WikiBone:Glossary

Glossary

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

0–9

3RR

See three-revert rule.

A

Ad

Advertisement.

Admin

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

Also used: Sysop.

Advertorial

Describing an article that has been created to advertise or promote a product, company, service or site without offering the information content appropriate to an encyclopedia.

AfD

The WikiBone:Articles for deletion page.

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

AGF

Abbreviation for "assume good faith", a guideline whereby one should not assume that an unwanted or disputed edit was done maliciously. See WikiBone:Assume good faith, and Hanlon's razor.

Anon

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

Also used: IP user.

Anchor

An HTML term for code that lets you link to a specific point in a page, using the "#" character. You can use them to link to a section of a page, e.g. WikiBone:How to edit a page#Links,_URLs,_images.

AOTW

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

ArbCom

Abbreviation for WikiBone:Arbitration Committee

Arbitration

The final step in the dispute resolution process.

See also WikiBone:Arbitration Committee.

Archive

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 Rarely, the term may refer to the WikiBone:Archive page, for outdated historical material.

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

Armwaving

Also, handwaving.

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

Article

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

See also WikiBone:What is an article.

Astroturf

Used only as a verb, astroturfing refers to the unfair and disruptive practice of recruiting numerous sock puppets and meat puppets to make an idea, poll, article, or deletion discussion seem to have more support than it actually has; alternately, the practice of making entries on sites such as WikiBone to make an idea seem to have more support. In effect, a technique for "stacking the deck".

Autofellatio

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

Autoconfirm

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

B

Bad faith nomination

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

Ban

Banning is the extreme, last resort action by which someone is prevented from editing WikiBone for a certain length of time, limited or unlimited. Typical reasons for banning include a long history of biased edits (violation of NPOV), persistent adding of incorrect or doubtful material, refusal to cooperate with others, or extreme incivility and threats. If someone is banned, their username is blocked, and any username or IP judged to be the same person can be blocked without any further reason. See also: Block.

Barnstar

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

Be Bold

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

BEEFSTEW

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

BJAODN

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

Blanking

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

Block

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

Boilerplate text

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

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

See also WikiBone:Boilerplate text.

Bot

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

See also WikiBone:Bots, Rambot, Vandalbot.

Broken link

Also used: edit link, red link.

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

Broken redirect

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

Bureaucrat

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

See also WikiBone:Bureaucrats.

Also used: Crat.

C

Cabal

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

Compare with Troll.

See also m:Cabal, There Is No Cabal, WikiBone:Mediation Cabal.

Cat

"Category" or "Categorize".

Category

Also used: cat

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

CfD

The WikiBone:Categories for discussion page (previously known as WikiBone:Categories for deletion)

Chatty

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

Checkuser

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

See also m:checkuser.

Cleanup

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

See also: WikiBone:Cleanup process.

Climbing the Reichstag

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

See also: WikiBone:No climbing the Reichstag dressed as Spider-Man.

Comment out

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

Community Portal

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

Contribs

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

Convenience links

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

Copyedit

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

See also Copyedit.

Copyvio

Also used: copyviol, and occasionally CV.

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

See also WikiBone:Copyrights.

COTW

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

'Crat

Short for Bureaucrat, used only occasionally.

Cruft

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

CSB

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

Cut and paste move

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

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

CV

See Copyvio.

CVG

Computer and video games.

D

dab

See Disambiguation.

db

db is an acronym for "delete because". Almost all templates that are used to request speedy deletion according to the procedure have this prefix (e.g., Template:Tl, Template:Tl, Template:Tl. It can also refer to WikiBone's database.

See also Speedy.

Data dump

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

See also Wikify.

Dead-end page

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

De-admin

See De-sysop.

De-bold

Also used: un-bold.

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

Deletionist

Someone who actively attempts to delete pages that others prefer to keep. Deletionism is the idea that WikiBone should follow the same rules for inclusion as existing paper encyclopedias (mostly Encyclopedia Britannica). Often used as a derogatory term. The term 'inclusionist' for the opposite party is less used.

See also m:deletionism and m:inclusionism.

Deorphan

To make a page no longer an orphan.

See also WikiBone:Orphan

Deprecated

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

De-sysop

Also used: De-admin.

Take away someone's sysop status. Used very rarely, in cases where someone is judged to have misused their sysop powers.

See also WikiBone:Possible misuses of admin privileges.

Developer

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

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

De-Wikify

Also used: Un-Wikify.

