[Kde-pim] jargon is bad! :)

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On March 15, 2010, Maciej Mrozowski wrote:
> I understand and agree with you on this problem.
> One could (leaving Nepomuk alone for now) throw some other old 'jargons'
> present in System Settings:
> - 'KDE Resources'
> - 'KDE Wallet'

"wallet" isn't too bad; it's a semi-known term and is a real world metaphor at 
least. "KDE Resources" is pretty bad indeed though :)

> However some line needs to be drawn somewhere.
> For instance what's considered jargon and what a brand?

imho the line is quite clear:

* if we are doing promo to an audience that will care about the brand, we use 
the brand name.

* if we are communicating something useful/important/meaningful to the user, 
it must be clear and meaningful without requiring them to go consult a list of 
brands.

this means that we can certainly discuss the benefits of "Akonadi" or 
"Nepomuk" in our press releases, in our community relations, definitely in our 
developer outreach (presentations at conferences, interviews, irc, mailing 
lists, etc) ... but when it comes to the actual software experience itself we 
should aim to make it as clear and obvious as possible.

it's really interesting to watch an average computer user get confronted with 
one of our jargon filled messages. it doesn't help them feel better about the 
software (it's not clear to them what is going on) and it therefore doesn't 
help them feel better about the brand (it's associated now with a confusing / 
unsatisfying event)

> I'm especially talking about proper names like Akonadi, Nepomuk or (sic!)
> Plasma.

we keep words like "Plasma", "Plasmoid", "Containment" and others very 
purposefully out of the UI. there is some leakage in the old and sparse user 
documentation for Plasma (which needs to be rewritten quite badly at this 
point :/), but other than that we (plasma team) quite consciously use 
descriptive terms in the UI. 

we try to keep our promo work (e.g. branding) to our blogs, press releases, 
websites, etc. :)

> While they're names of technologies (so considered as 'technicalities' and
> jargon), they are meaningless strings and maybe worth replacing with
> something denoting functionality.
> They are established names however, and they help avoiding confusion so
> maybe they're worth kept visible.

what confusion do they avoid?

> System Settings->Desktop Search contains some jargon (namely Nepomuk
> Semantic Desktop), but that jargon is explained just below ("Nepomuk blah
> blah  enabled tagging and rating of files integrated with the Desktop
> Search") - so it's existence is somewhat forgiven.

if we have to explain something that wouldn't need explaining if we just used 
plain language then we are failing the user imho.

> Just wanted to note that refraining from jargon needs to be done carefully
> not to cause confusion and name clashes.

:)

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Qt Development Frameworks
_______________________________________________
KDE PIM mailing list kde-pim at kde.org
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-pim
KDE PIM home page at http://pim.kde.org/