Wikipedia:Glossary

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Glossary

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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 (Articles for Deletion), see the Wikipedia:Guide to deletion. For common abbreviations and slang phrases outside Wikipedia, see List of Internet slang phrases.

[edit] 0-9

1RR

Voluntary (or sometimes ArbCom-imposed) one-revert rule. See One revert rule for more information.

3RR

See three-revert rule

[edit] A

Abcdise

Term sometimes used in edit summaries to indicate that the edit was to move list or other items into alphabetical order.

Admin

Short for Administrator. A user with extra technical privileges for "custodial" work on Wikipedia - specifically, deleting and protecting pages, and blocking users.

Also used: Sysop.

AfC

The Wikipedia:Articles for creation page where unregistered contributors can post details of articles they want created. Only relevant while article creation by anonymous users is disabled.

AfD

The Wikipedia:Articles for deletion page. The AfD of an article refers to the discussion wherein Wikipedians consider whether an article should be kept or deleted.

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 an unwanted or disputed edit was done maliciously.

See Wikipedia:Assume good faith, and Hanlon's razor.

AIV

Abbreviation for "Administrator intervention against vandalism", a place and procedure for notifying Wikipedia administrators about chronic vandalism.

See Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism.

AMA

Abbreviation for "Association of Members' Advocates", a advocacy scheme by and for Wikipedians. It failed to achieve widespread acceptance and was closed down.

AN

Abbreviation for "Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard", a discussion location for Wikipedia administrators

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 and URLs.

ANI

Abbreviation for "Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents", where Wikipedia administrators discuss issues which may or may not need urgent administrator attention

Anon

Also used: IP user.

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

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:Historical archive page, for outdated historical material.

See also: Help:Archiving a talk page.

Armwaving

Also, handwaving.

An assertion not supported by evidence; most frequently seen in articles for deletion discussions, when editors may assert that a subject is notable, but fail to make a convincing case. Such arguments are usually given less weight.

Article

An encyclopedia entry. All articles are pages, but there are also pages that are not articles, such as this one.

See also Wikipedia:What is an article.

Astroturf

Used only as a verb, astroturfing refers to attempts at creating the impression of a grassroots movement by the use of sock puppets and meat puppets to make an idea, poll, article, or deletion discussion seem to have more support than it actually has; alternately, the practice of making entries on sites such as Wikipedia to make an idea seem to have more support. In effect, a technique for "stacking the deck".

Autoconfirm

A newly registered user is still subject to some of the same restrictions as anonymous users - for example, inability to move articles or edit semiprotected pages, although some restrictions, such as the restriction on anonymous users creating pages, are lifted. When a user is autoconfirmed, these restrictions end. Currently a new user must wait four days to be autoconfirmed, and there is no minimum number of edits required.

Autofellatio

In the outside world, "Autofellatio" means just what the article says (think before you click, it's not appropriate for the whole family). 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.

[edit] 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 certain length of time, limited or unlimited. Typical reasons for banning include a long history of biased edits (violation of NPOV), 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 judged to be the same person can be blocked without any further reason. See also: Block.

Banner

A banner is a template that is placed across the top of an article's talk page or at the top of a category to indicate specific details relating to the article or category's maintenance. They are often specifically linked to a WikiProject to indicate that the article or category falls within the jurisdiction of that project, but may also be related to article maintenance or protection. "Banner" may also simply mean the administrator who bans a troublesome editor.

Barnstar

Barnstars are a light-hearted system of awards given to Wikipedian editors by other editors to acknowledge good work or other positive contributions to Wikipedia. They take the form of an image posted to an editor's talk page, usually in the form of a five-pointed star. There are a wide variety of different types of barnstar, each indicating a different reason for the award having been given.

Be Bold

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

BJAODN

Abbreviation for Wikipedia:Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense, a now-inactive page. The verb, BJAODNed, refers to the act of something being posted on the page with that name, and was 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 vandalized brand-new page, it is maintenance, and the page will be deleted by an admin within a few hours if no dispute arises. {{Delete}} 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 engaged in vandalism or against users who have been banned. See also: Ban.

