Glossary proposal as tree of no taxon pages

Give it a try and see how it looks--we can always take it out later if it does not work well.

If you have any suggestions on style consistency, they would be appreciated as well. For instance, I had decided to capitalize entries, but maybe that's a bad idea--most modern dictionaries and glossaries do not do that.

Hard to know, too, where to put the information. All could go in the "Remarks" field, but that gets crowded. I started using "origin of name" for etymology, "Identification" for the definition, etc. Thoughts? I did a few pages linked under leg, and I like the linked series of terms. (A diagram needs alteration--I will do that.) Take a look and see if you have any style suggestions.

I like the word in bold. I like having the pronunciation...which I'm terrible at. I'm confident in your decisions on this. We just need to come up with a way to keep all entries consistent like you said. However, having it in the taxonomy presents some issues....like clicking on the word and seeing "nothing below this taxon". This can't be changed. And in the browse "there are no guide pages below this one" I don't know if these can be changed to "click on info tab for definitions" by John for just the glossary branch or if this is something that can't be fixed.

Yes, I like the words in bold as well, and have gone through and changed them, based on what you did in the glossary article. I equivocate over capitalization. (I'm obsessive, what can I say!) Pronunciation is good

Yes, those interface issues are troubling--we are asking the software to display information somewhat different than that for which it was designed.

I think the main use of the glossary will not be browsing, but as the target of a hyperlink in guide pages. I have done a few of those--I did a search on "clypeus" and went and hyperlinked about half of the guide pages where it occurs to the glossary entry. This is tedious. I'm going to ask John if the software can go do this automatically, or a global find/replace can be done, for instance:
Find "clypeus" (or "Clypeus")
replace with:
[url=/node/view/110028]clypeus[/url]
That will insert the hyperlink to the glossary. Of course, the find/replace has to skip the ones already done manually.
We need to have more glossary entries done first, before this should be attempted, I suppose. I'm going to just go down a list and pull terms and generate guide pages with no content, that way we'll get a skeleton glossary in place.

for Bristle; is this OK?

Looks excellent. Lynette and I were discussing if we should put the term itself in bold in the Identification box, just to improve readability--otherwise the term is far off at the top of the page. I'll do it on bristle--see what you think.

But it is probably most important to get the important terms in place first, and then worry about details of format

I added some suggestions for the format of glossary entries in the top glossary page. These are, of course, suggestions, realizing that we are trying to shoehorn terminology into a system designed for taxonomy.

Given that BugGuide is a collaborative effort of volunteers, I think it is most important that glossary entries be internally consistent and logical--not all necessarily in exactly the same format. I think a quick glossary entry is also better than no entry at all--others can always add to them later.

I think everyone was thinking of those entomology terms that are used commonly, but not familiar to the amateur, or the beginner. Terms such as: elytra, coxa, femur, tibia, tarsus, .... Nothing too technical.

The idea I was floating was really the use of no taxon pages, one per term, instead of an article. I didn't want to clutter up the guide if others thought it was a bad idea.

to BugGuide will be when it is overhauled, we can't guess how this will fit in with the new BugGuide format. So our only caution is to make sure this works for John VanDyk and Mike Boone. We would hate to see people put a lot of work into something which is planned to look very different in the near future.

John told me he did not anticipate any problems at this point. Mike Moon said he is not involved with the upcoming software changes.

So, gloss away!