data item which would normally have a certain data type [as the value of its "data type" attribute] to be treated -- (mainly at compile time, but [in some cases] with or without some run-time "conversion", [of the value of the variable or data item], if appropriate) -- as if its data type were instead some other data type. This is sometimes done implicitly (depending upon, or relying on, the context) but [see 'also' the suggestions below that mention a certain SRP] it can also be done using a "cast"
 * {such as: [these examples of casts are from this web page] a static_cast, dynamic_cast, const_cast, reinterpret_cast, "(type)value (C-style cast)", OR a "type(value) (function-style cast)".}
 * See (for example) some of the information that can be found via doing a search such as https://duckduckgo.com/?q=coerce+c%2B%2B&ia=web
 * (The above "URL" or 'link' is the internet address of a "search results page" [SRP]; and the SRP itself contains some explanatory material, as well as entries -- called "Hits" -- that point to other web pages which contain even more explanatory material [possibly useful content].)

I do not know how to cause the little "list item numbers" shown above (generated by using a little "#" sign as the first character of a line) to be displayed as "3." instead of ... as "1.". So, ... for that reason, among other reasons,


 * Any advice or other comments would be appreciated. --Mike Schwartz (talk) 04:36, 9 May 2023 (UTC)