I am enormously skeptical that there is any realistic possibility of getting anyone let alone unpaid volunteers to forego the use of abbreviations or useful jargon.
OTOH (LOL), I believe that there are MediaWiki software extensions (which I enjoy using at Wiktionary) that allow a window to pop up when a highlighted word is clicked. Inmy expereine the content is from Wiktionary. Wiktionary has all of the menioned terms and special characters defined (except for the open-source movement terms) and would be a possible source for definitions. (At present, it explicitly exclude terms that are solely WikiJargon from the main dictionary and relegate them to an Appendix page. ) Alternatively enwikt could be used as a source for a special-purpose glossary that served as the target for the extension. FWIW. On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 9:55 AM, Ziko van Dijk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote: > About usability: I believe that one significant barrier for new Wikimedians > is the jargon in the Wikimedia projects, mostly in discussions, but also in > help pages: > * Expressions from computer science: IP, bug, URL > * Expressions from the Open Source movement: fork, stable version > * Expressions from the net culture: imho, :D, lol, @ (directed to a person > in a discussion) > * For non native speakers of English: SNAFU, dude > > Jargon (sometimes specialist's language) cannot be totally avoided, and it > is good for community cohesion. But it would be a good step towards > usability thinking before using jargon: is it really necessary here, is it > comprehensive to everybody, even if "help:glossary" mentions it? > > Ziko > -- > Ziko van Dijk > NL-Silvolde > -- Dennis C. During But then arises the doubt, can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animals, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions ? -- Charles Darwin _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l