More:Glossary
From MySeattle
Source: Wikipedia:Glossary
This is a Wikipedia:glossary of commonly used Wikipedia terms. For more help, see Wikipedia:Help, Wikipedia:FAQ and Wikipedia:Contributing FAQ.
For further abbreviations often used in the edit summary line, see Wikipedia:Edit summary legend.
Note: the definitions below may be useful for understanding and writing text in the community pages (Talk, Wikipedia, User sections / Meta etc), but please write actual encyclopedia articles as far as possible in jargon-free language which is readily understandable without specific knowledge of the Wikipedia project.
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A
- Admin (a.k.a. Sysop)
- Short for Wikipedia:Administrator. S/he who does housework.
- Anchor
- An Wikipedia: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.
- Arbitration
- The final step in the Wikipedia :Dispute resolution process. See Wikipedia :Arbitration Committee.
- Article
- An encyclopedia entry. All articles are pages, but not all pages are articles. See Wikipedia :What is an article.
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B
- Ban
- Banning is the extreme action by which someone is disallowed to edit Wikipedia for a prolonged or indeterminate length of time. Reason for banning is usually a long history of POV edits or adding of incorrect or doubtful material without signs of improvement. If someone is banned, their username is blocked, and any username or IP identified as being the same person that is with great likelihood identified as being the same person can be blocked without any further reason.
- Blanking
- Removing all content from a page. If this is done to a valid article, it is vandalism (see below). On the other hand, if this is done to a vandalised brand-new page, it is maintenance, and the page will be deleted by an admin (see above) within a few hours if no dispute arises. {{msg :delete}} should be added to the blanked page to draw attention to it, rather than just blanking it.
- 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, but there can be other reasons.
- Bot
- Program that automatically or semi-automatically adds or edits Wikipedia-pages. See Wikipedia :Bots.
- Broken link
- A wikilink to a non-existing page. These show up red.
- Broken redirect
- Redirect to a non-existing page. Common opinion is that these should be removed.
- Bureaucrat
- A Wikipedia Admininistrator who has been entrusted with promoting users to sysops. See Wikipedia :Bureaucrats.
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C
- Copyvio (or copyviol)
- Copyright violation. Usually used in an edit summary when some copyrighted material has been added to Wikipedia. See Wikipedia :Copyrights.
- 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 Wikipedia :How to fix cut and paste moves.
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D
- dab
- see Disambiguation, below.
- Data dump
- To import material from outside sources into Wikipedia without editing, formatting and linking. This is frowned upon by most Wikipedians. See Wikify.
- Dead-end page
- Page that has no links to existing other pages, except perhaps interlanguage links. One of the Special Pages lists them, but this function is disabled in some Wikimedia projects.
- De-bold (or 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 m :deletionism and m :inclusionism.
- De-sysop
- Take away someone's sysop status. Used very rarely, in cases where someone has misused their sysop powers. See Wikipedia :Possible misuses of admin privileges.
- De-Wikify (or Un-Wikify)
- To remove (de-link) a Wikification (see below) of an article. This can be done to remove selflinks (see below) or excessive common-noun Wikification.
- 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 m:Help:Diff
- Disambiguation (also dab, disambig)
- The process of resolving the conflict that occurs when articles about two or more different topics have the same natural title. See 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 (see below) whose target is 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.
- Dyk
- An old name for Wikipedia :Did you know.
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E
- Edit conflict
- Two or more parties both attempt to save different edits to the same page at the same time, causing one to get canceled out. See Wikipedia :edit conflicts.
- Edit war (a.k.a. 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 Wikipedia :Edit war.
- Edit summary
- The contents of the "Summary :" field below the edit box on the "Edit this page" page. See Wikipedia :Edit summary.
- External link (ext. ln, ext lk, or extlink)
- A link to a website not owned by wikimedia. See Wikipedia :External links. The alternatives are an internal link, wikilink or free link within Wikipedia, and an interwiki link to a sister project.
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F
- 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. These links usually show up as blue if they are working and are not in your browser's cache, red if they are broken, and purple if they are working but not in cache, note that they do not have the arrow symbol cahracteristic of an external link.
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G
- GFDL
- GNU Free Documentation License. Wikipedia articles are released under this license (see wikipedia :copyrights for details).
- 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 Wikipedia :Google Test.
- GPL
- GNU General Public License. Wikipedia's software is released under this license.
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I
- Infobox
- A consistently-formatted table which is present in articles with a common subject (An infobox is a generalization of a taxobox (see below).
- 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.
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J
- Jimbo
- Jimbo Wales, chair of the Wikimedia Foundation
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M
- 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.
- MediaWiki
- The software behind Wikipedia and its sister projects, as well as several projects not related to Wikimedia. See Wikipedia :MediaWiki. Also a namespace. See Wikipedia :MediaWiki namespace
- Merge
- Taking the text of two pages, and turn them into a single page.