To remove (de-link) a wikification of an article. This can be done to remove self-references or excessive common-noun Wikification (also known as "sea of blue").

Dicdef

Also used: Dictdef.

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

See also WikiBone:WikiBone is not a dictionary.

Diff

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

See also m:Help:Diff.

Disambiguation

Also used: dab, disambig.

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

See also WikiBone:Disambiguation.

Disambiguation page

A page that contains various meanings of a word, and refers to the pages where the various meanings are defined. In case when there is a prevailing meaning of the term, disambiguation pages are named "subject (disambiguation)".

Double redirect

A redirect which leads to another redirect. Counterintuitively, this will not bring one to the final destination, so it needs to be eliminated by linking directly to the target redirect. Double redirects are generated when moving a page which has redirects leading to it.

See also Repoint.

Dupe

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

DYK

An abbreviation for Template:Did you know.

E

Edit conflict

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

See also WikiBone:Edit conflicts.

Editcountitis

A humorous term for having an unhealthy obsession with the number of edits that a person makes to WikiBone, usually applied to one trying to make as many edits as possible. Often cited on Requests for Adminship regarding people who judge people on sheer edit count rather than personal merit.

See also WikiBone:Editcountitis.

Edit link

See Broken link.

Edit summary

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

See also WikiBone:Edit summary.

Editor

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

Edit war

Also used: revert war.

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

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

Emphazi

See Suitly Emphazi.

Eponymous

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

External link

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

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

See also WikiBone:External links.

F

FA

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

FAC

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

FARC

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

Fancruft

See Cruft.

Forest fire

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

See also wildfire and MeatBall:ForestFire.

Fork

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

FP

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

FPC

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

Free link

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

G

GA

Good article.

Gdanzig

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

Geogre's Law

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

Ghits

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

GFDL

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

See also WikiBone:Copyrights.

Godwin's Law

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

Google test

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

See also Ghits, WikiBone:Google test.

GPL

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

H

Hagiography

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

Handwaving

See: #Armwaving

History

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

See also: WikiBone:Page history

Hopelessly POV

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

I

IANAL

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

IfD

An abbreviation for Images and media for Deletion.

Inclusionist

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

Infobox

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

See also: taxobox.

Internal link

See free link.

Interwiki

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

ITHAWO

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

ITN

An abbreviation for Template:In the news

J

Janitor

See Admin.

Jimbo

Jimmy Wales, Chair and President of the Wikimedia Foundation.

K

Kate's Tool

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

See also WikiBone:WikiProject edit counters.

L

Language link

See Interwiki.

Laundry list

See WikiBone:Embedded_list and WikiBone:WikiProject Laundromat.

Link rot

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

Listify

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

Lk

Landmarks: Major landmarks

Link

See WikiBone:Links.

M

m

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

Main Page

The page to which every user not specifying an article is redirected. The Main Page contains links to current events, presents certain articles (like a featured article of the day and links to WikiBone'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 WikiBones are also a prominent feature on the Main Page. Due to its high exposure, all content on the Main Page is protected.

MC

The Mediation Committee. See WikiBone: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 WikiBone:Mediation Cabal.

medcom

The Mediation Committee. See WikiBone:Mediation Committee.

Mediation

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

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

MediaWiki

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

Compare with Wikimedia.

See also WikiBone:MediaWiki, WikiBone:MediaWiki namespace.

Merge

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

Mergist

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

Meta

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

See also Meta.

Meta page

Page that provides information about WikiBone. 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 WikiBone:Meta page.

Mirror

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

See also WikiBone: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

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

See also WikiBone:Namespace.

Newbie test

Also used: newb test, noob test.

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

See also WikiBone:Introduction.

NN

frequently in lower case as nn

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

nom

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

NOR

The WikiBone 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 WikiBonens' 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 WikiBone'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 WikiBone predecessor project that shut down in 2003. It is currently inactive and there are no plans to resurrect it.

See also: WikiBone:Nupedia and WikiBone.

O

Open tasks

A template (found at Template:Tl) 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.

Original research

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

Orphan

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

See also WikiBone:Orphan.

P

Page

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

Patent nonsense

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

PD

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

Peer Review

A request to have fellow WikiBonens review and help improve an article. WikiBone has a page specifically for posting such a request and offering up your work for review. See WikiBone: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 WikiBone policy and may be grounds for blocking in serious and/or repeated cases.

