Re: Quick Terminology Poll

Julian Voelcker said:

> I think the key thing is that I am trying to come up
> with a key set of names that the average, non techie
> user will be familiar with

You are trying to specify very technical things, though.
Using common terms only makes it confusing because the
person you're trying to explain something to conflates
the CM subject you're talking about with other meanings
of the same terms.

I think that whenever possible, if you're talking about
a concept that is specific to a technical domain, you
should use unique terms.  Even if those terms sound
clumsy or otherwise "icky", clarity is more important
than aesthetics.  (Unless you're in marketing, of course -
for some marketing purposes, a lack of clarity is often
preferable ;^)

To give an example, at my company our engineers long ago
decided to use the term "template" for something.
Because "template" is used for a million different things
In different software applications industries and outside
of computing as well, it's now very difficult to commun-
icate to the un-initiated what a template is in our
system.  It's certainly impossible to express something
about our templates clearly in a single sentence.

Tim Denby