launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Matthew Revell <matthew.revell@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 15 February 2010 17:59, Jonathan Lange <jml@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 5:28 PM, Matthew Revell

>> The terminology we use in Launchpad has always struck me as one of our
>> biggest barriers for newcomers. I understand why we have some unusual
>> terminology: in some cases, we're dealing with concepts that don't
>> crop elsewhere or, at the least, aren't adequately described
>> elsewhere.
>>
>> Even though we may have good reasons for some of our unusual terms, I
>> think they're a problem nonetheless. Should we consider changing some
>> of the less obvious terms? Or is there something we can do to make our
>> terminology and concepts instantly understandable to someone using
>> Launchpad for the first time?
>>
>
> We should definitely consider it, and even do it!
>
> What's next? What do you think are the terms we need to start thinking about?

I'd say we have two categories of difficult terminology:

 * unfamiliar but self-explanatory terms (e.g. bug supervisor).
 * terms that derive from a common usage but that require at least a
sentence to explain how the term applies to Launchpad (e.g. series)

To complicate matters, I'd suggest "milestone" could fall into either
category because it is fairly self-explantory but has associated
baggage.

I've thrown up a wiki page where I'm going to track these terms and
record our decisions for each. Everyone should feel free to add to the
list and then perhaps we can tackle each term here.

https://dev.launchpad.net/PlainEnglish

-- 
Matthew Revell -- https://launchpad.net/~matthew.revell
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