Example: Our site is devoted to WordPerfect. We are about to build a WordPerfect FAQ. WordPerfect has many features with defined names. Whenever those feature names appear in the text of an answer, I would like them to be automatically formatted so that clicking on the feature name would bring up another browser session with the definition of the feature name and any "sell also" cross references stored in the definition. The "glossary" might be set up as a separate but special FAQ category, with its subcategories each being a glossary term and their answers the definitions/cross references for the term.

The key engineering challenge here, I believe, would be to have FOM recognize and format any glossary term encountered as a cross reference to the coresponding definition.

I believe it would be fairly simple to train our contributing subscribers to use proper terms (they're mostly experts), and the automatic conversion of defined glossary terms to cross references would reward and reinforce the use of proper terms. On the other hand, training my contributors to code cross-references would be problematic. They would first have to recognize that there is an available cross-reference, then locate it, then write the cross reference code. Even if they do it consistently, there would be many instances where they simply forget that a term could be a cross reference, so the terms in many situations would not be cross-referenced. Another advantage of automated cross referencing is that it can also serve as a learning tool.

A further refinement might be an automated way for to have all places in the FAQ where the defined term is discussed be automatically cross-referenced in the opposite direction and collected in the glossary term's definition. Sort of an automated See Also generator with the See Also links concatenated in the glossary definition.

An alternative, less automated way to accomplish this would be to create a search and replace tool moderators could use to create cross references and See Also references. But that's something that definitely could cause some damage and security should be very tight on such a tool.