Wikipedia:Glossary

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This is a glossary of terms commonly used on Wikipedia.

!$@

: – en:, de:, es:, fr:, ja:, etc.: The English-, German-, Spanish-, French-, Japanese-, etc.-language Wikipedia. For a full list of codes, see List of ISO 639-1 codes. For a full list of Wikipedias, see List of Wikipedias or m:List of Wikipedias.
ø: The character ø has been used in edit summaries to mean a Null edit, except that if you can see the edit summary, then it was a dummy edit instead of a null edit.
!=: "Is not equal to". This usage comes from the relational operator in programming languages such as C and C++.
!vote: A response to a proposal, e.g. support or oppose, but in a Wikimedia context where the consensus-seeking decision process does not normally lead to a tally and a majority would not be binding. The expression is read as "not-vote", and imitates the use of the exclamation point to mean 'not' in many programming languages. See also Wikipedia:Polling is not a substitute for discussion#Not-votes and the essay Don't vote on everything.
+: Used in edit summaries to show minor addition to text.
?: Used in edit summaries to show correction of odd minor error.

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0–9

0RR: Voluntary or imposed zero-revert rule. See Wikipedia:Revert only when necessary § Zero-revert rule.
1RR: Voluntary or imposed (sometimes by ArbCom) one-§ Revert rule. See Wikipedia:Revert only when necessary § One-revert rule.
2RR: Voluntary or imposed two-revert rule.
3RR: Abbreviation for § Three-revert rule.
5C: Abbreviation for the "five C's" of copyediting – making the article clear, correct, concise, comprehensible, and consistent.
5P: Abbreviation for Five pillars of Wikipedia.

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A

Abcdise: Term sometimes used in edit summaries to indicate that the edit was to sort list or other items into alphabetical order.
Actionable: In featured content promotion discussions, all objections to promotion must be actionable – that is, it must be possible to make changes (or "actions") so the specified problem can be resolved. For example, objecting on the basis that the citations need improvement is actionable because it is possible to make improvements in this area: more and better citations can be added, the citation style and syntax can be improved, etc. An example of an unactionable objection is that the topic is too controversial; Wikipedia editors can do nothing to change how controversial the topic is.
Admin: Short for Administrator. A user with extra technical privileges for "custodial" work on Wikipedia – specifically, deleting and protecting pages, and blocking abusive users. Synonym: § sysop.
AFC: The articles for creation project which reviews some articles created via the Article wizard.
AfD: The Wikipedia:Articles for deletion page. The AfD of an article refers to the discussion wherein Wikipedians consider whether an article should be kept or deleted. See Wikipedia:Guide to deletion for explanation of some terms used on AfD.
AGF: Abbreviation for "assume good faith", a guideline whereby one should not assume an unwanted or disputed edit was done maliciously. See also Hanlon's razor.
AIV: Abbreviation for "Administrator intervention against vandalism", a place and procedure for notifying Wikipedia administrators about urgent cases of vandalism.
AN: Abbreviation for "Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard", a discussion location for Wikipedia administrators.
Anchor: Wikipedia defines an anchor as either the starting point or the ending point of a link.^[a] In practice, usage of the term anchor at Wikipedia usually refers to the destination anchor, i.e., the landing place of a link.
ANI, AN/I: Abbreviation for "Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents", where Wikipedia administrators discuss issues which may or may not need urgent administrator attention.
Anon: Abbreviation for "anonymous user". As a user does not necessarily lose their anonymity by registering or logging in, this term should be avoided. See § IP user.
Anyone can edit: See the § Encyclopedia that anyone can edit.
AOTW: Abbreviation of Wikipedia:Article of the week, the former appellation of Wikipedia:Collaboration of the week.
ArbCom: Abbreviation for Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee.
Arbitration: The final step in the dispute resolution process. See also Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee (ARBCOM).
Arb: Short for arbitrator – a member of the Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee.
Archive: A § Subpage of a § Talk page to which some parts of the discussion are transferred, to reduce the size of the Talk page. Rarely, the term may refer to the Wikipedia:Historical archive page, for outdated historical material. See also: Help:Archiving a talk page.
Article: An encyclopedia entry. All articles are pages, but there are also pages that are not articles, such as this one. See also Wikipedia:What is an article.
Astroturf: Used only as a verb, astroturfing refers to attempts at creating the impression of a grassroots movement by the use of sock puppets and meat puppets to make an idea, poll, article, or deletion discussion seem to have more support than it actually has; alternatively, the practice of making entries on sites such as Wikipedia to make an idea seem to have more support. In effect, a technique for "stacking the deck".
AUSC: The former Audit Subcommittee. Monitored and oversaw § Checkuser and Oversight use, and handled complaints concerning use of those privileges. Dissolved in 2016.
Autoconfirmed: A newly registered user is still subject to some of the same restrictions as anonymous users – for example, inability to move articles or edit semi-protected 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 make ten edits and wait four days to be autoconfirmed.
AWB: Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser, a semi-automated Wikipedia editor.

