What types of Terminology questions should be accepted?

Question

Terminology - This tag should be used in questions regarding terms and their use.

Consider these two questions:

What does tsukkomi mean? and What does canon mean?.

When I asked what canon means, I actually had no idea of its definition. I see that everyone loves using this term based around anime and manga, and I get the vibe that people use it to describe something as legitimate, but I truly didn't know what it meant (not a troll question).

With that said, my canon question is closed for being off topic, but the tsukkomi question was kept open. In general, both words seem to be associated and used with anime, however, the titled question itself does not pertain to Anime whatsoever.

The only real difference I see between questions is that the tsukkomi question cites a manga description, thus enabling it to be on topic. Otherwise it would be offtopic if it didn't include any anime references and the answer doesn't require any anime references.

In terms of relevancy and usage, I do believe canon is a more common word associated with anime than tsukkomi. Based on that, I would like to think that it can be an on topic question. Perhaps rephrasing the question as What does it mean when an anime is referred to as canon? would make it on topic.

What qualifies as on topic terminology questions?

Answer 1

This seems quite similar to culture questions, and I think the same rules mostly work here. Terminology questions should be anime-specific, not just anime-inspired. Questions about in-universe terminology are always allowed. What follows is for general terminology questions.

Standard English literary terms and terms which are used to describe fiction generally are off-topic here, as they are never anime-specific. We can generally assume that readers of this site know what terms like "climax" and "character development" mean and questions about these aren't really about anime at all. Such terms are generally covered well by Wikipedia, and sometimes also by other network sites such as Writers.

Good terminology questions should be about terminology that is mostly/solely used in the context of anime/manga/etc, originated from anime/manga, or means something different in the context of anime/manga than other types of fiction. Some examples of terms which fit this are moe, waifu, and Type A vs Type B. None of these would be well-known to someone who is not knowledgeable about anime and otaku culture.

There's a grey area when a Japanese term that is used commonly in Japanese culture is also used commonly in anime/manga. Some terms like this are tsukkomi and omake. Neither of these really means something drastically different in the context of anime than in other media. However, these are terms that most non-Japanese viewers would only encounter in the context of anime/manga, so the question may still be useful to anime viewers. In this case, I think we can allow the question on a case-by-case basis if it is likely to be useful for future readers and something that would probably be asked again. Such questions are borderline and it should be decided by the community exactly where the line is.

I don't think there is a set list of criteria which will work in every case like this. One minimum requirement is that it can't be something answerable by a simple translation. So "What does kokoro mean?" isn't going to be acceptable unless the term is being used in a nonstandard way in some work. The term needs to be at least a bit difficult to translate into English in a single word or phrase, so that a simple dictionary check doesn't immediately answer it. It also needs to be at least somewhat common in anime/manga. As I said, this is a grey area, so I'd suggest just using your best judgement.