A plain FAQ and the right words

The work: 1 November 2026 · Written 1 November 2026 · Entry 17 of 17

The most recent entry of this log is about words. On 1 November 2026 the home page gained a frequently asked questions section in plain language, in five languages, and the project began keeping a glossary of game terms.

Questions anyone can understand

The FAQ is written for people who are not programmers. It answers things like whether the site is free, whether you can play on a phone sideways, and what happens to the game you are playing when a match is found. Each answer states only things that are true of the site today, and each is checked against the code.

The same words in every place

The words of the site live in files, one set for each language, and one file per page plus a shared file. A reviewer can open the file of one page and improve the text without touching any code. The text of the FAQ has its own file for each language.

A glossary with sources

A word can be wrong in a way that only a native speaker notices. The word for a Match, for example, is not the word for pairing: in Traditional Chinese it is 對戰, in Simplified Chinese 对战, in Japanese 対戦, and in Spanish partida. The glossary lists the right word for each concept and each language, the words to avoid, the status, and the web page where the word was checked. A test fails when an avoided word appears in a text.

Taiwan and mainland China

The glossary and a second word list keep the two forms of Chinese apart. The same idea can have different everyday words, such as data, which is 資料 in Taiwan and 数据 on the mainland. The project treats them as two languages that happen to share many characters.