BLP

Abbreviation for Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons, the official policy on articles on living people.

Boilerplate text

A standard message which can be added to an article using a template. For example, {{stub}} 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, Vandalbot.

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.

[edit] 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, Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal.

Cat

"Category" or "Categorize".

Category

Also used: cat

A category is a collection of pages automatically formed by the Wikipedia servers by analyzing 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 discussion page (previously known as Wikipedia:Categories for deletion)

Chatty

A term used for articles which seem to present their content in the manner of a casual conversation with the reader. Chatty articles may need cleanup.

Checkuser

An access level with which a user can 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 and other trusted users.

See also m:checkuser.

Child

A subpage or (more often) subcategory. Compare Parent.

Cleanup

The process of repairing articles that contain errors of grammar, are poorly formatted, or contain irrelevant material. 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.

Climbing the Reichstag

A humorous way of indicating that an editor has over-reacted during an argument such as an edit-war in order to gain some advantage. This has similar consequences to - and is as unwelcome as - WP:POINT (qv).

See also: Activities of "Fathers for Justice", Wikipedia:No climbing the Reichstag dressed as Spider-Man.

CNR

Also used: XNR

Acronym for Cross-namespace redirects.

COI

Acronym for Wikipedia:Conflict of interest.

COIN

Acronym for Wikipedia:Conflict of interest noticeboard.

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 sidebar (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.

Contributor

See Editor.

Convenience links

Links to unofficial copies of reliable sources (not to the original publisher) in addition to a formal citation of the reliable source. Has the advantage over books, paid websites, and websites that need registration of easy accessibility. Sometimes disputed because of violations of copyright, linking to partisan websites, possible distortions or those reliable sources, or because it may contain comments on the reputable sources that other editors do not like. See Wikipedia:convenience links

Copyedit

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

See also Copyedit and Wikipedia:How to copy-edit.

Copyvio

Also used: copyviol, and occasionally CV.

Copyright violation. Usually used in an edit summary when deleting copyrighted material added without complying with Wikipedia copyright verification procedures.

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, used only occasionally.

Cross-namespace redirects

Also used: CNR, and occasionally XNR.

A redirect which links from one type of namespace to another. Examples include words in the article namespace which redirect to project pages in the Wikipedia namespace. Although they are not considered standard practice, some are created to facilitate searching, especially for new users.

See also Wikipedia:Namespace and Wikipedia:Cross-namespace redirects (inactive).

Cruft

A term used to describe an article or group of articles which are too focused on a specific topic, covering it in too much detail for a general encyclopedia. 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 are cruft, despite their long-term survival as articles.

CSB

WikiProject Countering systemic bias or, more rarely, an adjective for a topic of concern to the WikiProject, e.g. "This doesn't seem to be a CSB article." Systemic bias is the tendency for Wikipedia articles to be biased towards a European or American view of things, simply because most editors are European or American.

CSD

Criteria for speedy deletion, a policy detailing the circumstances when articles etc. can be removed from Wikipedia without discussion. Also lists the templates needed to nominate something for speedy deletion.

Cut and paste move

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

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

CV

See Copyvio.

CVG

Computer and video games.

[edit] D

dab

See Disambiguation.

Data dump

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

See also Wikify.

db

An abbreviation for "delete because". Almost all templates that are used to request speedy deletion according to the procedure have this prefix (e.g., {{db-advert}}, {{db-nonsense}}, {{db-band}}. It can also refer to Wikipedia's database.

See also Speedy.

Dead-end page

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

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 actively attempts to delete pages that others prefer to keep. Deletionism is the idea that Wikipedia should follow the same rules for inclusion as existing paper encyclopedias (mostly Encyclopedia Britannica). 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 non-technical 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 voluntarily elected to resign such status, or is judged to have misused their sysop powers.

See also Wikipedia:Requests for de-adminship.

Developer

A user who can make direct changes to the Wikipedia software and possibly also the database, usually being one of the MediaWiki developers or Wikimedia foundation technicians. Technically it is the highest user access level, but Developer privileges are generally only used at request.

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 self-references or excessive common-noun Wikification (also known as "sea of blue").