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B

Babel: A babel is a user language template aiding multilingual communication by making it easier to contact someone who speaks a certain language.
BAD: Abbreviation for Wikipedia:List of bad article ideas.
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.
Balancing the Main Page: Copy editing the content on various Main Page sections such that text on the left Today's featured article/Did you know column and the right In the news/On this day column are "balanced", i.e. there is minimal blank space below both. Depending on the circumstances, this may also involve temporarily posting an additional hook or event onto one of the Main Page sections, beyond what the maximum number is stated on that particular section's guidelines.
Ban: Banning is the last-resort action by which someone is prevented from editing Wikipedia for a certain length of time, limited or unlimited. Typical reasons for banning include a long history of biased edits (violation of § NPOV), persistent adding of incorrect or doubtful material, refusal to cooperate with others, or extreme incivility and threats. Banned users are not necessarily blocked; however, it is one mechanism to enforce a ban. Any username or IP judged to be the same person can be blocked without any further reason. See also: § Block.
Banner: A banner is a template that is placed across the top of any page to indicate the page's type, details about its maintenance, etc. Banners are usually created using the mbox family of templates. They are often specifically linked to a WikiProject to indicate that the article or category falls within the jurisdiction of that project, but may also be related to article maintenance or protection. "Banner" may also simply mean the administrator who bans a troublesome editor.
Bar: A placeholder name. See § Foo.
Bare URL: A reference including only the URL (web address) with no other text (publication name, article title, date, author, etc). See Wikipedia:Bare URLs. Such references are liable to link rot and should be avoided.
Barnstar: Barnstars are a light-hearted system of awards given to Wikipedian editors by other editors to acknowledge good work or other positive contributions to Wikipedia. They take the form of an image posted to an editor's § Talk page, usually in the form of a five-pointed star. There is a wide variety of different types of barnstar, each indicating a different reason for the award having been given.
BASC: The Ban Appeals Subcommittee, where users formerly could appeal against their ban (or long-term block) after all other appeal processes have failed for them.
base name: In regard to page titles a base name (sometimes "basename") is an undisambiguated title. For example, in a title like Training Day (Potter Payper album) the base name is "Training Day". Words like "base" and "name" are very common and when used together may have other meanings in different contexts. Base name can be used to refer to the magic word {{BASEPAGENAME}}.
battlegrounding: An oppositional Talk page behavioral style; see WP:BATTLEGROUND.
Be Bold: The exhortation that users should try to improve articles and fix mistakes themselves by editing, rather than complain about them. See Wikipedia:Be bold in updating pages.
BEANS: An allusion to the essay on not warning people about things they would never have imagined doing (it just gives them ideas): Don't stuff beans up your nose.
Best practice: The ideal thing to do in a particular situation. The best practice might or might not be the typical practice, and it may be unattainable in some circumstances. If a policy or guideline does not support the best practice, the policy or guideline should be changed.
Bit: Most often refers to an account being given the administrator rights. When a user "gets the admin bit" they have just become an administrator. Also known as a "flag" or the "admin flag". See also: § Mop. See Wikipedia:User access levels for further information.
Bitey: Being impolite or worse to a newcomer to Wikipedia. Also seen in the forms bite, biter, and bitten. From the guideline name, Wikipedia:Don't bite the newcomers and its shortcut, WP:BITE. Related to Wikipedia:Assume good faith and Wikipedia:Welcoming committee.
BJAODN: Abbreviation for Wikipedia:Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense, a now-inactive page. The verb, BJAODNed, refers to the act of something being posted on the page with that name, and was often used at Wikipedia namespace articles involving heavy user participation, such as the Reference desk or AfD/TfD pages.
Blanking: Removing all content from a page. Newcomers often do this accidentally. On the other hand, if blanking an article is done in bad faith, it is § Vandalism. Newcomers often mistake blanking for deletion. If someone wants their new article removed, they should simply add {{db-g7}} or {{delete}} to it and an administrator will delete the page.
Block: Action by an administrator, removing from a certain IP address or username the ability to edit Wikipedia. Usually done against addresses that have engaged in vandalism or against users who have been banned – see Wikipedia:Blocking policy. See also: § Ban.
BLP: Abbreviation for Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons – official Wikipedia policy, whereby articles about living people must be handled with great care.
Blue link: A wikilink to an article that already exists shows up blue (or purple if it has been recently visited by that reader/editor). See also § Sea of blue, § Red link, and WikiProject Red Link Recovery.
Blurb: A one-sentence summary of a recent news item for § ITN.
Body: The part of an article containing detailed content about the article topic, as defined by its article title, excluding the WP:LEAD, if any. The body follows the lead and may be followed by optional appendix section(s). For short articles with no lead or appendixes, the body may be the entire article, with any end matter following after.
Boilerplate text: A standard message which can be added to an article using a template. For example, {{stub}} is expanded to the following:
This article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
See Boilerplate (text).
Boomerang: A situation when the reporter is blocked following their own reports, particularly in ANI.
Bot: A program that automatically or semi-automatically adds or edits Wikipedia-pages. See Wikipedia:Bots/Dictionary, § Vandalbot.
BRD: Bold, Revert, Discuss. A commonly-cited explanation of § Be Bold saying that the process is to make changes boldly, revert unhelpful changes, and discuss any disagreements rather than § Edit war by repeatedly counter-reverting.
Broken link: A link to a nonexistent page, usually colored red, depending on your settings. May also refer to dead links. See also: § Edit link, § Red link, and Wikipedia:Red link.
Broken redirect: Redirect to a non-existing page. Common opinion is that these should be removed.
Bump: To update the posted WP:ITN item with newly available information and bring it higher (bump) among other items accordingly.
Bureaucrat: A Wikipedia Administrator who has been entrusted with promoting users to Administrator status. See also § Crat, Wikipedia:Bureaucrats.
BURO: NOT:Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy.

