Talk:Quincunx

message: This page makes no reference to the use of the quincunx in recusant Britain.
If it is believed that a repeated quincunx is not in fact a quincunx, the we should remove the line "A quincunx is a standard pattern for planting an orchard..."  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.99.119.37 (talk) 11:35, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: If a quincunx has to be a square or rectangle, then the Portuguese shield pictured on this page is not actually a quincunx, as it does not have right angles. Alphius 22:47, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The five blue shields are arranged more in a cross shape, but the five small white roundels inside each one form quincunxes. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:32, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Portuguese Shield 

message: If U+2059 FIVE DOT PUNCTUATION is unicode for a quincunx, then what is 
U+26bb QUINCUNX? Note that the unicode character looks very different. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.205.8.166 (talk • contribs) 
:That's the astrological quincunx, the subject of a different article, not the dot pattern that is the subject of this article. (On Wikipedia, articles are about specific subjects, not about the words that name them, so the existence of other things with the same name is largely irrelevant to this article; see WP:NOTDICT.) —David Eppstein (talk) 00:07, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unicode 

message: This article is intended to be about a geometric pattern of five points in a cross. I strongly believe that this pattern is notable, and that the content of the article (somewhat haphazardly organized as it is) should focus on that pattern and not on its name. There is a name for that pattern, "quincunx", that we happen to be using for the article title, in place of clunkier equivalent formations like five-point cross pattern. User:Johnbod continues to edit-war to expand off-topic material about other meanings of the title word (plantings of trees that are not necessarily in fives and not necessarily cross-shaped), making this article less focused and confusing its topic with that of Quincunx (disambiguation) (which really is about the word not the pattern). It's as if some editor insisted on adding to our article on geometric squares, long paragraphs of material about Squares in London focusing on the trapezoidal shape of Leicester Square. Is there another article where this material would better belong, that Johnbod could be sent to spam his 18th-century books on tree-planting? Would it improve matters to move this article to Quincunx (five-point pattern) and let Quincunx point to the disambiguation page on articles using a similar title? Alternatively, is there some way to emphasize even more strongly than we currently do that this article is only about geometric patterns of five points in a cross, and not about meanings of words? —David Eppstein (talk) 18:16, 29 April 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: You are the only person insisting on that narrow definition of the subject, which you have defended with extraordinary tenacity against a number of other editors above. Taking the geometrical material off to Quincunx (five-point pattern) may be the best solution, if you intend continuing to edit-war. Most of the other material does not have articles covering it, so a disambiguation page is not the best solution. "Is there another article where this material would better belong", you ask. No, there isn't. It should stay here. Johnbod (talk) 01:13, 30 April 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: What do you want to make the other article about? 45°-rotated square grids of trees? How is that a notable topic, distinct from other grids of trees only in their orientation with respect to the edge of the plantation? I am defending the fact that this article should have a topic, and not just be about things related only by having the same name. As WP:NOTDICT demands. If the topic is not "five points arranged in a cross", then what is it? If you take out all of the material that is only about five-point-cross-arrangements and not about tree-planting to make the article you think it should be, what is left?  —David Eppstein (talk) 01:28, 30 April 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: You keep complaining the article is dealing with the word, so all the closely-related meanings should be covered. They are not "related only by having the same name".  I must say, I'm completely confused by the line or lines in the sand you have drawn between what does and doesn't belong in the article as you see it, but please don't explain. Johnbod (talk) 01:34, 30 April 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: There are two meanings of geometric patterns that use the same word: (1) a square grid that has been rotated by 45°, (2) five points in a cross. They are separate topic. They should not have a single article because of the singularity of their names, any more than any other two topics that have similar names should be glommed into a single article. NOTDICT. Encyclopedia articles are about topics, not about lists of different topics that happen to have the same name. I am also completely baffled. I don't understand what you think this article is about. Try describing it in words that do not use "quincunx". I can do that for my intended meaning: five points in a cross. What is yours? —David Eppstein (talk) 01:38, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

text: Relatedly, I temporarily removed the bullet point saying that this was a common planting pattern for 16th-18th century European gardens, because none of the sources talk about the planting pattern being the same as the geometric pattern that is the topic here: five trees in a square, with one at the center, and no more than five trees. I think it is likely that this five-tree pattern was a common planting pattern, and I would like to re-add this bullet point, but we need a source that explicitly talks about five-tree groupings and none of the ones we had does. Gardens of Court and Country, which was used to source the "more specialized meaning, referring specifically to groups of trees with their branches stripped from the trunk", explicitly contradicts this meaning, saying that its use of the word mostly referred to a square grid but should properly have referred to a 60-degree triangular grid. Also note that if you take an orchard of trees planted in a larger square grid, and add more trees at the centers of the squares, the result is still a square grid (rotated 45 degrees from the starting grid), so for the purposes of describing mathematical patterns it is not any different than the square grid itself, and not the five-point pattern that this article is about (at least, not any more than any other square grid, which also contains many copies of the same pattern). This leads to much confusion in trying to find early sources on five-tree patterns, because many sources write as if the diagonally-oriented square grid and the orthogonally-oriented square grid are different patterns, and talk about the diagonally-oriented pattern being grouped in fives, when they are not different and when you could just as easily find smaller square groups of four in the same pattern or larger groups of five in the orthogonally-oriented square grid. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:57, 29 April 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Five points in a cross