The SCP Foundation

I get that using big and/or complicated words makes the articles sound more scientific, but I highly doubt that they actually get used much in real life. Reading through an article and having to consult a dictionary every 5 words is frustrating. Some sort of quick reference page with commonly used words would be wonderful. Maybe even throw up basic unit conversions too, for those of us that don't have them all memorized.

I'm not just talking basic definitions either, but common contextual situations would be nice as well.

Such a page would be very beneficial to new users, and would fit nicely with the other guides and information on the wiki.

Commonly used scientific terms, latin/greek replacements for commonly used English words, and other things like that.

Ennui is the philosophical concept of complete boredom with life. Pretty sure it's an SAT word. But to address the real topic, a small dictionary shoved somewhere in the help section of common SCP terms would be pretty useful for newbies.

I am still agitating for a damn slurry tag (what is WITH the proliferation of that word on here?) but I am going to have to go with that old internet truism- google it. This isn't Shakespearean English, we shouldn't have to translate words of more than two syllables, nor explain the meaning of words that used to be solely french 200+ years ago.

On a more constructive note, it wouldn't be practical to make a faq that'd have to be updated every time someone used a new word, or someone got confused with a word for the first time.

An issue any professional has when writing up a technical report or paper is knowing whether or not it is okay to make assumptions about the proficiency of their intended audience in the topic(s) and thus, whether they should actually explain a concept before continuing with what they were describing in the paper. It's a hard decision to make often. Sometimes, the guy (or gal) reading the document doesn't need to know what a sebaceous head cyst removal is, sometimes he/she does.

I admit, there has been some abuse of technobabble in some articles but personally, I think if the text was too complicated or pointlessly complicated, somebody would've brought it up already in the comments. The technical terms are (usually) there to aid the reader, not confuse them.

If you'd provide examples and/or bring it up in the discussion pages (not en masse), you'll probably have someone (e.g. the author) address the issues.

Edit: Ew. Gross. Don't do that. -TroyL

There are actually a number of plugins that will allow you to highlight a word and instantly have it defined, as well… >.>

Oh alright, I give up. I'll start looking for a Firefox plugin or something, though I'm loathe to make it eat up even more of my computers resources.

Because some still get measurement wildly wrong, here's is a quick list of measurements.

Measurement by thumb:

• Distance
  • an inch is about 2.5 cm
  • a yard is a meter, or close enough
  • one kilometer is a little over half a mile (0.6)
• Temperature
  • room temperature is about 22 degrees Celsius
  • water freezes at 0 Celsius and boils at 100 Celsius
  • -40 Fahrenheit and -40 Celsius are the same thing. If you hit this temperature with wind chill, exposed flesh can get frostbite in less then a minute.
  • Celsius and Kelvin are the same scale, just offset by 273.15
  • Don't use Kelvin unless you're going below -100C
• Liquid
  • A liter is about a quart, so it's about four to the gallon.
  • The "average" adult human has 5-6 quarts/liters of blood.
• Area
  • An acre is about 4000 sq meters, or a square of about 64 meters (210 feet) on a side
  • A U.S. football field (100 yards long) is about 1.1 acres
  • It can take between a quart to a full gallon of blood paint to cover a 10 foot square area completely. Depends on the surface and how good of job you're doing.
• Odd ones
  • 1 mile per gallon = 0.425 kilometers per liter (I don't think that's EVER going to come up here…)
  • 1 furlong per fortnight = 14.4 meters per day

Don't know what your problem is, I find the site's vocabulary perfectly cromulent.