Wikipedia:Glossary

From Free net encyclopedia

{{{1{{{1|}}}|

Shortcut: {{{1|}}}

}}}

This is a glossary of terms commonly used on Wikipedia. For more help, see Wikipedia:Help, Wikipedia:FAQ, and Wikipedia:Contributing FAQ. For abbreviations often used in edit summaries, see Wikipedia:Edit summary legend. For common shorthands used in AfD, see the Wikipedia:Guide to deletion.

Contents
0–9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Top of page — See also — External links

A

Accidental link

A wikilink where the displayed text is the name of the target article. To display text other than the name of the target article, use a piped link.

Admin

Short for Administrator. A user with extra technical privileges who does housework.

Also used: Sysop, Janitor.

Advertorial

Describing an article that exists more to advertise or promote a product, company, service or site than to provide encyclopedic information on it.

AfD

The Wikipedia:Articles for deletion page.

See also Wikipedia:Guide to deletion for explanation of some terms used on AfD.

AGF

Abbreviation for "assume good faith", a guideline whereby one should not assume that a bad edit was done maliciously. See Wikipedia:Assume good faith.

Anon

Abbreviation for "anonymous user". This is what you are if you have not logged in.

Also used: IP user.

Anchor

An HTML term for code that lets you link to a specific point in a page, using the "#" character. You can use them to link to a section of a page, e.g. Wikipedia:How to edit a page#Links,_URLs,_images. Note that anchors currently have no effect in redirects.

AOTW

Abbreviation of Wikipedia:Article of the week, the former appellation of Wikipedia:Collaboration of the week.

ArbCom

Abbreviation for Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee

Arbitration

The final step in the dispute resolution process.

See also Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee.

Archive

A subpage of a Talk page to which some parts of the discussion are transferred, to reduce the size of the Talk page. Rarely, the term may refer to the Wikipedia:Archive page, for obsolete historical material.

See also: Wikipedia:How to archive a talk page.

Article

An encyclopedia entry. All articles are pages, but not all pages are articles.

See also Wikipedia:What is an article.

Autofellatio

In the outside world, "Autofellatio" means just what the article says. On Wikipedia, Autofellatio is connected to several issues, including censorship (by removing a photograph of the act that used to be on there) and vandalism (by inserting said photograph into user pages) and trolling (by igniting flamewars for or against the inclusion of said photograph). Due to this, and the term's otherwise obscurity, Autofellatio has become an internal Wikipedian meme.

B

Bad faith nomination

A bad faith nomination is the nomination of a page, or more pages (usually for deletion at AFD) for disingenuous reasons such as making a point or vandalism.

Ban

Banning is the extreme, last resort action by which someone is prevented from editing Wikipedia for a prolonged or indeterminate length of time. Reason for banning is usually a long history of biased edits, persistent adding of incorrect or doubtful material, refusal to cooperate with others, or extreme incivility and threats. If someone is banned, their username is blocked, and any username or IP that is with great likelihood identified as being the same person can be blocked without any further reason. See also: Block.

Be Bold

The exhortation that users should try to fix mistakes in articles themselves, rather than complain about them. See Wikipedia:Be bold in updating pages.

BEEFSTEW

A proposed rubric that some editors use for judging the quality of articles on high schools (and, by extension, elementary schools). See User:Dpbsmith/BEEFSTEW.

BJAODN

Abbreviation for Wikipedia:Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense. The verb, BJAODNed, refers to the act of something being posted there, and is often used at Wikipedia namespace articles involving heavy user participation, such as the Reference desk or AfD/TfD pages.

Blanking

Removing all content from a page. Newcomers often do this accidentally. On the other hand, if blanking an article is done in bad faith, it is vandalism. If blanking is done to a vandalised brand-new page, it is maintenance, and the page will be deleted by an admin within a few hours if no dispute arises. Template:Tl should be added to the blanked page to draw attention to it, rather than just blanking it. Newcomers often mistake blanking for deletion.

Block

Action by a sysop, removing from a certain IP-number or username the ability to edit Wikipedia. Usually done against addresses that have done vandalism or against users who have been banned. See also: Ban.

Boilerplate text

A standard message which can be added to an article using a template. For example, Template:Tl is expanded to the following:

This article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

See also Wikipedia:Boilerplate text.

Bot

A program that automatically or semi-automatically adds or edits Wikipedia-pages.

See also Wikipedia:Bots, Rambot.

Broken link

Also used: edit link, red link.

A link to a nonexistent page, usually colored red. [[Template:]] may display this way depending on your settings.

Broken redirect

Redirect to a non-existing page. Common opinion is that these should be removed.

Bureaucrat

A Wikipedia Administrator who has been entrusted with promoting users to sysops.

See also Wikipedia:Bureaucrats.

Also used: Crat.

C

Cabal

Sometimes assumed to be a secretive organization responsible for the development of Wikipedia, the word is usually used as a sarcastic hint to lighten up when discussions seem to become a little too paranoid. Discussions involving the term may have links to POV / NPOV issues, admin problems, or pretty much anything to do with the foundation of Wikipedia. The term is comparable to the use of the term SMOF in science fiction fandom.

Compare with Troll.

See also m:Cabal, There Is No Cabal.

Category

A category is a collection of pages automatically formed by the Wikipedia servers by analysing category tags in articles. Category tags are in the form [[Category:Computers]]. The part after the ":" is the name of the Category. Adding a category tag causes a link to the category and any super-categories to go to the bottom of the page. As stated, it also results in the page being added to the category listing. A list of basic categories to browse through can be found at Category:Fundamental, though a more user-friendly way to find a category is at Wikipedia:Browse.

