Discussion: Orienteering lingo

The point of National Orienteering Week (May 3-10) in Canada is to invite newcomers to try orienteering. I'm organizing an event in Canmore, Alberta on May 3rd. As I read the meet information I'd created I tried to imagine a non-orienteer reading this stuff. There was a lot that was pretty hard to understand! So I had the idea to create an orienteering lingo dictionary of some kind. In the end I didn't do anything fancy - I just made a page of lingo.

I'm sure there must have been an attackpoint thread about lingo at some point in the past, but I didn't look very hard for it. So I may have duplicated already existing stuff (is there something out there already?).

If you are interested in giving me some feedback, you can find the page at orienteering lingo

Very British biased, but might be a few good things to pick out:

http://www.mvoc.org/Jargon_Buster.htm

Alternatively, why not just re-write the information so you just have the stuff that's needed, without the lingo, and anyone could understand it? Maybe just say to people: turn up at place at time with appropriate kit and it'll cost you this much, and then do the rest of the explaining when they get there - especially if the events are specifically trying to attract newcomers.

Cool AZ, GHO is putting together a glossary of Orienteering/adventure running terms/lingo for use in the Salomon Adventure Running Series so this will be great to start from. But one of the things we thought about in creating a page for lingo might be to remove the lingo that hurts the sport.

Foot-O for example. Are we doing the sport any benefit using that terrible term? :-)

Another is the term 'flag' or 'control' and I've heard 'bag' used in the US. The term checkpoint seems to resonate with newcomers more. Perhaps terms that resonate more with the public should be used and then in brackets the O terminology.

Excellent glossary. One minor change recommendation, though, under Timing Lingo: capitalize LED to differentiate it from the past tense of "to lead."

Some map symbols that might not be obvious the first time someone hears them:

"narrow ride", "wide ride"...?

In Italian, a "spur" is called a "nose", which makes a lot more sense.

What's the difference between a "depression", a "small depression", a "pit", a "rocky pit", and a "waterhole"?

What's the difference between a "boulder field" and a "boulder cluster"?

"broken ground"?

"earthbank" vs. "earth wall"?

"form line"?

I wonder if AZ has been tempted to write an orenteering book rather than list orienteering terms for beginners. For example the beginner has absolutely no need to know about the backup arrangements that come with Emit and SI - only that they are two widely-used electronic systems for recording your control visit. Example the difference between ISOM and ISSOM - in fact I hope that a beginner wouldn't be faced with these terms at all when they come orienteering.

Unfortunately, orienteers who are talking to newcomers often DO introduce all sorts of spurious stuff, thereby creating an apparent need to explain it. Less is better.

in italian, a control is a "lantern", as a light lamp made of translucent material.

Similar for the Swedish word "skärm", I believe.

Some lingo is awful (eg: FootO) but other lingo serves a useful purpose. So I am not in favor of eradicating all lingo. I'm all for teaching it to people. But there are two issues (at least) here - one is the content and the other is the delivery. The question of how to deliver content to individuals in an effective and personalized way is fascinating (at least it is to me - I wrote my thesis on this topic). Certainly giving newcomers a page such as this and expecting them to study it is not going to win any awards for good teaching. My concept for presentation is more like a dictionary - where newcomers could look up (perhaps via a direct link) terms that they find on websites and don't understand or find confusing.

So if you think it confuses newcomers to know about ISOM and ISSOM then don't write about them on your websites and don't talk about them. But I am looking at the invitation I wrote for Barebones 2008 and it has information about the maps that will be important to elite orienteers and completely confusing to newcomers. So in my opinion it will be good to have a link from that mention of ISSOM in the Barebones invitation to the "definition" of ISSOM in the lingo "dictionary".

btw: here is another glossary

"Some map symbols that might not be obvious

re-entrant is on the list already, but re-entrant vs. a ditch?