User talk:Rand Linden

Definitions for Land related articles

Heyas =)
I read your contributions to the sim and region article. I had in mind to merge land related articles (even poked a friend on it but I guess he's to swamped with other stuff atm). So I was wondering if you could help with a definition for parcel, estate and grid. Also the difference Main Grid (MG), Beta Grid and Teen Grid (TG), as well as the difference between estate and grid. I'm not sure but MG and TG don't seem to be different Grids (both Agni)? Currently available articles are: Parcel, Estate, Agni, Aditi, Grid
I'm just writing since your userpage sounded like you'd be into this kind of stuff. Sorry if this was the wrong way to request it.
Btw: You can register your userpage to certain Linden categories via Template:llEmployee. Oh and welcome :-)
Lynch ^{(talk|contribs)} 22:56, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

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Hi, Zai! Thanks for pinging me, and yes, I'm interested in working on this kind of stuff. I'm pretty busy getting up to speed, and I'm also working on a couple of internal projects, so it may take a while for me to get to this, but I will do so ASAP. In the long run, I expect to be contributing to the wiki quite a bit...

In general, I am in favor of merging lots of little articles into more manageable-sized chunks. However, I was thinking of these two articles as glossary entries (I believe that is their Category). But maybe we want to think about a better way to do a glossary? I've seen them done in various different ways on wikis, e.g. one big article, an article for each letter, etc. Of course refactoring the Glossary would be a pretty big project, and I wouldn't want to undertake it without reasonable discussion and input from the community as well as other interested Lindens.

--Rand Linden 20:07, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Heyas and thx for the reply =)

The current form of the glossary is quite new. It was a huuuuuge article before and we ripped it apart to turn it into a category. This was the first step. The second step would be, to scan this categories again for mergable clusters and then form them to helpful articles, while the original pages would become categorized redirects to chapters of these articles. For example: One Land article with chapters Parcel, Region (subchapter Normal Region, Void Region (Openspace), Homestead), Estate, Grid. The former articles about these topics would then be turned into redirects to these specific chapters, while they would still remain to be in the glossary category. That is the plan we (Gally Young and me) had in mind so far... Though we're quite distracted lately and not really working on it at the moment... There is even a to do list were some clusters are noted (besides the Help:Open Wiki Tasks page). The benefit of this over a Wiki page with entries sorted by alphabet is, that

1. articles can contain more info than just a few sentences and display related topics
2. information aren't scattered
3. entries can have more than one category

For example, a categorized redirect from Region to "Article: Land, Chapter: Region" could also be in the Category:Help/Land and not only in the glossary category.

These were our thoughts so far. I'm really happy that there's someone official now who'd like to take part in it! =)

Greetz, Lynch ^{(talk|contribs)} 21:15, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

That's an interesting approach, and one that could be a fruitful way to glean more contextually relevant information from scattered Glossary articles. However, if I understand what you are proposing, the end result would be elimination of a Glossary per se.

I personally think a Glossary, with short concise terminology definitions can be very useful, in addition to more lengthy and detailed expository articles that put terms in context. Virtually every technical doc set I've worked on for the last 20 years has had a glossary....for good reason IMHO. Sometimes someone just wants a concise definition for a specific term, not a lengthy discourse. And Glossary entries can of course link to other pertinent articles to provide more detail and context.

You could still pursue the plans you outlined, but I would suggest reviving actual Glossary articles, and chunking them down into smaller articles, e.g. "Glossary A-F," "Glossary G-L," or even individual letters, if length warrants. Glossary definitions should have guidelines for length and format so they don't get too long and are consistent...

Anyway, that's just my take on the subject. Glossaries have traditionally been an unglamorous but important part of tech docs, one that is too-often ignored, IMHO. But, particularly for newbies, they can be invaluable.

--Rand Linden 18:07, 19 December 2008 (UTC)