User:Rursus/How to resolve ambiguous scientific and technical terms

Ambiguity
When multiple related meanings of a word occurs, they are often confused causing discussions and discord or just confusion for everyone involved. It's therefore essential to master the discussion techniques how to treat such ambiguities.

Be aware of the usage
Be aware that lots of discussions on this planet are caused by differing definitions of words, and that any proper negotiation with any intelligent human includes agreeing on a common wording on the topic for negotiation, and every involved parts' right to interpret this common wording. In the wikipedia context this implies that the discussion on an ambiguous definition shall result in distinguishing various usages, whether these are correct or not, and whether the culture of usage is glorious or despisable, or just NPOV:ly is!

Distinguish roles
The various usages of a term are always motivated by an interest. F.ex. a text file (in computer science) is used by one person (common user) and therefore defined by its usage, it is read and interpreted and written by another person (programmer) and therefore defined on its typical contents, and so on. It helps very much to distinguish what groups use the term:
 * politicians, administrators,
 * technicians,
 * scientists (most sciences with their own individual usage),
 * marketeers,
 * lawyers,
 * other specialists,
 * laymen.

Different groups are distinguished by differing usage patterns:
 * representing a tool that may be used in a certain way,
 * representing an item that must be maintained or modified in a certain way,
 * representing a category of items that are marketed (en masse or a few expensive items),
 * representing a category of items or methods whose usage must be restricted for negative risks,
 * representing a technical solution to a certain problem, solved by them scientists/technicians...

Humans associate terms naturally, so from a marketeers perspektive two products that represent the same selling technique are alike. This is how humans are! In order to analyse an ambiguous scientific or technical term, identifying the category of term users is a good help, and then analysing the why of how they perceive the term's meaning, that is: understanding the usage pattern for that group.

Goal
The goal of the discussion shall be to provide an acceptable consensus about what definition on the terms there are out there, which can be used for improving the article, so to make it clearly intelligible for any reader.