Tuesday, August 05, 2008 12:18:06 PM
Wikipedia:Glossary -- M THRU !vote
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Note: while the definitions below may be useful for understanding and communicating on project and discussion pages, and with edit summaries, remember to explain jargon in encyclopedic articles, and write them in language which is readily understandable without specific knowledge of the Wikipedia project.
Don't overdo the use of Wikipedia jargon such as shortcuts on talk pages and edit summaries, either, at least not without providing explanatory links to the appropriate pages. See Wikipedia:WTF? OMG! TMD TLA. ARG! for an essay on this.
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.
M THRU Z
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.
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.
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.
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 1.14alpha (r38535) (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.
Q
Quarto
Wikimedia Quarto is a multilingual quarterly newsletter published by the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. It can be read online here.
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.
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.
Sort key
A device to make an article file alphabetically (in a category or other list of articles) other than by the article title, eg "John Smith" under "Smith, John", or "The Who" under "Who, The". Can be assigned to a specific category, or as a {{DEFAULTSORT:}}. See Help:Category#Sort_key.
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.
Sprot
Also used: sprotect, sprotection
Short for semi-protect. Articles that are semi-protected cannot be edited by unregistered or newly-registered users.
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.)
SUL
Abbreviation for "Single user login", which refers to the process of unifying individual accounts with the same name across Wikimedia projects into one global account.
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
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.
Trainwreck
A nomination of a group of related pages for deletion or renaming which fails due to the disparate worth of the pages. The deletion process often becomes messy with editors wishing to keep some pages but delete or rename others. Usually the discussion is closed as a procedural "keep", with some or all of the pages later nominated separately.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A Wikipedian 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:Wikiize Wikiize a verb usage akin to Wikification of documents
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 bold. 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 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).
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.
?
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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Glossary
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Note: while the definitions below may be useful for understanding and communicating on project and discussion pages, and with edit summaries, remember to explain jargon in encyclopedic articles, and write them in language which is readily understandable without specific knowledge of the Wikipedia project.
Don't overdo the use of Wikipedia jargon such as shortcuts on talk pages and edit summaries, either, at least not without providing explanatory links to the appropriate pages. See Wikipedia:WTF? OMG! TMD TLA. ARG! for an essay on this.
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.
M THRU Z
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.
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.
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.
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 1.14alpha (r38535) (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.
Q
Quarto
Wikimedia Quarto is a multilingual quarterly newsletter published by the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. It can be read online here.
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.
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.
Sort key
A device to make an article file alphabetically (in a category or other list of articles) other than by the article title, eg "John Smith" under "Smith, John", or "The Who" under "Who, The". Can be assigned to a specific category, or as a {{DEFAULTSORT:}}. See Help:Category#Sort_key.
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.
Sprot
Also used: sprotect, sprotection
Short for semi-protect. Articles that are semi-protected cannot be edited by unregistered or newly-registered users.
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.)
SUL
Abbreviation for "Single user login", which refers to the process of unifying individual accounts with the same name across Wikimedia projects into one global account.
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
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.
Trainwreck
A nomination of a group of related pages for deletion or renaming which fails due to the disparate worth of the pages. The deletion process often becomes messy with editors wishing to keep some pages but delete or rename others. Usually the discussion is closed as a procedural "keep", with some or all of the pages later nominated separately.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A Wikipedian 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:Wikiize Wikiize a verb usage akin to Wikification of documents
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 bold. 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 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).
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.
?
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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Glossary
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