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C

Cabal: Sometimes assumed to be a secretive organization responsible for the development of Wikipedia or for clandestinely enforcing certain ways of editing one disagrees with. The word is commonly used as a sarcastic hint to lighten up when discussions seem to become a little too paranoid. Discussions involving the term may have links to POV / NPOV issues, § Admin problems, or pretty much anything to do with the foundation of Wikipedia. The term TINC ("There Is No Cabal") is occasionally encountered, used humorously in such a way as to suggest that maybe there is a cabal after all. The term is comparable to the use of the term SMOF in science fiction fandom. See also m:Cabal, There Is No Cabal, Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal, WP:CABAL.
CamelCase: CamelCase (camel case or camel-case, originally known as medial capitals) is the practice of writing compound words or phrases in which the elements are joined without spaces, with each element's initial letter capitalized within the compound and the first letter is either upper or lower case – as in "LaBelle", BackColor, or "McDonald's". See also Wikipedia:CamelCase and Wikipedia.
Campaigning: The inappropriate § canvassing technique of attempting to sway the person reading a notification message about an ongoing discussion, through the use of tone, wording, or intent.
Canvass: Canvassing is the inappropriate notification of a community discussion with the intention of influencing its outcome. Canvassing is considered disruptive since it compromises the consensus building process. Canvassing comes in various types, including § Campaigning, § Votestacking, and § Spamming. See Wikipedia:Canvassing.
Cat: "Category" or "categorize". Often pluralized as "cats" or "cats."
Category: A category is a collection of pages automatically formed by the Wikipedia servers by analyzing category tags in articles. Category tags look like this: Category:Computers. The part after the ":" is the name of the Category. Adding a category tag causes a link to the category page to go to the bottom of the tagged page and results in the page being added to the category listing, also called category page. A list of basic categories to browse through can be found at Category:Main topic classifications.
Category declaration, category tag: A category name placed at the bottom of any page and the wiki-syntax of doing this. Pages are placed into categories by the use of the category declarations. Some people refer to category declarations as category tags. A category declaration looks like [[Category:Foo bar]] where foo bar is name of the category and serves as the title of the category page.
CC-BY-SA: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike. Wikipedia's articles are released under this license. See also Wikipedia:Copyrights.
CCI: Contributor copyright investigations.
CE, c/e: Copy-edit.
CfD: The Wikipedia:Categories for discussion page (previously known as Wikipedia:Categories for deletion).
CfM: Category for merging.
CfR: Category for renaming.
Chatty: A term used for articles which seem to present their content in the manner of a casual conversation with the reader. Chatty articles may need cleanup.
CheckUser: An access level with which a user can see the IP addresses of logged-in users, usually to determine if someone is using sockpuppets to violate policy. Currently granted only to certain members of the Arbitration Committee and some other trusted users.
Child: A subpage or (more often) subcategory. Compare § Parent.
Child article: An article which is one of two or more articles related in a hierarchical fashion, and subsidiary to another article known as the § Parent article. The article Causes of World War II is a child article of World War II. See § Summary style.
CIR: Competence Is Required. An essay commonly cited to point out that even well-intentioned editors (see Assume Good Faith) can be disruptive if they frequently get things wrong.
Circular reference: A reference which cites another page within Wikipedia which in its turn cites the first one. See "Circular reference". Often circular references create a logical fallacy. Another type of circular references is a wikilink in some page to a page which is a redirect to the first one. While mostly harmless, the latter ones are useless and annoying. See also: § Self-link.
Circular redirect: Also called self-redirect. A redirect which wikilinks back to itself, either directly or via a chain of redirects. A special case of § Circular reference.
Citation: A descriptive string which uniquely identifies a source of information (book, article, webpage, etc.) for the purpose of verifying article content. This descriptive text may be placed at the end of the article (a general reference) or after specific material (an inline citation). Material without an inline citation is § uncited. Material that is cited may or may not be § verifiable, depending upon whether the cited source is reliable for this content and contains information that matches the article content. Synonym: a reference.; Citing sources. A § Footnote using <ref>...</ref> tags is the most popular way to cite sources.
Civility: Behavior can be civil without being warm, friendly, or agreeable, as long as it provides a fair basis for social interactions and decisions (e.g., treating others as you would be treated, not lying, not being overtly rude, not trolling or provoking people just for the excitement).