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. Usually a reason for transwikifying to Wiktionary.

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.

Disambig

See Disambiguation.

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. In cases when there is a prevailing meaning of the term, disambiguation pages are named "subject (disambiguation)".

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. Double redirects are generated when moving a page which has redirects leading to it.

See also Repoint.

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

[edit] E

EC

See Edit conflict.

Edit conflict

Also, rarely "edconf". Appears if an edit is made to the page between when one opens it for editing and completes the edit. The later edit doesn't take effect, but the editor is prompted to merge their edit with the earlier one. Edit conflicts shouldn't be confused with edit wars.

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, usually applied to one trying to make as many edits as possible. Often cited on Requests for Adminship regarding people who judge people on sheer edit count rather than personal merit.

See also Wikipedia:Editcountitis.

Edit creep

The tendency for high quality articles to degrade over time. Articles usually achieve good article or featured article recognition because a small core of people knew the subject well and researched it carefully. Subsequently, new readers continue to alter the page. The average contribution may weaken the piece through bad copyediting, poor syntax, recitation of popular misconceptions, or giving undue weight to a subordinate topic.

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.

Editor

Also used: contributor and user.

Anyone who writes or modifies articles in a Wikipedia. That includes you.

Edit war

Also used: revert war.

Two or more parties continually making their preferred changes to a page, each persistently undoing the changes made by the opposite party. Generally, an edit war is the result of an argument on a talk page that could not be resolved. Edit wars are forbidden and lead to blocks.

See also Wikipedia:Edit war, Wikipedia:Three revert rule.

Emphazi

See Suitly Emphazi.

Eponymous

An eponymous category is a category that has the same name as an article and vice versa. For example George W. Bush and the eponymous category:George W. Bush.

Esperanzify

Motion to close a process or other Wikipedia: namespace page by preserving the page itself, tagging it historical (and adding explanation on why the page was closed), and redirecting (or deleting) subpages. This is the solution that was implemented to close Esperanza, a goodwill "club" that was shut down.

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.

[edit] 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.

Fancruft

See Cruft.

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.

FIST

Free Image Search Tool, which will look for free images for articles, either manually listed or by category

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, and one of an editor's least disputed rights), 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.

[edit] G

GA

Good article.

Gadget

A gadget is a JavaScript tool that can be enabled from your Wikipedia preferences.

Gdanzig

An edit war over which of several possible names should be used for a place. The word is a portmanteau of Gdańsk and Danzig, the two names about which a venerable edit war ensued. See Talk:Gdansk/Vote.

Geogre's Law

A law attributed to User:Geogre (although he may not have been the first person, and has certainly not been the only person, to observe this correlation), and most frequently referred to in Wikipedia: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.

GFDL

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

See also Wikipedia:Copyrights.

Ghits

"Google hits" - the number of successful searches for a particular word or phrase using the Google search engine. Sometimes used as a very rough assessment of notability on AFD. See also Google test.

Godwin's Law

Godwin's Law is particularly concerned with logical fallacies such as reductio ad Hitlerum, wherein an idea is unduly dismissed or rejected on ground of it being associated with persons generally considered "evil". Godwin's Law is: as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1. It is often cited as soon as it occurs as a flag that discussions have gone on too long or gotten out of hand on a particular topic.

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 Ghits, Wikipedia:Google test.

GPL

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

[edit] H

Hagiography

Wording that is excessively fulsome, adulatory or glowing in a biographical article, to the point of violating NPOV. See Hagiography.

Handwaving

See: Armwaving

Hatnote

A short note placed at the top of an article before the primary topic.

See also Wikipedia:Hatnote.

History

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

See also: Help:Page history

Hopelessly POV

Describing an article which, in the opinion of some Wikipedians, is so closely tied to a particular point of view as to be inherently in violation of Wikipedia policy and unable to be made neutral. Other Wikipedians consider the accusation "hopelessly POV" as being merely an excuse to suppress certain points of view.

[edit] I

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 professionally qualified to do so, and may not fully understand the law in question. May be generalized to other occupations, e.g. IANAA (administrator), IANAD (doctor).

