How Wikipedia Works/Appendix D
Appendix D. Glossary
Wikipedia's glossary, which contains many terms not found here, can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Glossary.
- admin
- A Wikipedia administrator; administrators are users with extra technical privileges to delete and restore articles and block accounts and IP numbers
- AfD
- Articles for Deletion; an open forum for discussing article deletion on a case-by-case basis
- AGF
- Assume Good Faith; a guideline requesting civility and mutual trust among editors
- ANI
- The Administrators' noticeboard for incidents, where Wikipedia administrators discuss and can be alerted to current problems with vandalism, edit wars, or other issues that require administrator attention
- anon
- An anonymous or IP user who is not logged in when editing
- ArbCom
- The Arbitration committee; a body that resolves on-site disputes
- arbitration
- The top-level, formal, and lengthy dispute resolution procedure performed by the ArbCom
- backlinks
- The wikilinks that link to a page, displayed by clicking What Links Here on the left-hand sidebar
- BOLD
- Short for the slogan, "Be bold in updating articles," which means if you see an article that needs work, don't hesitate to improve it
- bot
- An automated editing program operating on the site
- bureaucrat
- An administrator with power to promote other editors to administrator status
- COI
- Conflict of interest, which occurs when the editor of an article is somehow personally invested in the topic
- Commons
- See Wikimedia Commons
- contribs
- The list of contributions, or edits, made by an editor
- copyvio
- Short for copyright violation, such as an article or image that contains copyrighted material from another source
- CSD
- Criteria for speedy deletion; the policy detailing when articles may be deleted without going through a review process. See also speedy
- disambiguation page
- A page that links to alternate articles with similar titles. For example, the Boston disambiguation page lists at least 20 places named Boston, as well as the rock band and WWII-era aircraft
- dead-end page
- A Wikipedia page with no outbound wikilinks. See also orphan article
- diff
- The display showing the differences between two versions of a wiki page
- DRV
- Deletion review; the appeals system for deleted articles
- edit
- Any saved change made to a wiki page
- edit conflict
- A conflict that occurs when two editors try to save versions of a page at the same time
- edit count
- The total number of edits made by a user's account
- edit war
- An extended dispute between two or more editors over article content; during an edit war, changes to an article are reverted multiple times and no consensus emerges about the article's content
- external link
- A hyperlink leading to a site outside Wikipedia
- featured article
- An esteemed category of peer-reviewed Wikipedia articles; each day a different featured article is spotlighted on the main page
- Featured Content
- A category of Wikipedia content including featured articles, images, lists, and portals
- fork
- (verb) To split a wiki into two editing communities, with the intent to develop the existing content in different ways; (noun) the end product of such a split
- GFDL
- The GNU Free Documentation License under which Wikipedia content is released
- IAR
- Ignore All Rules; a traditional slogan suggesting Wikipedians should rise above formalities in unusual situations
- internal link
- A hyperlink on a wiki leading to another location on the same wiki; an internal link is implemented in wikitext using special syntax rather than a URL
- interwiki
- To link different wikis by extending internal link syntax; on Wikipedia, to link corresponding articles in different language versions of Wikipedia
- lead section
- The introductory section of an article, which appears before the first heading
- main namespace
- The main or article namespace is the namespace that articles appear in; this namespace does not have a prefix
- Manual of Style
- The collection of Wikipedia writing guidelines (WP:MOS)
- meatpuppet
- An account operated by someone who is acting for the benefit of another partisan editor. See also sockpuppet
- mediation
- A dispute resolution procedure, where a member of the mediation committee attempts to resolve a dispute between two or more editors through formal negotiation to reach consensus (WP:M)
- MediaWiki
- The open-source, free software used to run the Wikipedia sites and many others
- Meta, Meta-Wiki
- The site at http://meta.wikimedia.org/, for coordinating Wikimedia Foundation projects
- mirror site
- A website posting content from Wikipedia (legitimately, if GFDL conditions are fulfilled)
- monobook
- The default skin or template on Wikipedia; this is how pages appear to anyone who has not logged in and changed his or her user preferences. See also skin
- namespace
- A virtual container for different types of content on the wiki; namespaces are defined by different prefixes, such as talk: or Wikipedia:, which appear before page names; articles are in the main namespace
- Notability
- The criteria that article topics should be notable to an outside observer, as determined through outside sources
- NPOV
- Neutral Point of View; the Wikipedia policy that article content should be presented in an objective, neutral, and substantiated manner
- orphan article
- An article that has no incoming wikilinks from other articles
- OWN
- A shortcut for Wikipedia's policy on no ownership of articles (WP:OWN); in conversation, the term OWN may serve as a warning not to take control of an article's content
- page history
- The list of edits that have been made to a wiki page, displaying in reverse chronological order and viewable from the History tab
- permalink
- A link to a specific version of a Wikipedia page
- portal
- A project page that collects articles, images, and facts about a particular topic
- PROD
- Proposed deletion; the deletion process for article deletions expected to be uncontroversial
redirect:(noun) A page serving solely to send a reader to an article with another title; (verb) to redirect from one page to another
- revert
- To return an article to a previous version; often abbreviated as rvv or rv in edit summaries
- RfC
- Request for Comment; a part of the dispute resolution procedure in which editors can discuss issues such as the conduct of other users
- sandbox
- The sandbox is a page set aside for test edits Wikipedia:Sandbox
- sister project
- A Wikipedia sister project (for example, Wiktionary) is a multilingual collection of wikis set up by the Wikimedia Foundation to pursue a generally reference-related goal
- skin
- The appearance of Wikipedia pages; logged-in users can select how Wikipedia pages appear in their user preferences
- sockpuppet
- A second account operated covertly by an editor with an existing account. See also meatpuppet
- speedy
- A speedy page deletion by an administrator, in line with the criteria for the speedy deletion policy and criteria for speedy deletion
- steward
- An administrator who can change any user's status on any Wikimedia project
- subpage
- A page constructed with a forward slash (/), as in User:Abelard/Letter to Heloise; subpages are not allowed in the main article namespace
- sysop
- Short for system operator; a synonym for administrator
- Three-Revert Rule (3RR)
- The prohibition on reverting an article more than three times in 24 hours, except for reverting vandalism
- transclusion
- To include content stored on one page within another page, for example, by adding a template to a page
- transwiki
- To move an article to another wiki (usually deleting the original article)
- user page
- A registered user's personal page, usually containing information about the editor and his or her interests
- userfy
- To move an article into the User namespace as a subpage
- watchlist
- A personal list of articles that can be maintained by any logged-in user that lists all recent edits to the articles on the list
- wiki
- An online database of freely editable web pages, forming an evolving hypertext; Wikipedia is just one example of a wiki
- wiki engine
- The software underlying a wiki. See also MediaWiki
- wiki markup language
- The special simplified syntax for wiki page editing and formatting; also called wiki syntax
- wikify
- To add appropriate internal links to existing text and to impose standard format and other house style
- wikilawyer
- A pedantic, over-literal interpreter of Wikipedia policy and custom
- wikilink
- A synonym for an internal link. See also internal link
- Wikimedia
- Commons A project of the Wikimedia Foundation to collect free media (images and video); Wikipedia articles can contain links to files on Commons
- Wikimedia
- Foundation (WMF) The nonprofit organization that has overall responsibility for running the Wikipedia sites and sister projects
- wikitext
- The text of a wiki page visible when editing (as opposed to what readers see)