CfD

The Wikipedia:Categories for deletion page.

Chatty

A term used for articles which seem to attempt a conversation with the reader. Chatty articles may need cleanup.

Checkuser

An access level that lets users with it see the IP addresses of logged-in users, usually to determine if someone is using sockpuppets to violate policy. Currently only granted to certain members of the Arbitration Committee.

See also m:checkuser.

Cleanup

The process of repairing articles that are ungrammatical, are poorly formatted, etc. Cleanup generally requires only editing skills, as opposed to the specialized knowledge that is more often called for by pages needing attention.

See also: Wikipedia:Cleanup process.

Comment out

To hide from normal display whilst retaining the material for editors to see. This is done by inserting the characters <!-- at the start of the comment text and --> at the end. These character strings are used to delimit comments in HTML code.

Community Portal

One of Wikipedia's main pages. It can often be found on the quickbar (on the left side in most skins), and is a page that lists the collaboration of the week, outstanding tasks that need to be addressed, and several other useful bits of information and resources. The Community Portal is useful for picking an article or topic to work on or read.

Contribs

Short for contributions. These are the edits that a user has made.

Copyedit

A change to an article that only affects formatting, grammar, and other presentational aspects.

Copyvio

Also used: copyviol.

Copyright violation. Usually used in an edit summary when some copyrighted material has been added to Wikipedia.

See also Wikipedia:Copyrights.

COTW

Collaboration of the week, an article needing improvement that is selected by vote to be the subject of widespread cooperative editing for a week.

Crat

Short for Bureaucrat.

Cruft

A term used to describe an article or group of articles which are too detailed and/or irrelevent for Wikipedia. The term is often used as a suffix for terms such as Pokécruft (Pokémon-cruft) and Roadcruft (cruft articles about roads). Cruft articles are often on topics such as minor characters from television series, or very specific lists of songs (such as "List of songs which includes the word 'death' in the lyrics"). Cruft is often deleted or merged into other articles by the Wikipedia community, although some argue that articles such as Vulpix and Missingno. are cruft, despite their long-term survival as articles.

CSB

WikiProject Countering systemic bias or, more rarely, an adjective for an topic of concern to the WikiProject, e.g. "This doesn't seem to be a CSB article."

Cut and paste move

Moving a page by taking the text of the page, and put it into the edit window for the second page. Generally considered worse than the 'move page' option, because it causes the page and its edit history to be in different places. Cut and paste moves can be fixed by administrators.

See also Wikipedia:How to fix cut and paste moves.

D

dab

See Disambiguation.

Data dump

To import material from outside sources into Wikipedia without editing, formatting and linking. This is frowned upon by most Wikipedians.

See also Wikify.

Dead-end page

Page that has no links to existing other pages, except perhaps interlanguage links. Special:Deadendpages lists them, but this function is disabled in some Wikimedia projects.

De-admin

See De-sysop.

De-bold

Also used: un-bold.

To remove a phrase's bold typeface, because it is not the first reference to the title or a synonym of the topic (which should be bold), or that it is not the topic of the article at all. Common situations when one would de-bold include: bold foreign words (should instead be italicized) and bold Wikilinks (which, according to current Manual of Style, should be plain).

Deletionist

Someone who is in favor of deleting some pages that others prefer to keep. Often used as a derogatory term. The term 'inclusionist' for the opposite party is less used.

See also m:deletionism and m:inclusionism.

Deorphan

To make a page no longer an orphan.

See also Wikipedia:Orphan

Deprecated

Techie-speak for "tolerated or supported but not recommended (i.e. beware: may well be on the way out)". The term is also used to refer to pages, templates or categories that have been orphaned or are no longer used. In real English, the word means "deplored or strongly disapproved of".

De-sysop

Also used: De-admin.

Take away someone's sysop status. Used very rarely, in cases where someone has misused their sysop powers.

See also Wikipedia:Possible misuses of admin privileges.

Developer

A user who can make direct changes to the Wikipedia software and database.

See also m:Developers for a list of developers and further information.

De-Wikify

Also used: Un-Wikify.

To remove (de-link) a wikification of an article. This can be done to remove selflinks or excessive common-noun Wikification.

Dicdef

Also used: Dictdef.

Short for a dictionary definition. This term is commonly used on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion when referring to an article that is more similar to a dictionary article than an encyclopedia one.

See also Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary.

Diff

The difference between two versions of page, as displayed using the Page history feature, or from Recent Changes. The versions to compare are encoded in the URL, so you can make a link by copying and pasting it - for instance when discussing a change on an article's talk page.

See also m:Help:Diff.

Disambiguation

Also used: dab, disambig.

The process of resolving the conflict that occurs when articles about two or more different topics have the same natural title.

See also Wikipedia:Disambiguation.

Disambiguation page

A page that contains various meanings of a word, and refers to the pages where the various meanings are defined.

Double redirect

A redirect which leads to another redirect. Counterintuitively, this will not bring one to the final destination, so it needs to be eliminated by linking directly to the target redirect.

Dupe

Short for a duplicate article. Often used when identifying a duplicate page that needs to be merged with another.

DYK

An abbreviation for Template:Did you know.

Contents:	Top - 0–9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

E

Edit conflict

Two or more parties both attempt to save different edits to the same page at the same time. The later edit doesn't take effect, but the editor is prompted to merge their edit with the earlier one.