IfD

An abbreviation for Images and media for Deletion.

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 standard 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.

IPA

International Phonetic Alphabet, widely used on Wikipedia to indicate pronunciation. See also Help:IPA, Help:pronunciation (for English), the more detailed International Phonetic Alphabet for English, and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (pronunciation).

ITHAWO

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

ITN

An abbreviation for Template:In the news

[edit] J

Janitor

See Admin.

Jimbo

Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia and Chair and President of the Wikimedia Foundation.

[edit] K

Kill / Kill with fire / Kill with a stick

Dysphemisms for "deleting" a page, expressing some disgust for the existence of the page.

[edit] L

Language link

See Interwiki.

Laundry list

See Wikipedia:Embedded_list and Wikipedia:WikiProject Laundromat.

Link

See Help:Contents/Links.

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.

Listify

To delete a category and turn the contents into a list. This is shorthand for saying that "this group of articles would be better if presented as a list, rather than as a category."

Lk

Landmarks: Major landmarks

[edit] M

m

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

magic word

a symbol recognized by the MediaWiki software and which when seen in the non-commented text of the page, triggers the software to do something other than display that symbol, or transclude a page with that name, but instead to use the symbol directly.

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.

mainspace

The main article namespace (i.e. not a talk page, not a "Wikipedia:" page, not a "User:" page, etc.)

Mastodon

See the essay no angry mastodons. Refers to the fight or flight reflex that sometimes happens while editing Wikipedia. Generally mentioned to request for calm. "Nobody ever got trampled to death because they were editing an encyclopedia."

MC

The Mediation Committee. See Wikipedia:Mediation Committee.

Meat puppet

An account created only for the illegitimate strengthening of another user's position in votes or discussions. Unlike a sock puppet, the account is used by another person. 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.

Meh

Common edit summary used by many Wikipedians. Generally used for minor edits.

Merge

Taking the text of two pages, and turning it into a single page. See Help: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 ([1]) used to discuss general Wikimedia matters. In the past, this has been called Metapedia, Meta Wikipedia, Meta Wikimedia, and many other combinations.

See also Wikipedia: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

[edit] 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. Easily confused with the common non-Wiki use, "not applicable".

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 Wikipedia:Introduction.

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 in citing 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 present possibly subjective content in an objective, neutral, and substantiated manner, 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.

[edit] O

Open tasks

A template (found at {{opentask}}) that lists several more or less janitorial tasks that are pending or needed. It is found on the community portal as well as on many user pages. The term is also occasionally used within individual WikiProjects to refer to work which has been discussed but which still needs to be completed.

Open Ticket Request System

Refers to the people and software that surround the handling of email sent to the Wikimedia Foundation.

Original research

In Wikipedia, original research (sometimes abbreviated OR) is material added to articles that has not been published already by a reputable source. As an encyclopedia, Wikipedia is not the appropriate place to publish original research, nor can it be used for substantiation of article content.

Orphan

An orphaned article is an article with less than three links from other pages in the main article namespace which are not lists or disambiguation pages. An orphaned image is an image which is not linked to from any pages at all. You can view lists of orphaned articles and images. [[Category:Orphaned articles]] contains orphaned articles organized by month.

See also Wikipedia:Orphan and Wikiproject Orphanage.

OTRS

Abbreviation for Open Ticket Request System.

See also Wikipedia:OTRS.

[edit] 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.

Parent; Parent category

A larger, more general category of which the category under discussion is a subcategory. Compare Child.

Patent nonsense

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

Patrol

Wikipedia:Recent changes patrol and/or Wikipedia:New page patrol. May also be used as a synonym for "review closely".

PD

Material not presently under copyright and thus available for use without permission. 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.

Permcat

A permanent category - that is, a category into which an article is assigned to aid reader navigation, as opposed to a temporary assignment relating to a process such as cleanup or stub sorting.

Per, Per Nom, Per X

A comment 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 comment may be noted "per X" where X is the name of one of the other commenters, or a reference to some page that explains the reasoning.