CLS: Cats, lists, boxes.
Cleanup: The process of repairing articles that contain errors of grammar, are poorly formatted, or contain irrelevant material. See also: Wikipedia:Cleanup process.
Climbing the Reichstag: A humorous way of indicating that an editor has over-reacted during an argument such as an edit-war in order to gain some advantage. This has similar consequences to – and is as unwelcome as – WP:POINT (qv). See also: Activities of "Fathers for Justice", Wikipedia:No climbing the Reichstag dressed as Spider-Man.
cmt, cm: Comment.
CNR: Same as § XNR.
COI: Acronym for Wikipedia:Conflict of interest.
COIN: Acronym for Wikipedia:Conflict of interest noticeboard.
Comment out: To hide from normal display whilst retaining the material for editors to see. This is done by inserting the characters  at the end. These character strings are used to delimit comments in HTML code.
Commons: Wikimedia Commons is an online repository of free-use images, sound and other media files.
Community Portal: One of Wikipedia's main pages for editor communication. It can often be found linked to on the sidebar (on the left side in most skins), and is a page that lists important notices, 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.
Consensus WP:CON: The mechanism by which all decisions on Wikipedia are nominally made. Not the same as a "majority vote" (cf Polling is not a substitute for discussion) nor unanimity.
Container category: A category which is intended to contain only subcategories, and have no articles placed in it. An example would be Category:Architecture in the United States by state.
Contribs, contributions: Edits in wikipedia, supposed to be useful, unlike vandalism. See Help:User contributions.
Contributor: See § Editor.
Convenience links: Links to unofficial copies of reliable sources (not to the original publisher) in addition to a formal citation of the reliable source. Has the advantage over books, paid websites, and websites that need registration of easy accessibility. Sometimes disputed because of violations of copyright, linking to partisan websites, possible distortions or those reliable sources, or because it may contain comments on the reputable sources other editors do not like.
Copyedit, ce: A change to an article that affects only formatting, grammar, and other presentational aspects. See also Wikipedia:Basic copyediting.
Copyvio: Copyright violation. Usually used in an edit summary when deleting copyrighted material added without complying with Wikipedia copyright verification procedures. See also § CV, Wikipedia:Copyrights.
COTW: Collaboration of the week, an article needing improvement that is selected by vote to be the subject of widespread cooperative editing for a week.
Crat, 'Crat: Short for § Bureaucrat.
Cross-namespace redirects: A § Redirect which links from one type of § Namespace to another. Examples include words in the article namespace which redirect to project pages in the Wikipedia namespace. Although they are not considered standard practice, some are created to facilitate searching, especially for new users. See also § XNR, § CNR, Wikipedia:Namespace and Wikipedia:Cross-namespace redirects (essay).
Cruft: A somewhat dismissive term used to describe an article or group of articles that 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 Fancruft (cruft articles, usually about fictional subjects, significant only to a specific group of fans) and Listcruft (crufty list articles). Cruft articles are often on topics such as minor characters from television series, or very specific lists of songs (such as "List of songs which includes the word 'death' in the lyrics"). Cruft is often deleted or merged into other articles by the Wikipedia community.
CS1: An abbreviation for Citation Style 1, a collection of reference citation templates that can be modified to create different styles for different referenced materials.
CSB: WikiProject Countering systemic bias or, more rarely, an adjective for a topic of concern to the WikiProject, e.g., "This does not seem to be a CSB article." Systemic bias is the tendency for Wikipedia articles to be biased towards a European or American view of things, simply because most editors are European or American.
CSD, WP:CSD: Criteria for speedy deletion, a policy detailing the circumstances when articles etc. can be removed from Wikipedia without discussion. Also lists the templates needed to nominate something for speedy deletion.
Current: On a user's list of contributions, (current) indicates that the article has not been edited by anyone else since the user last edited it.
Current version: The (current version) of a page is the page as it is normally seen. Other versions exist in the page history and can be viewed and permalinked but do not normally show in searches.
: Moving a complete page by taking the text of the page, and putting it into the edit window for the second page. Usually done by novices to rename a page. The correct way of page renaming is the 'Move page' option. Cut-n-paste move is generally a bad idea because it splits the edit history of the page. Cut and paste moves can be fixed by administrators. See also Wikipedia:How to fix cut and paste moves.
CV: Abbreviation of § Copyvio.
CVG: Computer and video games.