- Meta
- A separate wiki ([http ://meta.wikipedia.org 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 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 Wikipedia : Meta page
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N
- Namespace
- A way to classify pages. Wikipedia has namespaces for encyclopedia articles, pages about Wikipedia (meta pages), user pages (User :), special pages (Special :), mediawiki pages (MediaWiki :) and talk pages (Talk :, Wikipedia talk :, and User talk :). See Wikipedia :Namespace.
- Newbie test (also "newb test" or "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 Wikipedia :Clueless newbies.
- 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.
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O
- Orphan
- A page with no links from other pages. You can view lists of orphaned articles and images. See wikipedia :Orphan
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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.
- Page move bug
- When you move pages the edit datestamp can be months before you arrived sometimes.
- 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 Wikipedia :Piped link.
- POV
- Literally, a point of view, but often used negatively as an adjective to indicate bias, as in "That reply was POV, not neutral.".
- Project namespace
- The project namespace is a namespace dedicated to providing information about wikipedia.
- Protected page
- A page that cannot be edited except by sysops. Usually this is done to cool down an edit war. See Wikipedia :This page is protected.
- The Pump (or VP)
- A nickname for Wikipedia :Village pump.
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Q
- 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.
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R
- Rambot
- A script written by User :Ram-Man to enter United States geographical data. See the rambot FAQ.
- Redirect
- 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". Often abbreviated to redir. See Wikipedia :Redirect.
- Revert war
- See Edit war above.
- rm
- Remove. Used in edit summaries to indicate that a particular piece of text or formatting has been deleted.
- rollback
- Change a page back to the version before the last edit. Sysops have special possibilities to do this more easily.
- rv
- Revert. An edit summary indicating that the page has been reverted to a previous version, often because of vandalism. See Wikipedia :How to revert a page to an earlier version.
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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
- Wikipedia :Sandbox is where newbies come to practise and oldies go to experiment.
- Section editing
- Using the 'edit' links to the right of the page, one can get an edit window containing only part of the page, making it (hopefully) easier to find the exact spot where one wants to edit. Javascript is needed for section editing. You can turn the off in your preferences under the "Enable section editing via [edit] links" option.
- Selflink (or 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 (see above).
- Skin
- The appearance theme in Special :Preferences. Currently, four are available : Standard, Nostalgia, Cologne Blue, and Monobook.
- Sock puppet
- Another user account created secretly by an existing wikipedian, generally to manufacture the illusion of support in a vote or argument. See Wikipedia :Sock puppet.
- sp
- Short for spelling correction. Used in edit summaries.
- Split
- Creating two or more pages out of a single one.
- Stub
- An article usually consisting of one short paragraph or less. See Wikipedia :Find or fix a stub
- 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"). See Wikipedia :Find or fix a stub
- 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 Wikipedia :Subpages.
- Sysop
- See Admin
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T
- Talk page
- A page reserved for discussion. All pages within Wikipedia (except talk pages themselves!) have talk pages attached to them. See Wikipedia :Talk page
- Taxobox
- A taxonomy table positioned at the right side of an entry for a species of organism (or for a genus or family), giving a chart of the kingdom, phylum, etc. of the creature. Also used for similar standardised tables used in other categories of article, particularly WikiProjects, where they are called infoboxes (see above). See Wikipedia :Taxobox.
- Transwiki
- Move a page to another wiki, in particular Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikisource or sep11 (http://sep11.wikipedia.org). See m :Transwiki.
- Tyop
- A cute misspelling of typo. Used as an edit summary when correcting typos. See Wikipedia :typo.
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U
- Unencyclopedic
- What should not be in Wikipedia; the term is highly debated and sometimes considered useless or tautological. See Wikipedia :Unencyclopedic.
- Unwiki
- Going against the character of a Wiki. Usually saying that something is unwiki means that it makes editing more difficult or impossible.
- 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 has a name of the form [[User :Hephaestos]]. See Wikipedia :User page.
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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 for measures that can be taken against this.
- 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. See also m:Wikipedia vandalism. Can be reported at Wikipedia :Vandalism in progress.
- 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 Wikipedia :Wikipedia is not a vanity press.
- VfD
- The Wikipedia :Votes for deletion page.
- VfU
- The Wikipedia :Votes for undeletion page.
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W
- Wikibreak
- When a Wikipedian takes a break from Wikipedia. Also called a Wikivacation. See also m :Wikibreak.
- Wikify
- To format using Wiki markup (as opposed to plain text or Wikipedia:HTML) and add internal links to material, incorporating it into the whole of Wikipedia. Noun : Wikification. Sometimes abbreviated wfy.
- Wiki markup, also called wiki text or wikitext
- Code like HTML, but simplified and more convenient, for example not <b> and </b>, but in both cases ''', see Wikipedia :How to edit a page. 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.
- 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. See Wikipedia:Wikimedia. Compare MediaWiki, above.
- Wikipedian
- A contributor to Wikipedia. See Wikipedia :Wikipedians.
- WikiProject
- An attempt to standardise the content and formatting of a particular category of articles using an agreed template. See Wikipedia :WikiProject.
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?
- en :/de :/ja :/etcetera
- The English/German/Japanese/etcetera-language Wikipedia. Often used in edit summaries to indicate changes to InterWiki links (see above).