Personal attack

A comment that is not directed at content, but rather insults, demeans or threatens another editor (or a group of editors) personally, with obvious malice. 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 1.13alpha (r36279) (see also Special:Version).

See also Wikipedia:MediaWiki, m:MediaWiki.

Phase IV

A dream 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 text displayed in the article is not the name of the link target. 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 the editor in certain circumstances.

See also Wikipedia:Piped link, Help:Pipe trick, and m:Help:Piped link#Automatic conversion of the wikitext.

POINT

"Thou shalt not deliberately skew any page, nor create or nominate for deletion any page, nor in any other way vandalize 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 a synonym for "bias", as in "That reply was POV, not neutral".

POV warrior

An editor who aggressively distorts coverage of certain topics to suit his/her biases despite community norms of neutrality and the Wikipedia policy of NPOV.

Prejudice

As in, "delete without prejudice" and variations, based on the legal term.

Deletion without prejudice indicates that there's a problem with the present version of the article (e.g. lack of sources) and that recreation of the article is viable if that problem is fixed. Deletion with prejudice indicates that there's a problem with the subject of the article, and that it should not be recreated in any form (although deletion review can overturn this).

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.

Prod

Proposed deletion. A process by which articles which do not qualify for speedy deletion but are able to be uncontroversially deleted can be removed from Wikipedia without going through a full AfD process. Can be used as both a noun and a verb (To prod an article).

See also Wikipedia:Guide to deletion.

Project namespace

The project namespace is a namespace dedicated to providing information about Wikipedia. Pages in the project namespace always start with "Wikipedia:".

Proseline

From "prose" and "timeline": chronological list of events narrated in a prose form, usually a lot of paragraphs that begin with a date or time ("In January 21, 2008, 'proseline' was added to the Wikipedia glossary page..."). Usually occurs in articles about ongoing events where editors are adding information as it comes available. Generally seen as bad style that should be avoided.

See also Wikipedia:Proseline.

Protected page

This term indicates a page that cannot be edited except by administrators, or in some cases, established users. 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 protologism and list of protologisms.

The Pump

Also used: VP.

A nickname for Wikipedia:Village pump.

[edit] Q

Quarto

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

[edit] R

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

A group of volunteer editors who examine Recent changes logs for vandalism and other undesirable edits.

Reader-facing template

See: Wikipedia:Neutral point of view

Re-creation, also "recreation"

A posting either of the same or similar 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. Sometimes abbreviated as RC. 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.

Redlink

A wikilink to an article that doesn't exist shows up red. See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Red_Link_Recovery

Refactor

To restructure 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 to evade the block. 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.

Repoint

To change the destination article of a redirect, either to avoid a double redirect or to change the redirect so that it leads to a more appropriate article. The term retarget is also frequently used.

Rescope

To change the subject matter of an article, a template or - most frequently - a category to one that is more acceptable for editorial or encyclopedic purposes. If by doing so the subject area is broadened, the term upscope is sometimes used.

Retarget

See Repoint.

Revert

An edit that reverses edits made by someone else, thus restoring the prior version.

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.

RfA Cliché #1

Sometimes used in support at "requests for adminship", to indicate that one thought the candidate already was an admin. See also ITHAWO.

RfAr

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 or 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 justified or particularly productive. See also "rouge admin".

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 which the affected users may not like (such as blocking vandals and deleting pages).

RS

Wikipedia:Reliable sources — a guideline that articles should be based on reliable published sources.

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.

rvt

Revert. See above.

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

rvv

Revert because of vandalism. See rv above.

[edit] 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").

Salt

(from "salt the earth") To delete an article and protect it against recreation. This is done when unwanted articles are repeatedly recreated.

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 emphasized 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.

Self-ref

When used in terms like "no self refs", this refers to the guideline Wikipedia:Avoid self-references whereby articles should generally not refer to the Wikipedia project directly or implicitly. Self-ref can also refer to the template {{selfref}}.

Self-revert

An editor self-reverts when he or she reverts or undoes an edit that he or she had previously made. This may be because the editor was merely making a test, or because the editor later realised his or her edit was faulty, or because he or she wishes to show good faith after a three-revert rule violation.

See revert.