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D

Dab, WP:D: Abbreviation of § Disambiguation (or disambiguate[d]) (from the Wikipedia:Disambiguation shortcut WP:DAB).
Dabify: To convert (typically a redirect) into a disambiguation page.
Dablink, DAB link, etc.: 1. Abbreviation of "disambiguation link"; a link that leads to a § Disambiguation page.; 2. To disambiguate a § Link within the text of a page.; 3. A link at the top of an article to one or more other articles with similar titles (a § Hatnote), or the addition of such.
DAB page, dab page: Same as § Disambiguation page.
Data dump: To import material from outside sources into Wikipedia without editing, formatting and linking (Wikifying). This is frowned upon by most Wikipedians, and is often a § Copyvio.
Db, DB: 1. An abbreviation for "delete because". Almost all templates that are used to request speedy deletion according to the procedure have this prefix (e.g., {{db-advert}}, {{db-nonsense}}, {{db-band}}. See also § Speedy.; 2. Wikipedia's database.
Dead-end page: A page that has no links to existing other pages, except interlanguage links. Special:Deadendpages lists them, but this function is disabled in some Wikimedia projects for performance reasons.
De-admin: See § Desysop.
De-also-fy: To remove the word "also" in an article when it is unnecessary.
De-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 because 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). See also un-bold.
Deleted edit: An edit that is no longer listed in an editor's contributions because the page has subsequently been deleted.
Deletionist: Someone who actively attempts to delete pages others prefer to keep. Deletionism is the idea that Wikipedia should be selective in the topics it covers and should remove articles that do not meet certain standards. Often used as a derogatory term. The term 'inclusionist' for the opposite party is less used. See also m:deletionism, m:inclusionism, and Deletionism and inclusionism in Wikipedia.
DENY: Used to mark reversions of edits by known long-term vandals, or obvious or proven sockpuppets of blocked users (see WP:DENY).
Delrev, DRV: Abbreviation for Deletion review.
Deorphan, De-orphan: To make a page no longer an § Orphan. See also Wikipedia:Orphan.
Deprecated: 1. (historical) Techie-speak for "tolerated in or supported by a system but not recommended (i.e., beware: may well be on the way out)".; 2. The term is also used to refer to pages, templates or categories that have been orphaned or are no longer used.; 3. In non-technical English, the word means, "deplored or strongly disapproved of".
Desc: Abbreviation for "description". Often used in edit summaries.
Destination: The destination of a name is the page or section to which it takes the reader in the main namespace. If the page by that name is a redirect, then the redirect target is the destination. Otherwise (typically if the page is an article or a disambiguation page) the page itself is the destination.
Desysop: Take away someone's sysop (§ Administrator) status. Used very rarely, in cases where someone has voluntarily elected to resign such status, or is judged to have misused their admin powers. See also Wikipedia:Requests for de-adminship.
Developer, dev: Usually capitalized. A user who can make direct changes to Wikipedia's underlying software and possibly also the database, often being one of the § MediaWiki developers (see next definition) or other Wikimedia Foundation technicians. Technically, it is the highest user access level, but Developer privileges are generally used only at request. Sometimes referred to by other terms such as "system administrators" or "sysadmins", to distinguish from MediaWiki developers. See also m:Developers for a list of developers and further information.; Usually not capitalized. One of the developers of the § MediaWiki software; often but not always a Wikipedia Developer (in the above sense).
De-wikify, dewikify: To remove (de-link) some of the wikification of an article. This can be done to remove self-references or excessive common-noun wikification (also known as the § Sea of blue effect).
Dicdef, dictdef, dic def, dic-def: Short for a dictionary definition. This term is commonly used on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion when referring to an article that is more similar to a dictionary article than an encyclopedia one. Usually a reason for transwikifying to Wiktionary. See also Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary.
Diff: The difference between two versions of page, as displayed using the Page history feature, or from Recent Changes. The versions to compare are encoded in the URL, so you can make a link by copying and pasting it, for instance when discussing a change on an article's talk page.
Disambiguation, disambig: The process of resolving the conflict that occurs when articles about two or more different topics have the same natural title. See also § Dab.
Disambiguation page, DAB page, dab page: A page that contains various meanings of a word, and refers to the pages where the various meanings are defined. In cases when there is a prevailing meaning of the term, disambiguation pages are named "subject (disambiguation)" when there is a primary topic. See (Wikipedia:Disambiguation)
Disambiguator, disambiguation tag: The extra text added to an ambiguous § base name to form an unambiguous article title.
DMCA takedown request: A filing to the Wikimedia Foundation asking them to remove an image or other content from Wikimedia on the grounds that it constitutes a copyright violation and the host has responsibility for that under the U.S.'s DMCA law.
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 that has redirects leading to it. See also § Repoint.
Duck: See the duck test.
Dupe: Short for a duplicate article. Often used when identifying a duplicate page that needs to be merged with another.
DRV: See § Delrev.
DYK: An abbreviation for Template:Did you know.