See also Wikipedia:Edit conflicts.

Editcountitis

A humorous term for having an unhealthy obsession with the number of edits that a person makes to Wikipedia.

See also Wikipedia:Editcountitis.

Edit link

See Broken link.

Edit summary

The contents of the "Summary:" field below the edit box on the "Edit this page" page.

See also Wikipedia:Edit summary.

Edit war

Also used: revert war.

Two or more parties continually making their preferred changes to a page, and undoing the changes they don't agree with. Generally, an edit war is the result of an argument on a talk page that could not be resolved.

See also Wikipedia:Edit war.

External link

Also used: ext. ln, ext lk, or extlink.

A link to a website not owned by Wikimedia. The alternatives are an internal link, wikilink or free link within Wikipedia, and an interwiki link to a sister project.

See also Wikipedia:External links.

F

FA

Featured article, an article that has been selected as representing "the best of Wikipedia". Articles become featured articles when a FAC gets consensus for promotion.

FAC

Featured article candidate, an article that has been proposed for consideration to be featured as one of the best in Wikipedia.

FARC

Featured article removal candidate, a featured article whose "featured" status is considered for removal, either because the featured article criteria or the article itself changed.

Fancruft

See Cruft.

Forest fire

A flame war which spreads, seemingly uncontrollably, beyond the pages where it began into unrelated articles' talk pages. A forest fire becomes progressively more difficult for any user to keep track of. On Wikipedia, this is less of a problem than on other wikis, due to well-established boundaries for user conduct, clear guidelines for article content, and a formal dispute resolution process.

See also wildfire and MeatBall:ForestFire.

Fork

A splitting of an entity to satisfy different groups of people - in Wikipedia, this can either mean a project-wide split, in which a group of users decides to take a project database and continue with it on their own site (which is perfectly legal under the GFDL), or the split of an article, usually to accommodate different POVs. The latter is often called a POV fork and generally regarded as highly undesirable.

FP

Featured pictures, a picture that has been selected as representing "the best of Wikipedia". Pictures become featured pictures when a FPC gets consensus for promotion.

FPC

Featured picture candidate, a picture that has been proposed for consideration to be featured as one of the best in Wikipedia.

Free link

A link pointing to another page within Wikipedia or its sister projects by using the wiki markup double square-brackets "[[" and "]]". Sometimes they are referred to as wikilinks or internal links. Unless otherwise specified in a user's monobook.css, these links usually show up as blue if they are working and you haven't visited them before, red if they are broken, and purple if they are working and you have visited them before; note that they do not have the arrow symbol characteristic of an external link.

G

Gdanzig

An edit war over which of several possible names should be used for a place, after an ancient lengthy edit war over the name of Gdansk.

Geogre's Law

A law attributed to User:Geogre (although he may not have been the first person, and has certainly has not been the only person, to observe this correlation), and most frequently referred to in Articles for deletion. Paraphrased, the law states that there exists a strong correlation between the lack of proper capitalization of a person's name in the title of a biographical article, and the failure of the subject of that article to satisfy the criteria for inclusion of biographies.

A stronger correlation has been found between the use of "cool" or "awesome" in a biography and failure to satisfy the criteria.

GFDL

GNU Free Documentation License. Wikipedia articles are released under this license.

See also Wikipedia:Copyrights.

Google test

Running sections or titles of articles through the Google search engine for various purposes. The four most common are to check for copyright violations, to determine which term among several is the most widely used, to decide whether a person is sufficiently famous to warrant an article or is simply engaging in vanity and to check whether a questionable and obscure topic is real (as opposed to the idiosyncratic invention of a particular individual).

See also Wikipedia:Google test.

GPL

GNU General Public License. Wikipedia's software is released under this license.

H

Hagiography

Wording that is excessively flushing or glowing, to the point of being POV, in a biographical article on a deceased person.

History

All previous versions of an article, from its creation to its current state. Also called page history.

See also: Wikipedia:Page history

Hopelessly POV

While Wikipedia policy states that Wikipedia must fairly describe multiple points of view, some Wikipedians are intent on suppressing certain points of view and so find it convenient to delete them with "hopelessly POV" given as the "reason".

I

IfD

An abbreviation for Images and media for Deletion.

IANAL

An abbreviation for I Am Not A Lawyer, indicating that an editor is about to give their opinion on a legal matter as they understand it, although they are not qualified and probably don't fully understand the law in question. May be generalized to other professions, e.g. IANAD (doctor).

Inclusionist

A user who is of the opinion that Wikipedia should contain as much information as possible, often regardless of presentation or notability. There are varying degrees of Inclusionism — radical Inclusionists vote "Keep" on every AfD they come across, while more moderate ones merely express their desire for a wide variety of topics to be covered, even if they do not fit the classical criteria for inclusion in an encyclopedia, or if the articles in question have quality problems.

Infobox

A consistently formatted table which is present in articles with a common subject. See Wikipedia:Infobox and Wikipedia:Infobox templates for a how-to guide.

See also: taxobox.

Internal link

See free link.

Interwiki

A link to a sister project; this can be an interlanguage link to a corresponding article in a different language in Wikipedia, or a link to a project such as Wikibooks, Meta, etc.

ITHAWO

I thought he already was one. Used about people listed in 'admin' requests.

ITN

An abbreviation for Template:In the news

J

Janitor

See Admin.

Jimbo

Jimmy Wales, Chair and President of the Wikimedia Foundation.

K

Kate's Tool

A tool written by Kate used to count a user's edits without having to page through the contributions list.