SfD

The Wikipedia:Stub types for deletion page.

Sharpen cat

To place an article within a more specific category, e.g. placing a biography article from Category:Kenya into Category:Kenyan people. Also, sh cat in edit summaries.

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." The opposite is called a "wolf vote".

Shortcut

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

See Wikipedia:Shortcut for the policy on these redirects, and Wikipedia:List of shortcuts for a complete list.

Skin

The appearance theme in Special:Preferences. Currently, seven are available: Chick, Classic, Cologne Blue, Monobook, MySkin, Nostalgia, and Simple.

Smerge

A contraction of "slight merge" or "selective merge", sometimes used in Articles for deletion discussions. This is for when a topic deserves mention in another article, but not to the extent and detail that is already included (a partial merge and redirect).

Snap

Retargeting a double redirect to point to the ultimate target.

Snowball clause

Sometimes entries on process pages are closed early when it becomes obvious that they have "a snowball's chance in Hell" of passing the process. This removal is "per the Snowball clause". The verb "snowballing" is sometimes used for this action.

See also Wikipedia:Snowball clause.

Sock or 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.

SPA

Short for Single Purpose Account. If that single purpose is disruptive (e.g. vote stacking, or attacking some user) the account tends to get indefinitely blocked.

Speedy

Abbreviation for Speedy delete (or "speedy rename" as appropriate). Can also be used as a verb — e.g., "I think the article should be speedied". "Speedy" on Wikipedia does not mean "now, immediately", but rather something that can be done without further discussion.

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 (e.g., overwhelming support for keeping it, or a history of deletion attempts that have ended in the same way).

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.

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 struck out (like this). Generally, one should strike out only one's own comments.

Stub

An article considered too short to give an adequate introduction to a subject (often one paragraph or less). Stubs are marked with stub templates, a specific type of cleanup template, which add the articles to stub categories sorted by subject matter.

See also Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub and Wikiproject Stub Sorting.

Subpage

A page connected to a parent page, such as Somepage/Arguments. You can only create subpages in certain namespaces. Do not use subpages in the main article space.

See also Wikipedia:Subpages.

Subst'ing

Short for "substituting" a template; see Transclusion.

Substub

Old (now rarely used) term for a very short stub, usually consisting of only one sentence.

Suitly emphazi

A phrase with no known exact meaning, but which has a general allusion to positive things, such as improvement, or a request for clarification or elucidation. 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.

See also WikiProject Countering systemic bias

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

[edit] 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 of the page with which it is associated, such as the article page. 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.

Task force

A smaller group of editors in a WikiProject dedicated to a more specific field within the scope of the parent project. Task forces are located on WikiProject subpages. They generally have a less formal bureaucratic structure than full-fledged WikiProjects.

See also Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide/Task forces.

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 standardized 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.

Three-revert rule

A rule whereby no one is allowed to revert a single article more than three times in one day (with a few exceptions). See Wikipedia:Three-revert rule.

Tl

Short for "template". Also the name of a specific template, {{tl}}, which provides a template link, i.e., links a page to a template without allowing the template's code to operate on that page.

top

On a user's list of contributions, (top) indicates that the article has not been edited by anyone else since the user last edited it.

Transclusion

See Wikipedia:Transclusion, Wikipedia:Transclusion costs and benefits.

Translation

The English-language Wikipedia should have only pages in English. Non-English pages, listed on Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English, are subject to deletion unless translated.

See also: Wikipedia:Translation for requests for translations into English of pages from foreign-language Wikipedias.

Transwiki

Move a page to another Wikimedia project, 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 enjoy causing conflict, and there are those who make a hobby of it. However, these are few in number and one should always assume good faith in other editors. 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 is likely to occur.

See also polarization.

Tyop

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

See also Wikipedia:typo.

[edit] U

Umbrella nomination

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

Unencyclopedic

Saying that something is unencyclopedic (also, unencyclopaedic) implies that it would not be expected to appear in an encyclopedia, and thus not in Wikipedia. (One must remember however that Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, and hence does not have the space limitations of a paper encyclopedia)

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.