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E

EC, e/c: § Edit conflict, or WP:Extended confirmed.
Edit conflict: Also, rarely "edconf". Appears if an edit is made to the page between when one opens it for editing and completes the edit. The later edit does not take effect, but the editor is prompted to merge their edit with the earlier one. Edit conflicts should not be confused with edit wars.
Editcountitis: A humorous term for having an unhealthy obsession with the number of edits a person makes to Wikipedia, usually applied to one trying to make as many edits as possible. Often cited on Requests for Adminship regarding people who judge people on sheer edit count rather than personal merit.
Edit creep: The tendency for high quality articles to degrade over time. Articles usually achieve good article or featured article recognition because a small core of people knew the subject well and researched it carefully. Subsequently, new readers continue to alter the page. The average contribution may weaken the piece through bad copyediting, poor syntax, recitation of popular misconceptions, or giving undue weight to a subordinate topic. (By way of analogy to scope creep.)
Edit link: See § Broken link.
Edit summary: The contents of the "Summary:" field below the edit box on the "Edit this page" page.
Editor: Anyone who writes or modifies Wikipedia articles. That includes you. Other terms with the same meaning: contributor, user.
Edit war: Two or more parties continually making their preferred changes to a page, each persistently undoing the changes made by the opposite party. Often, an edit war is the result of an argument that could not be resolved on a talk page. Edit wars are not permitted and may lead to blocks. Sometimes termed "revert war", see also the § three-revert rule.
Enc: Short for "encyclopedic" or "encyclopedic value". For example, used on featured pictures discussions.
Encyclopedia that anyone can edit: A core principle of Wikipedia, enshrined in the Five pillars, is that Wikipedia is the "Encyclopedia that anyone can edit".
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.
Essay: A page that consists of the generally accepted opinions of the authors, rather than verifiable fact.
Expand, expansion: To expand a template means to replace the use of a template in the § wikicode with the result of invoking the template for display to the reader. The Wikimedia software automatically replaces a template in the wikicode of an article with the result of the template invocation in the page Html so a reader may view it. For example, if you code {{Convert|15|miles|km}} in the wikicode of an article, when you view the page it will say "15 miles (24 km)" in place of the template invocation. The wikicode itself remains unchanged. The value returned by the template—what you see when viewing the article—is called the expansion of the template. See Help:Template#Terminology.; Expand can also mean to replace an abbreviation or initialism with the term it refers to.
External link: A link to a website not owned by § Wikimedia. The alternatives are an internal link, wikilink or free link within Wikipedia, and an § interwiki link to a sister project. See also Wikipedia:External links, Wikipedia:Spam.

