Talk:Glossary

Content

This is a glossary, so what goes here are short definitions of commonly used terms, that are not covered elsewhere and yet are likely to require explanation for new modders. Before adding a new term, you should keep this primary rule in mind:

Is the term: 1) commonly used, 2) likely to be unknown/confusing to new modders, and 3) not explained at length elsewhere? If the term is not all three of the above, then don't add it.

Exception

If the term is defined at length elsewhere, but is so basic that a brief explanation in the glossary would be quite helpful to new modders, then feel free to add the term here, followed by a link to the full page. E.g. "NPC" is basic but some new modders don't know that it stands for "Non Player Character" (and thus is juxtaposed to the Player). That's useful enough to provide

Examples

• "Armor" and "Weapon" are too obivious to require a glossary entry.
• "Object Window" is documented elsewhere. And would not require explanation because a user of TESCS can hardly miss the big window labeled "Objects".
• "NPC" is probably worth explaining here. Even though there's a full category (Category:NPC) devoted to it, it's a very basic term, yet many new modders may not know that NPC stands for "Non Player Character".

Linking Rules

• When adding an entry that does have a full page entry:
  • Put the link to full page under the text of the entry on a See: line.
  • Links from other articles should link to the full page, not to the glossary entry.

De-Categorization

A few quick notes before I head off to dinner... As mentioned elsewhere, I'm not particularly fond of the Category approach in general, but for the the glossary in particular, it seems ill suited. Glossaries are useful for 1) providing relatively short (not in-depth) definitions of terms, and 2) making many different terms simultaneously available -- so that you can read the glossary itself like an article -- scanning up and down to quickly clarify a number of terms.

So that's what I've done here. If this is well received, then the previous glosssary category should be deleted, as should most of the small pages that belong to it. (Larger entries would continue to stand as separate pages though. --Wrye 22:34, 30 May 2008 (EDT)

Is there a way to point directly to a term?

For instance, in Category:Spamless Functions (OBSE) it would be good to point directly to the Message Spam term. I've tried Glossary#Message Spam and Glossary#MessageSpam to no avail.--Haama 01:05, 13 July 2008 (EDT)