See also WP:KATE.

L

Language link

See Interwiki.

link rot

Because websites change over time, many external links from Wikipedia to other sites cannot be guaranteed to remain active. When an article's links becomes outdated and no longer work, the article is said to have undergone link rot.

lk

Link. See Wikipedia:Links.

M

m

On the Recent changes page, m (lower case, bold) indicates a minor edit.

Main Page

The page to which every user not specifying an article is redirected. The Main Page contains links to current events, presents certain articles (like a featured article of the day and links to Wikipedia's newest articles), and also serves as an entry point to browsing all articles by topic or other classification. Links to sister projects and other-language Wikipedias are also a prominent feature on the Main Page. Due to its high exposure, all content on the Main Page is protected.

MC

The Mediation Committee. See Wikipedia:Mediation Committee.

Meat puppet

An account that is created only for the strengthening of another user's position in votes or discussions, but which is operated by another person, unlike a sock puppet (which is operated directly by the user in question). Meat puppets are treated exactly like sock puppets in most cases, making the distinction between them largely academic.

medcab

The Mediation Cabal. See Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal.

medcom

The Mediation Committee. See Wikipedia:Mediation Committee.

Mediation

An attempt by a third party to resolve an edit war or other conflict between users. There exists a Wikipedia:Mediation Committee which can do so on a more or less official basis as the penultimate step in the Wikipedia:dispute resolution process, and a Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal which acts as an informal alternative.

See also: Wikipedia:What is mediation?; Wikipedia:Mediation.

MediaWiki

The software behind Wikipedia and its sister projects, as well as several projects not related to Wikimedia, and a namespace.

Compare with Wikimedia.

See also Wikipedia:MediaWiki, Wikipedia:MediaWiki namespace.

Merge

Taking the text of two pages, and turning it into a single page. See Wikipedia:Merging and moving pages

Mergist

A user who adheres to the principle of Mergism, which is a compromise between the Inclusionist and Deletionist principles. A Mergist is of the opinion that while many topics merit inclusion, not every topic deserves its own article, and tries to combine these "side" topics into longer, less specific articles.

Meta

A separate wiki (http://meta.wikipedia.org) used to discuss general Wikipedia matters. In the past, this has been called Metapedia, Meta Wikipedia, Meta Wikimedia, and many other combinations.

See also Meta.

Meta page

Page that provides information about Wikipedia. Meta pages are more correctly referred to as project namespace pages. Meta pages should not be confused with a page on Meta-Wikimedia.

See also Wikipedia:Meta page.

Mirror

A website other than Wikipedia that uses content original to Wikipedia as a source for at least some of its content.

See also Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks.

Mop

A term used to refer to administrator duties (compare Janitor). Often seen in the phrase to give someone a mop (i.e., to make someone into an administrator).

Move

Changing the name and location of an article because of a misspelling, violation of naming convention, misnomer, or inaccuracy. Involves either renaming the page or moving it and constructing a redirect to keep the original link intact.

See also Help:Renaming (moving) a page.

Contents:	Top - 0–9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

N

N

On the Recent changes page, N (upper case, bold) indicates a new page or article.

n/a

An abbreviation for new article, often used in edit summaries.

Namespace

A way to classify pages. Wikipedia has namespaces for encyclopedia articles, pages about Wikipedia (project namespace), user pages (User:), special pages (Special:), template pages (Template:), and talk pages (Talk:, Wikipedia talk:, and User talk:), among others.

See also Wikipedia:Namespace.

Newbie test

Also used: newb test, noob test.

An edit made by a newcomer to Wikipedia, just to see if "Edit this page" really does what it sounds like. Newcomers should use Wikipedia:Sandbox for this purpose.

See also newcomers.

NN

frequently in lower case as nn

Found on comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion, indicating that the article's subject is not notable enough for a Wikipedia entry.

nom

Short for "nomination," it is often found on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion as part of the phrase Delete per nom, indicating a voter's assent to the main nomination for deletion.

NOR

The Wikipedia policy that No Original Research is allowed for sources in articles.

Notice board

Also used: noticeboard.

A page which acts as a forum for a group of users, who use it to coordinate their editing. Most notice boards are by geographic location, like the UK Wikipedians' notice board; a notable exception is the Administrators' noticeboard.

NPOV

Neutral point of view, or the agreement to report subjective opinions objectively, so as not to cause edit wars between opposing sides. As a verb, to remove biased statements or slanted phrasing. As an adjective, it indicates that an article is in compliance with Wikipedia's NPOV policy.

Null edit

a null edit is made when an editor opens the edit window of a document then re-saves the file without having made any text changes. This is sometimes done to change the functioning of templates (which require articles containing them to be edited in order for any changes to take effect).

Nupedia

A Wikipedia predecessor project that shut down in 2003. It is currently inactive and there are no plans to resurrect it.

See also: Wikipedia:Nupedia and Wikipedia.

O

Open tasks

A template (found at Template:Tl) that lists several more or less janitorial things to do. It is found on the community portal as well as on many user pages.

Original research

In Wikipedia, original research (sometimes abbreviated OR) is material added to articles that has not been published already by a reputable source. Wikipedia is not the place for original research.

Orphan

A page with no links from other pages. You can view lists of orphaned articles and images.

See also Wikipedia:Orphan.

P

Page

Any individual topic within Wikipedia; the web page without the top, bottom and side bars. Pages include articles, stubs, redirects, disambiguation pages, user pages, talk pages, documentation and special pages.

