Talk:radiolarite

RFV discussion: June–November 2015
Rfv-sense "a fossil radiolarian shell". Never heard this; if true, it must be obsolete or something. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 22:33, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Appears to be used by non-native speakers of English, but they write a large portion of scientific literature. It seems hard to call this a mistake on their part. Take a look at the cites. DCDuring TALK 11:43, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Two of your cites are very clearly for the other sense; I've moved them. The 1999 cite could go either way, because in context it's hard to tell. The 2000 cite seems pretty clear. I labelled the sense "uncommon", but maybe "rare" is more like it — I can't find a single quote in the singular that supports it. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 18:59, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I wasn't at all sure about the ones you moved. I found a glossary that has a comparable definition, which would arguably afford it some protection, but that isn't the same as 3 cites. (I liked the challenge of finding more and liked using the "and other" trick [more generally, the coordination tool], but couldn't find more hits.) I wouldn't take the lack of singular attestation too seriously. The damned things are vary small and the fossilized ones not well studied AFAICT, so one would expect little use in the singular of this hyponym, for which radiolarian, in context, would be a good synonym. DCDuring TALK 22:10, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Your point about the singular is good, although we do sometimes look at them individually to find something diagnostic (if you need them for indexing, say). In any case, I mentioned this to a very experienced geoscientist who thought of it as just plain wrong; that was my gut feeling as well, but I can't actually find any source to support labelling it "proscribed". —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 03:09, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I'd be OK with deleting the sense and moving the apparently good cites to the citations page. DCDuring TALK 13:57, 5 June 2015 (UTC)


 * RFV-failed. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 19:32, 25 November 2015 (UTC)