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F

FA: Featured article, an article that has been selected as representing "the best of Wikipedia". Articles become featured articles when a § FAC gets consensus for promotion.
FAC: Featured article candidate, an article that has been proposed for consideration to be featured as one of the best in Wikipedia.

Fancruft

See § Cruft.

FAR

Featured article review, a process for the improvement or delisting of featured articles that may no longer meet the quality standards for "featured" status, either because the featured article criteria, the article's topic, or the article itself changed. The process begins with a discussion on the article's talk page. If the issues are not resolved, a user may list the article on FAR, where a discussion takes place to help identify and address areas where improvement may be needed. After the discussion, if no consensus emerges to keep the article featured, the review moves on to the next stage, featured article removal candidates (FARC). Here, the article's "featured" status is considered for removal.

FfD, FFD

An abbreviation for Files for discussion.

FIST

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

Float, floating

To add coding to a template, image, or other feature so it appears in a specific position on the page. See Wikipedia:Picture tutorial § Thumbnails, Help:Table § Floating table, and Help:Section § Floating the TOC for examples.

fmt

Format. Abbreviation commonly used in edit summaries to signify formatting of the page, or wikification.

FoF

Finding of Fact, one of the sections of an Arbitration Decision

Foo

A placeholder name, used to provide a generic example. Thus, "an article on the culture of Foo", means "an article on the culture of any of the places under discussion, or any that it may also apply to". When two placeholders are required, Bar is usually used as the second (e.g., "an article on the Foo of Bar"). See also Foobar.

Footnote

A labeled string of text rendered at the bottom of an article page by the Wikimedia software, and linked to by one or more superscript markers (usually numeric) in the running text of the article. Footnotes are generated by embedding footnote text inside <ref> tags in the wikitext of the article. When the text string is a § Citation, then it is called a citation footnote; otherwise an explanatory footnote. See Help:Footnotes.

footnote marker – the bracketed, superscripted number, letter, or word; like these dummy examples.^[1]^[a]^{[Note 1]}
footnote label – the part between the brackets; following the above example: '1', 'a', or 'Note 1'.
footnote – the full note or reference, displayed automatically in an ordered list in the Notes and references appendix of the page. Each entry begins with the footnote label in plain text.

Forest fire: A flame war which spreads, seemingly uncontrollably, beyond the pages where it began into unrelated articles' talk pages. A forest fire becomes progressively more difficult for any user to keep track of. On Wikipedia, this is less of a problem than on other wikis, due to well-established boundaries for user conduct, clear guidelines for article content, and a formal dispute resolution process. See also wildfire and MeatBall:ForestFire.
Fork: A splitting of an entity to satisfy different groups of people – in Wikipedia, this can either mean a project-wide split, in which a group of users decides to take a project database and continue with it on their own site (which is perfectly legal under the § GFDL, and one of an editor's least disputed rights), or the split of an article, usually to accommodate different POVs. The latter is often called a POV fork and generally regarded as highly undesirable.
FP: Featured pictures, a picture that has been selected as representing "the best of Wikipedia". Pictures become featured pictures when a FPC gets consensus for promotion.
FPC: Featured picture candidate, a picture that has been proposed for consideration to be featured as one of the best in Wikipedia.
Free link: A link pointing to another page within Wikipedia or its sister projects by using the wiki markup double square-brackets "[[" and "]]". Sometimes they are referred to as wikilinks or internal links. Unless otherwise specified in a user's monobook.css, these links usually show up as blue if they are working and you haven't visited them before, red if they are broken, and purple if they are working and you have visited them before; note that they do not have the arrow symbol characteristic of an external link.
Friendly notices: A contributor who sends friendly notices as a means of § Canvassing appropriately must ensure these neutrally worded notifications are sent to a small number of editors, intending to improve rather than to influence a discussion and while avoiding excessive cross-posting. See Wikipedia:Canvassing.
Full title: The § base name of an article plus any disambiguators. For example, the full title of the article at top (clothing) is top (clothing), consisting of the base name top and the disambiguator (clothing). If there are no disambiguators, the full title is identical to the base name.