Patent nonsense

A humorous pejorative applied to articles that are either completely unintelligible or totally irrelevant. See Wikipedia:Patent nonsense.

PD

Public domain

Peer Review

A request to have fellow wikipedians review and help improve an article. Wikipedia has a page specifically for posting such a request and offering up your work for review. See Wikipedia:Peer Review.

Per nom

A vote on a page such as RFA or AFD may be accompanied by the note "per nom", which means "for the reasons given by the nominator". Similarly, a vote may be noted "per X" where X is the name of a previous voter.

See also: nom

Personal attack

A comment that is not directed at content, but insults or threatens another editor (or a group of editors) personally. To maintain a friendly and productive atmosphere, personal attacks are forbidden per Wikipedia policy and may be grounds for blocking in serious and/or repeated cases.

See also: Wikipedia:No personal attacks, Wikipedia:Remove personal attacks

Phase I

The wiki software UseModWiki. Wikipedia used this software prior to January 25, 2002.

Phase II

The wiki software written by User:Magnus Manske and adopted by Wikipedia after January 25, 2002 (Magnus Manske Day).

Phase III

A rewritten and improved version of the Phase II software. It was eventually renamed to MediaWiki. Wikipedia currently uses MediaWiki version 1.6devel [1].

See also Wikipedia:MediaWiki, m:MediaWiki.

Phase IV

A dreamy proposal for the next generation of Wikipedia software made back when complete rewrites were in vogue. Development is now focused on incremental progress.

See also m:Wikipedia4.

Piped link

A link where the displayed text is not the name of the target article. Such links are created using the pipe character "|" e.g. [[Target article|Displayed text]]. The pipe trick is a software feature that generates the displayed text for you in certain circumstances.

See also Wikipedia:Piped link.

POINT

"Thou shalt not deliberately skew any page, nor create or nominate for deletion any page, nor in any other way vandalise Wikipedia, in order to try to prove your point!" Also written as WP:POINT.

See also Wikipedia:Don't disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point.

Pokémon test

A heuristic for assessing the relevance or legitimacy of prospective article topics, which holds that any topic more notable than the most obscure species of Pokémon may deserve a Wikipedia article.

See also Wikipedia:Pokémon test.

Portal

Portal

POTD

Picture of the day

POV

Point of view. Originally referred to each of many perspectives on an issue which may need to be considered and balanced in an encyclopedic article. Today, more often used as an insulting synonym for "bias", as in "That reply was POV, not neutral.".

POV warrior

A wiki editor who aggressively distorts coverage of certain topics to suit his/her biases despite community norms of neutrality. An affliction that especially infests Wikipedia.

Process page

A wikispace page dedicated to discussion and (usually) voting on specific pages or users, or for similar administrative reasons. Examples include CFD, RFA, and AFD.

Project namespace

The project namespace is a namespace dedicated to providing information about wikipedia.

Protected page

This term indicates a page that cannot be edited except by sysops. Usually this is done to cool down an edit war.

See also Wikipedia:This page is protected.

Protologism

A word that is created and used in the hope that it will become widely used and an accepted part of the language. A successful protologism becomes a neologism.

The term protologism has been adopted as jargon for use within Wiki communities, but is not in common usage outside this context. "Protologism" itself can be considered either a protologism or neologism. Coined by Mikhail Epstein from Greek protos, first + Greek logos, word.

See also list of protologisms.

The Pump

Also used: VP.

A nickname for Wikipedia:Village pump.

Q

Quarto

Wikimedia Quarto is a multilingual quarterly newsletter published by the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. It can be read online here.

Quickpoll

A poll among Wikipedia regulars on issues that need to be quickly resolved, such as the banning of problematic users. Also used as verb: to quickpoll, meaning to hold a quickpoll. Considered obsolete.

R

Rambot

A controversial bot written by User:Ram-Man and used to enter United States geographical data for tens of thousands of cities, notable and otherwise.

See also User talk:Rambot.

Random page

The Random page link is on the left of each page for most skins. It will take you to a Wikipedia article that is chosen by a computer algorithm without any deliberate pattern or meaning to the choice.

RC

An abbreviation for Recent changes

RC Patrol

See Recent changes.

Reader-facing template

See: Wikipedia:Neutral point of view

Re-creation

A posting either of the same text of a deleted article by a new user, or of the same text or different text of a deleted article by the original creator.

Recent changes

A dynamically generated page (found at Special:Recentchanges) that lists all edits in descending chronological order. Recent changes are checked regularly by editors doing RC patrol, which means checking all suspicious edits to catch vandalism as early as possible. Other ways of watching recent changes are the Recentchanges IRC channel, or CryptoDerk's Vandal Fighter, which announce changes in realtime.

Redirect

Also used: redir.

A page title which, when requested, merely sends the reader to another page. This is used for synonyms and ease of linking. For example, impressionist might redirect to impressionism.

See also Wikipedia:Redirect.

Red link

A wikilink to an article that doesn't exist shows up red.

Refactor

The act of restructuring a document, usually applied to the ordering and summarizing of talk pages.

See also: Wikipedia:Refactoring talk pages

Reincarnation

A new user account created by a banned user. See sock puppet.

Render

In the context of the World Wide Web, rendering is the operation performed by the user's browser of converting the web document (in HTML, XML, etc. plus image and other included files) into the visible page on the user's screen.

Revert

An edit that reverses changes made by someone else.

See also Wikipedia:Revert

Revert war

See Edit war.