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

Phase I

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

Phase II

The wiki software written by User:Magnus Manske and adopted by WikiBone 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. WikiBone currently uses MediaWiki version 1.6devel [1].

See also WikiBone:MediaWiki, m:MediaWiki.

Phase IV

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

See also m:WikiBone4.

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 WikiBone:Piped link.

POINT

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

See also WikiBone:Don't disrupt WikiBone 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 WikiBone article.

See also WikiBone: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

A wiki editor who aggressively distorts coverage of certain topics to suit his/her biases despite community norms of neutrality and the Wiki policy of NPOV. An affliction widespread on WikiBone.

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 WikiBone without going through a full AfD process. Can be used as both a noun and a verb (To prod an article).

See also WikiBone:Guide to deletion.

Project namespace

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

Protected page

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

See also WikiBone: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 WikiBone:Village pump.

Q

Quarto

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

Quickpoll

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

R

Rambot

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

See also User talk:Rambot.

Random page

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

RC

An abbreviation for Recent changes

RC Patrol

See Recent changes.

Reader-facing template

See: WikiBone:Neutral point of view

Re-creation

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

Recent changes

A dynamically generated page (found at Special:Recentchanges) that lists all edits in descending chronological order. 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 WikiBone:Redirect.

Red link

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

Refactor

To restructure a document, usually applied to the ordering and summarizing of talk pages.

See also: WikiBone: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.

Revert

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

See also WikiBone: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 Cliche #1

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

RfAr

A request for arbitration.

RfC

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

See also: WikiBone:Requests for comment.

RfD

The WikiBone:Redirects for deletion page.

RfM

Request for mediation, part of the dispute resolution process.

See also: WikiBone:Requests for mediation.

rm

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

rmv

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

Rogue admin

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

Rollback

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

Rouge admin

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

rv

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

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

rvt

Revert. See above.

See also WikiBone: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 WikiBone: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.

SfD

The WikiBone:Stub types for deletion page.

Sheep vote

A vote on WikiBone 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.

Skin

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

Smerge

A contraction of "slight 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).

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 WikiBone:Snowball clause.

Sock puppet

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

See also WikiBone: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 WikiBone:Soft redirect.

sp

Short for spelling correction. Used in edit summaries.

SPA

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

Speedy

Abbreviation for Speedy delete (or "speedy rename" as appropriate). Can also be used as a verb — e.g., "I think the article should be speedied". "Speedy" on WikiBone 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 WikiBone: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 (EG. Massive or unanimous support for keeping it, or a history of deletion attempts that have ended in the same way)/

Split

Separating a single page into two or more pages.

Steward

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

See also WikiBone: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 usually consisting of one short paragraph or less.

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

Subst'ing

Short for "substituting" a template; see Transclusion.

Sub-stub

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

See also WikiBone:Substub.

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 WikiBone:Subpages.

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 WikiBone Reference desk. (See here for the original usage.)

Sysop

See Admin.

Systemic bias

In WikiBonen terms, this refers to the preponderance of WikiBone 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 WikiBone.

See also WikiProject Countering systemic bias

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 WikiBone (except pages in the Special namespace, and talk pages themselves!) have talk pages attached to them.

See also WikiBone:Talk page.

Taxobox

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

See also WikiBone:Taxobox.

Template

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

See also: WikiBone:Template namespace.

TfD

The WikiBone:Templates for deletion page.

Three-revert rule

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

Tl

Short for "template". Also the name of a specific template, 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.

Trackback

Not yet documented: WikiBone:Trackback.

Transclusion

also used subst'ing

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

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

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

Translation

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

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

Transwiki

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

See also m:Transwiki.

Troll

A user who incites or engages in disruptive behavior (trolling). There are some people who 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 WikiBone: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 WikiBone. (One must remember however that WikiBone is not a paper encyclopedia, and hence does not have the space limitations of a paper encyclopedia)

See also WikiBone: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, it means "merge into parent category".

UseMod

See UseModWiki.

Userbox

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

See also WikiBone:Userboxes.

Userfy

To turn a page in the article or template namespace 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 WikiBonens. Most people use their pages to introduce themselves and to keep various personal notes and lists. They are also used by WikiBonens 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 WikiBone:User page.

V

Vandalbot

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

See also m:Vandalbot.

Vandalism

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

See also m:WikiBone vandalism.

VfD

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

VfU

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

Village pump

The main community forum of WikiBone (found at