Upmerge

A term frequently used on categories for discussion and stub types for deletion, it means "merge into parent category". In the case of stub types, this usually means to keep any associated template but to link it with the parent category rather than the category under discussion. In contexts such as WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals, creating an upmerged template means a stub template, only, feeding into a more general stub type.

Upscope

A portmanteau of upmerge and rescope. See rescope.

User

See Editor.

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 some look down upon it.

See also Wikipedia:Userboxes.

Userfy

Wikipedia:Userfication is the process by which material posted in a Wikipedia article, project, or template space is moved into the user space: into a user page or subpage. A common case is where an inexperienced user who is not a notable person has created an article about himself/herself. The article would be deleted after userfying — moving its content to a user page.

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. User pages are not generated automatically by the process of Registration. A user page is linked to as [[User:Hephaestos|Hephaestos]] and appears as Hephaestos.

See also Wikipedia:User page.

[edit] V

Vandal

One who engages in significant amounts of vandalism.

See also m:Vandal.

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, et cetera. The term is sometimes improperly 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.

VandalProof

A tool for finding and removing vandalism — see User:AmiDaniel/VandalProof.

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.

VFD

Used to refer to the "Votes for deletion" page. While replaced with "AFD" (WP:AFD), you may still see the term in older talk pages.

VP

Shorthand for Village pump or for VandalProof.

[edit] 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 and Wikipedia:Wikiholiday

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.

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; gerund: wikifying. 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 without clamoring for attention or praise for what they did.

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 or to an anchor on the same page, as opposed to an external link. For policy, see Wikipedia:Only make links that are relevant to the context, Wikipedia:Build the web. For mechanics, see Wikipedia:Canonicalization, Help:Section#Section linking, Wikipedia:How to edit a page#Links and URLs, and Wikipedia:Citing_sources/Further_considerations#Wikilinks to full references. See also free link and piped link.

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 external major search engines, 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 organization that provides a legal, financial and organizational framework for Wikipedia and its sister projects and provides the necessary hardware.

Compare with MediaWiki.

See also Wikimedia.

WikiOgre

A Wikipedian who makes large edits from time to time but generally keeps to WikiGnomery.

See also Wikipedia:WikiOgre.

Wikipedophile

An avid reader of the Wikipedia. The true Wikipedophile reads only Wikipedia's youngest articles.

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

Also used: Wikiholic.

A wikipediholic 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.

Wikipe-tan

Also used: Wiki-tan.

One of the personifications of Wikipedia. She is the mascot character of various WikiProjects.

See also Wikipedia:Wikipe-tan.

WikiProject

An active group of Wikipedia editors working together to improve a specific group of articles, usually those on one or more related topics. This often involves an attempt to standardize the content and Style of the articles using an agreed standard format.

See also Wikipedia:WikiProject.

Wikiquette

The Wikipedia etiquette of working with others on Wikipedia.

See also Wikipedia:Etiquette.

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:Shortcuts (Wikipedia:WP).

Wikispam

Articles or sections created to promote a product or other meme. Spamming can also include adding extraneous or irrelevant 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.

Wolf vote

A vote on Wikipedia which seems to be cast just to go against the flow. E.g., on RfA, this can typically be a vote such as "Oppose because x, y, and z are supporting." The opposite is called a "sheep vote".

WMF

See Wikimedia Foundation.

WP

Common abbreviation for Wikipedia, especially for pages in the Wikipedia namespace. Also sometimes used as an abbreviation for WikiProject. See Wikipedia:Namespace#Pseudo namespaces and Wikipedia:Shortcuts (Wikipedia:WP).

[edit] X

XfD

Generic term for the collection of deletion discussion pages such as MfD, AfD, RfD, IfD, et al.

XNR

Also used: CNR

Acronym for Cross-namespace redirects. Used mainly at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion to emphasize for deletion.

[edit] ?

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.

!=

"Is not equal to". This usage comes from the relational operator in such languages as C.

!vote

"Not-vote" (the exclamation mark means 'not' in many programming languages). Something that looks like a vote but should not be considered a vote. The term !vote is somewhat tongue-in-cheek. See also Discuss, Don't Vote.