RfA

Can mean request for adminship or request for arbitration, depending on the context. The latter is frequently abbreviated RfAr to avoid the ambiguity.

RfAr

A request for arbitration.

RfC

Request for comment, part of the dispute resolution process. A request for comment is an informal process for soliciting input from Wikipedians about a question of article content or a user's conduct.

See also: Wikipedia:Requests for comment.

RfD

The Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion page.

RfM

Request for mediation, part of the dispute resolution process.

See also: Wikipedia:Requests for mediation.

rm

Remove. Used in edit summaries to indicate that a particular piece of text or formatting has been deleted.

rmv

Remove vandalism. Used in edit summaries when good edits were made after vandalism, requiring the editor to sort out the vandalism, as opposed to a simple reversion. (See "rvv" below.)

Rogue admin

Accusatory term for a Wikipedia administrator, suggesting that the accused person systematically abuses their administrative access. Such accusations are rarely found to be particularly productive.

Rollback

To change a page back to the version before the last edit. Sysops have special tools to do this more easily.

Rouge admin

A misspelling of "rogue admin" occasionally used by vandals and trolls. Now used jokingly by many Wikipedia administrators, usually to describe themselves performing actions that are within policy but which the affected users may not like (such as blocking vandals and deleting pages).

rv

Revert. An edit summary indicating that the page has been reverted to a previous version, often because of vandalism.

See also Wikipedia:How to revert a page to an earlier version.

rvv

Revert because of vandalism. See rv above.

S

s/word1/word2/

Replace word1 with word2. Used in edit summaries. It is a reference to the command for "find and replace" in languages such as sed and Perl. s/word1/word2/g means "replace all occurrences of word1 with word2" (g stands for "global").

Sandbox

A sandbox is a page that users may edit however they want. Though it is meant to help users experiment and gain familiarity with Wiki markup, the public sandbox at Wikipedia:Sandbox is often filled with strange things and patent nonsense. In addition to the public sandbox, users may create private sandboxes on subpages of their user page, e.g. User:Hephaestos/Sandbox.

Section editing

Using one of the '[edit]' links to the right of each section's title, one can get an edit window containing only the section of the page that's below the [edit] link. This makes it (hopefully) easier to find the exact spot where one wants to edit, and helps you avoiding an edit conflict. You can turn section editing off in your preferences under the "Enable section editing via [edit] links" option.

Self-link

A Wikilink contained in an article that points the reader to that same article, e.g. linking Vice President in the article "Vice President". Such links are automatically displayed as strongly emphasised text rather than links, but the more complex case of a link which redirects to the same article is not, and should be de-wikified.

SfD

The Wikipedia:Stub types for deletion page.

Sheep vote

A vote on Wikipedia which seems to be cast just to go along with the flow. E.g., on RfA, this can typically be a vote such as "Support because x, y, and z are supporting."

Shortcut

A redirect used within Wikispace to enable editors to get to a project page more quickly.

Skin

The appearance theme in Special:Preferences. Currently, five are available: Standard, Nostalgia, Cologne Blue, Monobook, and MySkin.

Snowball clause

Sometimes votes on process pages are closed early when it becomes obvious that they have "a snowball's chance in Hell" of passing the vote. This removal is "per the Snowball clause".

See also Wikipedia:Snowball clause.

Sock puppet

Another user account created secretly by an existing wikipedian, generally to manufacture the illusion of support in a vote or argument. Also, particularly on AfD, a friend of an existing Wikipedian who has created an account solely for the purpose of supporting that wikipedian in a vote (this special case is often called a meat puppet). It is not always possible to tell the difference.

See also Wikipedia:Sock puppet.

Soft redirect

A very short article or page that essentially points the reader in the direction of another page. Used in cases where a normal redirect is inappropriate for various reasons (e.g. it is a cross-wiki redirect)

See also Wikipedia:Soft redirect.

sp

Short for spelling correction. Used in edit summaries.

Speedy delete

Deletion of a page without prior discussion. Pages can be speedily deleted only under very specific circumstances; see Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion for those.

Speedy keep

The closing of a vote on a deletion wikispace page (like AFD) prior to the normal end of the voting period. This happens when the nomination has been faulty (e.g. a Bad faith nomination) or when there is overwhelming evidence that the page should be kept.

Split

Separating a single page into two or more pages.

Steward

An Administrator who has been empowered to change any user's status, including granting and revoking Administrator status and granting bureaucrat status.

See also Wikipedia:Administrators#Stewards.

Stub

An article usually consisting of one short paragraph or less.

See also Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub.

Strike out

Placement of text in strikethrough (HTML <s></s>) tags. This is very rarely used in articles, but is relatively common in votes and discussions when a contributor changes his opinion. As not to cause confusion, the outdated comments are stricken out (like this). Generally, one should strike out only one's own comments.

Subst'ing

See Transclusion.

Sub-stub

A very short stub. For example, an article that is no more than a simple definition ("An airplane is a type of winged flying vehicle"). The practice of tagging short articles as substubs has been deprecated - tag them as stubs instead.

See also Wikipedia:Substub.

Subpage

A page connected to a parent page. You can only create subpages in certain namespaces. Do not use subpages in the main article space.

See also Wikipedia:Subpages.

Suitly emphazi

A phrase with no known exact meaning, but which has a general allusion to positive things, such as improvement. Originally started as an in-joke on the Wikipedia Reference desk. (See here for the original usage.)

Sysop

See Admin.

