Editing Terms

Any signed-in reader can suggest a change to a term; moderators apply theirs immediately, everyone else's goes to review first. That role split is the one thing to know before you start.

Who can edit what#

This applies to every kind of glossary edit on this page: suggesting a change, adding a term, bulk rename, and chapter overrides.

Non-moderators can submit up to 200 glossary suggestions a day: edits, new terms, bulk renames, and personal translations all draw from this one budget. It's the same on every tier, including Free: this isn't a patron perk, just a cap high enough that cleaning up a long novel's glossary in one sitting won't hit it. See Pricing and limits for the site's other limits.

Suggesting a change to a term#

Open a term (from a chapter or from the novel's Glossary page) and choose Suggest Public Change. The edit has two steps:

1. What changes: Translated Name, Gender, Type, and Term Status (Active/Inactive). You can also switch on General Term to request it become a general term, or open Manage chapter overrides (gender / active state) for chapter-bounded changes.
2. Reason: pick a quick reason or write your own, then submit.

The reason is required. It's what a moderator sees when reviewing your suggestion, and it's kept on the term's edit history permanently.

What happens after you submit#

• You're a moderator: the change applies right away.
• You're not: the suggestion is posted to the moderator review Discord channel. A moderator applies or rejects it from there. You'll see the change on the site once it's approved.

Community votes#

If three or more readers independently set the same personal translation for a term, it's automatically proposed to moderators as the new public translation. You don't need to do anything beyond setting your own personal translation. This doesn't apply to general terms, since a change there would rename the term across every novel that uses it.

Adding a new term#

From a chapter, use the Add button in the glossary toolbar. On the novel's Glossary page, use Add Term.

From a chapter, type the English name you want and the matching original-language text is found automatically; you can still type or correct the original name yourself. Every new term needs:

• Original Name
• Translated Name
• Type
• Description / Notes: why the term matters, for the reviewer

Gender defaults to Neutral if you don't set it.

"Already exists": if the original name you entered is already in the glossary, you'll see a notice instead of a dead end. Open takes you straight to the existing term; Edit lets you change what you typed and try again.

Renaming a term#

Changing a term's Translated Name has two ways of reaching chapters that are already translated:

• By default, the new name is substituted directly into already-translated chapters wherever the old name appeared. This is fast, but it can't fix grammar around the change. Renaming "Information Beings" to "Information Being," for example, leaves a stray plural behind.
• Force retranslate affected chapters: an opt-in switch on the reason step. The affected chapters are queued for a real retranslation instead, so the new name lands with correct grammar. This is also available on any edit (not just a rename) as "Retranslate chapters that don't use this name", useful when the glossary is already right but some existing chapters don't reflect it.

If you're deactivating a term (setting it Inactive) instead of renaming it, a different option appears: Lowercase instead of retranslating. This substitutes the name in place, lowercased, across already-translated chapters, useful for a term that turned out to be an ordinary word, not a name (deactivating "Silence" but wanting "silence" to read naturally). It doesn't spend a retranslation, and it can't be combined with Force retranslate.

Bulk rename#

On the novel's Glossary page, Bulk Rename finds every term whose translated name contains a substring and replaces it in all of them at once, useful for a formatting fix that hit many terms the same way (for example, "Profound-tier" → "Profound Tier" everywhere it appears).

1. Find the substring to match (at least 2 characters, case-sensitive, matched as plain text). There's no partial-word protection, so "The " and "The" behave very differently.
2. Replace with the new text (leave empty to delete the matched substring).
3. Original must contain (optional): an extra filter on the term's original-language name, so a rename can be scoped to only the terms that share a specific source term instead of every coincidental English match.
4. A Reason, required.

Preview matches shows every affected term before anything changes, with a switch per term so you can deselect any that matched by coincidence. If the rename would leave two terms sharing the same translated name, you'll see a collision warning. This is allowed, but worth checking.

Applying follows the same role split as any other edit: moderators apply immediately; everyone else submits it for review.

Chapter overrides#

Some changes should only apply from a certain chapter onward, or in just one chapter, not from chapter 1. Open a term and choose Manage chapter overrides (gender / active state).

There are two kinds, each with its own tab:

• Gender by chapter: for a term whose gender should read differently starting at some point.
• Active by chapter: for a term that should stop or start being used from a specific chapter, rather than for the whole novel. Useful for a name that collides with an ordinary English word only in part of the story.

Adding an override asks for a chapter and a scope:

• From here on: applies starting at that chapter through the end of the novel.
• This chapter only: applies to just that one chapter.

Existing overrides show as chips (for example "Ch.50+" or "Ch.12 only"); tap one to cycle or flip its value, or remove it. Chapter overrides aren't available on general terms, since they're specific to how one novel uses a term.

Only the chapters whose effective state actually changes are flagged for retranslation.

Edit history#

Every term's dialog has a Change History button (the small history icon next to its name). It lists every accepted change: what changed, who suggested it, who approved it, and the reason, newest first. Tap an entry to see the full before/after detail.

XP for accepted edits#

The first time your suggestion changes a real field on a term (name, gender, type, status, or chapter overrides) and it's accepted, whether a moderator applied it directly or approved it on Discord, you earn XP once for that term. A reason-only edit that changes nothing doesn't earn XP. XP isn't credited instantly; see Levels and Achievements for the timing.

Requesting a general term#

Editing the General Term switch on a term's edit screen proposes promoting it to the general glossary, shared across novels. This is a promotion only; an already-general term can't be un-generalized from this screen.

Editing a general term#

Where you start the edit changes what it affects:

• From inside a novel (a chapter, or that novel's Glossary page), changing a general term's name, gender, or type creates a novel-specific copy: this novel gets its own version of the term, and the change applies to that novel's chapters only. The shared term stays exactly as it was for every other novel. The edit dialog explains this and links to the shared entry.
• From the general glossary page (/entities/general), editing a term changes the shared entry itself: the change applies everywhere the term is used. This needs its own reason, and follows the same moderator / everyone-else split.

On the general glossary page, each term's ⋯ menu also has Genres and Fandoms: these set which genres or fandoms the term applies to (used for filtering the general glossary), submitted with their own reason the same way as any other change.

To remove a term from the general glossary entirely, use Remove in the same menu. This doesn't delete the term; each novel that was using it keeps its own copy going forward.

Canon reasoning for fan-fiction#

For a novel categorized as Fan-Fiction, the reason picker offers a Fandom/canon name option, for a name that should follow established canon or fandom convention rather than a literal translation. Choosing it, or otherwise writing "canon," "fandom," or "fanon" in your own reason, can also propose the term for the general glossary automatically, since a canon name usually applies to every fan-fiction novel in that fandom. This doesn't happen on non-fan-fiction novels.