Talk:Airway

Question

Isn't it the same as Respiratory tract? Xic667 (talk) 10:57, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I would think that for example, the sinuses and the pleura are part of the respiratory tract, but not a part of the airways. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 18:35, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

To respire is to breathe. A tract is a passageway. It seems to me as if "respiratory tract" ought to refer to the same thing "airway" refers to, but that "airway" sounds rather less scientific, being English, brief, and broad in its connection to "air", as opposed to breathing. Any hole through which air can pass is an airway, but the respiratory tract, like the digestive tract, refers to a passageway in one of the major systems ("respiratory system", "digestive system") of human physiology. It is more clearly a medical term. Unfree (talk) 16:18, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Macrophages

It isn't clear how the macrophages exit the lungs. Do they always arrive and leave via capillaries, or do they also leave via the trachea? Unfree (talk) 15:42, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Merged

Contents already covered, merged with respiratory tract. So shall just add tags Iztwoz (talk) 07:23, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Visitors looking for other kinds of airway (e.g. in aviation) do need navigation hooks: I have changed the destination to Airway (disambiguation). — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 08:41, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Primary topic / disambig

The term "Airway" is commonly used for established ground-controlled routes flown by aircraft, much as "highway" is used for roads and "seaway" for shipping. As such, the term "Airway" has two primary topics of equal importance - Respiratory tract and Airway (aviation). This page should not impose one or the other on the visitor, but should disambiguate.

As a first step I changed it to redirect to Airway (disambiguation), but this was reverted by BD2412 (talk · contribs) because "no evidence has been provided that the anatomical usage is not the primary topic of this term". So, heavens to Betsy, what evidence do we need for this kind of obviousness? The sheer number of air carriers calling themselves "Whatever Airways"? Links to Air Traffic Control textbooks and dictionaries? A list of the civil aviation organisations around the world? I struggle to find focus for this "lack of evidence". — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 08:31, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Well, and you know me as an aviation editor, my first instinct on seeing the word "airway" without further context would be in medical terms (eg first aid instructions have "check their airway is open and clear") and second thought would be aviation. GraemeLeggett (talk) 11:35, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

The fact that a topic has multiple meanings does not by itself make it an ambiguous title - consider Apple and Mouse, for which the natural history topics are primary over the well-known computer topics due to their greater historic importance. Airways, in the anatomical sense, have existed for hundreds of millions of years, and enable all vertebrate life on Earth. bd2412 T 11:48, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Agree with BD2412, and examples such as "apple" and "mouse" are why. It's not an afront to anyone's dignity or common sense that the furry critter gets to have the pagename "mouse" and that the hatnote sends you off to "mouse (computing)" if that's what you're looking for. It's not necessary for the two titles to be "mouse (animal)" and "mouse (computing)" to make them "equal in standing". It would be perfectly logical, sure, but it's not mandatory, and it's not the only possible logic; and if you did make those the pagenames, then the next question would be, regarding pagename "mouse", is it going to be a redirect to "mouse (animal)" or is it going to be a disambig page with links to "mouse (animal)" and "mouse (computing)"? The latter, although scrupulously "even-handed" (not playing favorites by presuming to choose for the user), would clearly deteriorate the user experience, not improve it (because everyone who wanted "mouse the animal", which is a lot of users, would be asking "why did I need that two-step click-through/double page load?"), and the former would be needless although harmless. Better off just allowing the animal to have the main pagename and give hatnotes for nav away from there. Quercus solaris (talk) 17:42, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

I would disagree that Apple or Mouse is a parallel example. Those two words have only a single primary meaning and other common usages reference those primary meanings: every occurrence of "apple" references the fruit, every occurrence of "mouse" references the rodent. That is not true of "airway", the two common meanings have entirely independent conceptual roots; one is a route travelled by moving air, the other is a route travelled by a moving object through static air. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 17:56, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Although that is a consideration, it is not an absolute. Compare Turkey, which is about the country and has a hatnote to the etymologically unrelated bird. bd2412 T 20:24, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, the bird's name is not etymologically unrelated; see turkey. But that doesn't invalidate the point, that the presence of multiple common things with otherwise the same name does not mean that we default to a disambiguation page for the undisambiguated title. I. This case the respiratory tract is still the most likely use if the term "airway", as the aeronautical usage is much more specialized and even jargon-y. That many airlines use the term in their name doesn't change that, either, as the term "airline" is at least as common, if not more so, and is the more generic term. oknazevad (talk) 14:59, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Exactly so, you make my argument for me, because that shows perfectly why the Airway page needs a similar disambiguation link, corresponding to that hatnote. Relegating the link to the wholly irrelevant Respiratory tract article is not good enough. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 08:44, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

If your argument is that Respiratory tract should have a hatnote stating: "Airway" redirects here. For an aerial route taken by airplanes, see Airway (aviation). For other uses, see Airway (disambiguation), then yes, I have made your argument for you; and since I have now adjusted the hatnote to say exactly that, we're done here. bd2412 T 15:45, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

No, of course my argument is not that, I'd be grateful if you studied it a little more closely. IMHO your convoluted redirect is verging on the ridiculous. My argument is, as I have very plainly stated, that Airway should have that disambig link, in just the same way that Turkey has a disambig link. I'm sorry, but other than writing it out in plain English and repeating it over and over, I don't know how to communicate that very simple logic to you. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 16:32, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Airway, which now redirects to Respiratory tract, now has a disambig link, and it is structured exactly identically to the disambig link for Turkey. It really isn't clear what you want to change about that, since that is the meaning of the phrase, "has a disambig link". bd2412 T 16:43, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

A page cannot both redirect and offer an alternative link. You are playing with words here, mistaking the software function for the information design. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 18:21, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

This page is a redirect, and so it remains until there is an evidence-based consensus that the redirect _target is not the primary topic of the term. If it isn't that will require a page move, since the disambiguation page already exists. bd2412 T 18:28, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Steelpillow, this is ambiguous. Most results [1] are airline names. If this is disambiguated, I suggest this page be moved to airway (biology) for edithistory purposes. -- 65.94.169.222 (talk) 07:03, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

No one is denying that the term has multiple uses, but so do redirect titles like CIA. There is one well-established process for proposing such moves, which is to go through WP:Requested moves and present evidence based on things like references in published works, pageviews, and incoming links, supporting the proposition that the current topic is not the primary topic of this title. bd2412 T 12:24, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

That is not what I'm saying. I'm saying that based on the Google results, this biological concept does not seem to be the primary topic, as it does not dominate results. Therefore, the disambiguation page would be preferable. Try that with CIA, and you'll get the spy agency dominating results. -- 65.94.169.222 (talk) 03:54, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

You're looking at results for "Airways, with an "s" at the end, which is a different sense. these are the verbatim results for airway. bd2412 T 04:22, 16 August 2014 (UTC)