Systemic bias

In Wikipedian terms, this refers to the preponderance of Wikipedia articles relating to subjects specific to English-speaking and/or Western countries, as opposed to those from the rest of the world. It may also refer to a bias for articles that may be of particular interest to those who have an affinity towards computers and the Internet, since they are more likely to edit Wikipedia.

Contents:	Top - 0–9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

T

Tag

In addition to its usual HTML meanings, a tag can simply mean a category or a template that will assign an article to a category (most often a stub template). "To tag an article" means to either add a category or a stub template.

See also Help:HTML in wikitext and Help:Table

Talk page

A page reserved for discussion. Very confusingly, the link to a talk page is labelled "discussion". All pages within Wikipedia (except pages in the Special namespace, and talk pages themselves!) have talk pages attached to them.

See also Wikipedia:Talk page.

Taxobox

A type of infobox, a taxobox is a taxonomy table positioned at the right side of an entry for a species or organism (or for a genus or family), giving a chart of the kingdom, phylum, etc. of the creature. Taxoboxes are also used for similar standardised tables.

See also Wikipedia:Taxobox.

Template

A way of automatically including the contents of one page within another page, used for boilerplate text, navigational aids, etc.

See also: Wikipedia:Template namespace.

TfD

The Wikipedia:Templates for deletion page.

Trackback

Not yet documentated: Wikipedia:Trackback.

Transclusion

also used subst'ing

There are two main ways of using templates on articles: inclusion (accomplished by using {{Template Name}}), and transclusion ({{subst:Template Name}}). The former will include the content of Template Name on the fly whenever the article is loaded, while the latter will permanently insert the content of the template onto the article. Thus, using transclusion, if the template content is modified at a later date, the article's content will not change.

Transclusion is the preferred method for long-term, permanent notices, as it is less confusing, and even helps to lighten the load on the database. Transclusion has a further advantage in that a template may be de-linked from any associated category or slightly modified to suit the circumstances, for instance when the template is used on a talk page. Inclusion is preferred when it is possible that the template will be edited or replaced at a later date.

some process pages are said to be transcluded when each day's new additions to the page (or every new item) has its own subpage, linked to the main process page by a template.

Translation

The English-language Wikipedia should have only pages in English. Non-English pages are subject to deletion unless translated.

See also: Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English for pages on the English Wikipedia that are written in a foreign language; Wikipedia:Translation into English for requests for translations into English of pages from foreign-language Wikipedias.

Transwiki

Move a page to another wiki, in particular Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikisource or sep11.

See also m:Transwiki.

Troll

A user who incites or engages in disruptive behavior (trolling). There are some people who just enjoy causing conflict, and there are those who make a hobby of it. However, these are few in number. Calling someone a troll in a dispute is a bad idea; it has an effect similar to calling someone a Nazi – no further meaningful debate can be held.

Compare with Cabal.

See also polarization.

Tyop

A cute misspelling of typo. Used as an edit summary when correcting typos.

See also Wikipedia:typo.

U

Unencyclopedic

What should not be in Wikipedia; the term is highly debated and sometimes considered useless or tautological.

See also Wikipedia:Unencyclopedic.

Un-wiki

Going against the character of a Wiki. Usually, saying that something is "un-wiki" means that it makes editing more difficult or impossible.

UseMod

See UseModWiki.

Userbox

A small box which is stored in the template space, and which includes a small piece of information about a user (such as "This user likes cheese"). Many users use userboxes on their user page, although several look down upon it.

See also Wikipedia:Userboxes.

Userfy

To turn a page in the article or template namespace into a user page or subpage.

User page

A personal page for Wikipedians. Most people use their pages to introduce themselves and to keep various personal notes and lists. They are also used by Wikipedians to communicate with each other via the user talk pages. A user page is linked to as [[User:Hephaestos|Hephaestos]] and appears as Hephaestos.

See also Wikipedia:User page.

Umbrella nomination

A nomination (e.g. on CfD) that contains several items (e.g. categories) which are normally nominated individually.

V

Vandalbot

Some kind of bot being used for vandalism or spamming. Recognizable by the fact that one or a few IP-addresses make many similar clearly vandalist edits in a short time. In the worst cases these have created or vandalized hundreds of pages in several Wikipedias in a timespan of only minutes.

See also m:Vandalbot.

Vandalism

Deliberate defacement of Wikipedia pages. This can be by deleting text or writing nonsense, bad language etcetera. The term is often incorrectly used to discredit the views of an opponent in edit wars. Vandalism can be reported at Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress.

See also m:Wikipedia vandalism.

Vanity page

A page in the article namespace that presents biographical details of a non-famous person favorably and is considered inappropriate and/or unencyclopedic by most Wikipedians. Such articles are often suspected to be written by their subjects.

See also Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a vanity press.

VfD

"Votes for Deletion", the previous name of Wikipedia:Articles for Deletion (see AfD, above)

VfU

"Votes for undeletion", the previous name of Wikipedia:Deletion review.

Village pump

The main community forum of Wikipedia (found at Wikipedia:Village pump), where proposals, policy changes, technical problems and other internals are announced and discussed in front of a wider audience than a topic-specific page would have.

VP

Shorthand for Village pump.

W

Watchlist

A set of pages selected by the user, who can then click on My watchlist to see recent changes to those pages.

See also: Help:Watching pages.

Wheel war

A dispute between Wikipedia administrators who use the privileges of Wikipedia administrators (such as blocking) as weapons in the "war".

See also: Wikipedia:Wheel war, Wheel war.

Wikibooks

A Wikipedia sister project that works to develop free textbooks, manuals, and other texts online.

