[drupal-devel] what do you call a rose?

[Steve Dondley]

Well, I would argue that "URL" is jargon.  I'd say at least 7 out of
10 people wouldn't know what that is.  How about "web page address" or
something similar?

There is a HUGE psychological effect that goes on when someone
encounters a technical term.  People feel stupid and have doubts about
their abilities even if they are extremely bright people.  It makes it
real tough to teach people when the jargon gets in the way.  Something
like "web page address" uses simple, pre-existing plain english and
though they might not understand the concept immediately, it's a hell
of a lot easier to digest.

On 9/30/05, Dries Buytaert <dries at buytaert.net> wrote:
>
> On 29 Sep 2005, at 09:21, Karoly Negyesi wrote:
>
>
> > "free tagging" has 13,300 results while folksonomy has 1,220,000
> > results according to googlefight. It's not that "free tagging" is
> > bad, it's just that we are creating another barrier. Look at
> > taxonomy vs. categories... it's still more accessible to call it
> > "categories" while the savvy developer know that "Drupal
> > categories" is another name for a rose called "taxonomy". I am
> > ready to admit that "free tagging" is not folksonomy, but again,
> > taxonomy vs. categories. You can say that taxonomy vs. categories
> > is the camel nose in the tent. I will disagree.
>
> Today, I attended a presentation on 'usability in content management
> systems'.  According to their research, one of the key problems is
> the use of technical jargon and system details/internals being
> exposed to the user.  According to them, the answer to the following
> question should be 'yes':
>
>    Does the system use natural, non-technical language?
>
> I tend to agree, and don't regret changing 'taxonomy' to
> 'categories'.  Furthermore, I'm all for renaming 'path alias' to
> 'custom URL'.  I'll continue to commit patches that eliminate
> technical jargon from Drupal.
>
> We don't name insects by their Latin/classification name either; we
> don't care what the insect is really called or how it ought to be
> classified.  Unless you are John VanDyck, a bug is a bug.
>
> PS: I attended 10 CMS presentations given by commercial CMS vendors
> today.  Quite an eye opener ...
>
> --
> Dries Buytaert  ::  http://www.buytaert.net/
>
>
>
>


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