Danbooru

alias road_roller -> steamroller

Posted under Tags

I don't see the need to alias away a common term into something more vague and obscure just on the off-chance that someone uploads a road roller that is not a steamroller. If that happens they can just have a separate tag for it.

Talulah said:

I don't see the need to alias away a common term into something more vague and obscure just on the off-chance that someone uploads a road roller that is not a steamroller. If that happens they can just have a separate tag for it.

I was asking if we should use road roller as the main term and have steamroller as an alias to it, not to have them separate. At a first glance most of the results in the tag are in fact not steam-powered.

Yes, I understand what you were asking. People call non-steam-powered rollers steamrollers anyway, the Wikipedia article even states as much. Calling them road rollers when steamroller is overwhelmingly more common of a term, even if it's being incorrectly used, makes little sense.

It should be fine either way. Common dictionaries do seem to define steamroller as either both or as another term for road roller.

Merriam-Webster

1) : a steam-driven road roller
broadly : ROAD ROLLER

Oxford UK dictionary

1) A heavy, slow-moving vehicle with a roller, used to flatten the surfaces of roads during construction.

For the old style steamrollers, we probably would be better served with something like an antique vehicle tag or something similar to indicate vehicles with certain designs that match styles from certain time periods.

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