See also Wikibooks.

Wikibreak

Also used: Wikivacation.

When a Wikipedian takes a break from Wikipedia.

See also m:Wikibreak.

WikiFairy

Also used: Wiki faerie.

It is the slang term for a wiki editor who beautifies wiki entries by organizing messy articles, and adding style, color and graphics. The efforts of WikiFairies are normally welcome, though they do not necessarily create new articles or affect the substantive content of the articles they edit. WikiFairies are considered to be basically friendly, like WikiGnomes and WikiGremlins.

See also Wikipedia:WikiFairy.

Wikify

To format using Wiki markup (as opposed to plain text or HTML) and add internal links to material, incorporating it into the whole of Wikipedia. Noun: Wikification. Sometimes shortened to wfy.

See also Wikipedia:How to edit a page, Category:Articles that need to be wikified, Wikipedia:Guide to layout and Wikipedia:Make only links relevant to the context.

WikiGnome

A Wikipedian who makes minor, helpful edits.

See also Wikipedia:WikiGnome.

Wikilawyering

Attempting to inappropriately rely on technicalities in a legalistic manner with respect to Wikipedia:Policies or Wikipedia:Arbitration. See Wikipedia:Wikilawyering

Wikilink

A link to another Wikipedia page, as opposed to an external link. See Wikipedia:Canonicalization.

Wiki markup

Also used: wiki text, wikitext.

Code like HTML, but simplified and more convenient, for example '''bold''' instead of <b>bold</b>. It is the source code stored in the database and shown in the edit box. Searching by the Wikipedia software is done in the wikitext, as opposed to searching by Google, which is done in the resulting text. The size of a page is the size of the wikitext.

See also Wikipedia:How to edit a page, Wikipedia:Guide to layout.

Wikimedia

Properly Wikimedia Foundation Inc., a non-profit organisation that provides a legal, financial and organisational framework for Wikipedia and its sister projects and provides the necessary hardware.

Compare with MediaWiki.

See also Wikimedia.

Wikipedian

Also used: Wikipedist, Wikipede.

A contributor to Wikipedia.

See also Wikipedia:Wikipedians.

Wikiportal

Pages intended to be the main pages for Wikipedians interested in a specific area of knowledge, helping both to find the information on the specific topic and to develop articles connected with it.

See also Wikipedia:Portal.

wikipediholic

A wikipediholic or wikiholic is someone with a serious addiction to anything involving the words "Wiki" and "Pedia" in the same word or sentence. One of the main, and most common characteristics of the condition is the victim having a web browser window constantly open to the Recent Changes section of Wikipedia (or in the condition's slightly milder form, one's Watchlist), and pressing the "Reload" or "Refresh" button with a high frequency.

WikiProject

An attempt to standardise the content and formatting of a particular category of articles using an agreed template.

See also Wikipedia:WikiProject.

Wikiquette

The Wikipedia etiquette of working with others on Wikipedia.

See also Wikipedia:Wikiquette.

Wikiquote

A Wikipedia sister project to create a free online collection of quotations.

See also Wikiquote.

Wikislap

Providing someone with the URL of a Wikipedia article when they express a lack of knowledge about a particular topic.

Wikisource

A Wikipedia sister project to create a free online compendium of primary source texts.

See also Wikisource.

Wikispace

The Wikipedia namespace. See Wikipedia:Namespace#Pseudo-namespaces and Wikipedia:WP.

Wikispam

Articles or sections created to promote a product or other meme. Spamming can also include adding extraneous links to promote an outside site, particularly for commercial purposes.

Wikispecies

A Wikipedia sister project. It is a wiki-based, species directory that provides a solution to the problem that there is no central registration of species data in Wikipedia. Wikispecies will provide a central, more extensive database for taxonomy. Wikispecies is aimed at the needs of scientific users rather than general users.

Wikistress

Personal stress or tension induced by editing Wikipedia, or more often by being involved in minor conflict with another editor. Some users maintain a Wikistress meter on their user page. See Wikistress template, The Bosch Wikistress Meter, Wikistress

Wiktionary

A Wikipedia sister project to create a free online dictionary of every language.

See also Wiktionary.

WMF

See Wikimedia Foundation.

WP

Common abbreviation for Wikipedia, especially for pages in the Wikipedia namespace. See Wikipedia:Namespace#Pseudo namespaces and Wikipedia:WP.

?

en: / de: / ja: / etc.

The English / German / Japanese / etc.-language Wikipedia. Often used in edit summaries to indicate changes to interwiki links. For a full list of codes, see ISO 639. For a full list of Wikipedias, see m:Complete list of language Wikipedias available.

ø

The term ø is sometimes used in edit summaries to indicate a null edit.

Contents:	Top - 0–9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

bg:Уикипедия:Речник

zh-min-nan:Wikipedia:Te̍k-sû iōng-gí ca:Ajuda:Glossari de:Wikipedia:Glossar es:Wikipedia:Glosario fr:Aide:Jargon is:Wikipedia:Hugtakaskrá it:Aiuto:Glossario lb:Hëllef:Jargon hu:Segítség:Szójegyzék mt:Għajnuna:Glossarju ms:Wikipedia:Glosari nl:Help:Terminologie ja:Wikipedia:ウィキペディア用語集 pt:Wikipedia:Glossário simple:Wikipedia:Glossary sr:Википедија:Речник th:วิกิพีเดีย:อภิธานศัพท์ vi:Wikipedia:Từ điển thuật ngữ zh:Wikipedia:术语表