1. A dictionary.
2. A stock of terms used in a particular profession, subject, or style; a vocabulary: the lexicon of surrealist art.
3. Linguistics. The morphemes of a language considered as a group.
4. You're looking at it.

The Knightmare Lexicon is designed to be all of the above and a little more. It's a facility for people to share their knowledge of Knightmare with each other and also lookup anything they may not know. Finally the simple feedback system lets visitors show how usefull they've found the information provided.

Definitions 1 to 3 provided by Dictionary.com

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Created by Forester, the Lexicon took shape through October 2004. By the 15th, adding and editing entries was possible. Ten days later, the Lexicon was complete, except for its search feature. (This was added in due course, along with other extensions, such as image uploading and hosting on the 28th, and a broader colour scheme for hyperlinks in early November.)

Interactive Knightmare's newest feature was accordingly announced by Forester on the Knightmare.com Forum, as 'rather obviously a Knightmare Lexicon designed to provide a dictionary / encyclopedia style reference to everything even remotely related to Knightmare.' Although closer to an encyclopædia than to a lexicon, the name 'Knightmare Encyclopedia' was already taken. Nevertheless, the pages of the Lexicon were for a while titled 'Lexicon - A Knightmare Encyclopædia'.

The Lexicon achieved instant popularity: by October 28th, just 3 days after its launch, it had over 100 definitions from 8 different users. In September 2006, the Lexicon reached the 500 mark, courtesy of Billy Hicks' entry on Hugo Myatt. In January 2007, the Lexicon was boosted when Jake Collins (Eyeshield) started cross-posting old TES articles as Lexicon entries. In September 2009, the Lexicon reached the 1000 mark, courtesy of an article on Audrey Jenkinson. In December 2011, an entry on the Helmet of Justice became the Lexicon's 1000th entry.

Here are some statistics:

Number of contributors: over 33, including Aldude, Anna, Becxsmagic, Billy, The Brollachan, Canadanne, Darren, David, Eastb, emeraldeyes, Emii, Eyeshield, Forester, Frightknightrider, Gareth, Harvey Towers, James Aukett, Jamie, Kieran, King G, KM Fan, LordF, Martin, Mog, Mystara, Neil Jones, Pooka, Ricky (a.k.a. Skarkill), Ringmasterrob, Robin, Romana, Snowcat, Thanatos, The Mighty Martin.

Number of contributors who have written entries on themselves: 9, plus 1 (Ringmasterrob) that was removed after posting.

Earliest entry by current date: IKM, dated 20/10/04.

Number of categories: 28.

Letters of the alphabet covered: all 26, running from Abesse to ZZAP. The X gap was first filled by Billy's entry on xanthous in 2005.

Highest number of definitions by a single user: over 730 to date by David. After him it's Eyeshield, with over 250.

Highest number of definitions for a single entry: Lord Fear has 7. However, 2 of them pertain to members of the fan community named after Lord Fear, and 2 pertain to the fan-made Knightmare RPGs, rather than to the Knightmare character himself.

Best-received entry: a tie between Billy Hicks, Blind Date and Matt [Richings], which currently have 7 thumbs up and 0 thumbs down each.

Worst-received entry: Emii's definition of Astro Farm, which currently has 7 thumbs down and 1 up.

Most thumbed entry: to date, Eastb's entry on Lord Fear, which has 11 thumbs in total.

N.B. A number of Lexicon users are known to have voted for definitions that they themselves have written, while other users have made a point of avoiding this practice.

It is helpful when contributors to the Lexicon don't link to non-existent entries, because it is misleading and it detracts from visitors' ability to navigate the Lexicon.

[Earlier version: 2008-01-11 00:33:17]

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