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G

GA: Good article. Hence GAN Good article nomination and GAR Good article reassessment.
gadget: A gadget is a JavaScript tool that can be enabled from your Wikipedia preferences.
Gdanzig: An edit war over which of several possible names should be used for a place. The word is a portmanteau of Gdańsk and Danzig, the two names about which a venerable edit war ensued. See Talk:Gdansk/Vote.
geostub: A WP:stub article about a geographical location
GF: Good faith, a tenet of Wikipedia.
GFDL: GNU Free Documentation License. Many of Wikipedia's articles are released under this license. See also Wikipedia:Copyrights.
GFE: 1. A good faith edit.; 2. A good faith editor.
Ghits, G-hits, GHits: "Google hits" – the number of results returned on 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.
glock: Short for global lock, a block where the user is banned from every WikiMedia site
gloss, glosses, glossing: In editing, a gloss is brief explanation that accompanies a text. It can also refer to the addition, modification, or deletion of hyperlinks like this one.
gnome: A wikipedia editor who primarily engages in gnoming: making minor, but helpful edits.
Godwin's Law: Godwin's Law is concerned with logical fallacies such as reductio ad Hitlerum, wherein an idea is unduly dismissed or rejected on the ground of it being associated with persons generally considered "evil".; Godwin's Law states, "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1." It is often cited as soon as it occurs as a flag that discussions have gone on too long or gotten out of hand on a particular topic.
good hand, bad hand: Using one resource only for good things and a second, similar resource only for bad things, thereby deflecting any criticism from the first resource by attracting it with the second. In short, keeping one hand clean by using only the other hand for all dirty things.; On Wikipedia, used in phrasing such as, "A good hand, bad hand situation," usually referring to the behavior made under two editor accounts. See Wikipedia:Sock puppetry § Inappropriate uses of alternative accounts, in particular the bullet point with direct shortcuts WP:GHBH & WP:HAND.
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 notable to warrant an article and to check whether a questionable and obscure topic is real (as opposed to the idiosyncratic invention of a particular individual). See also § Ghits and Wikipedia:Google test.
GPL: GNU General Public License. Wikipedia's software is released under this license.
gr: Grammar. Used in edit summaries to indicate that a grammar problem is being corrected.

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H

Hagiography: Wording that is excessively fulsome, adulatory or glowing in a biographical article, to the point of violating § NPOV.
Handwaving, armwaving: 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. See also Handwave.
Hatnote: A short note placed at the top of an article before the primary topic.
Hard redirect: Equivalent to the usual § Redirect, used to differentiate it from the § Soft redirect.
Hat: 1. A collapsed (section of) discussion enclosed by {{hat}} (Template:Hidden archive top) and {{hab}} (Template:Hidden archive bottom) templates. See: Hatted, Hatting; 2. A specific user right, in the context of Wikipedia:Hat collecting.
Hatted, Hatting: Refers to using {{hat}} (Template:Hidden archive top) to close and collapse a discussion to discourage further editing, without removing it completely from the page.
History: All previous versions of an article, from its creation to its current state. Also called page history. See also: Help:Page history.
Hook: A short entry at Wikipedia:Did you know.
Hopelessly POV: Describing an article which, in the opinion of some Wikipedians, is so closely tied to a particular point of view as to be inherently in violation of Wikipedia policy and unable to be made neutral. Other Wikipedians consider the accusation "hopelessly POV" as being merely an excuse to suppress certain points of view.

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I

IANAL, 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 fields, e.g., IANAA (administrator), IANAD (doctor).
IAR, Ignore All Rules: A policy which states simply "If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it." There are several essays on what this means, including Wikipedia:What "Ignore all rules" means, and an encyclopedic article on the topic.
IAW: An abbreviation for "in accordance with", as in "IAW [[WP:RS]]".
IBAN, I-BAN: An abbreviation referring to an interaction ban between two or more editors, usually used to reduce or eliminate a conflict.
ICBH: An abbreviation for I couldn't be happier.
IfD, IFD: An abbreviation for Images and media for deletion, the old name for Files for discussion.
Iff: If and only if.
Inactive: Describes a user that has not edited Wikipedia for some time, with or without announcing that they have § retired. User accounts are never deleted, and an inactive editor can return to editing at any time. § Administrators who are inactive over a year may have their permissions administratively removed. See also § Retiring.
Inclusionist: A user who is of the opinion that Wikipedia should contain as much information as possible, often regardless of presentation or notability. There are varying degrees of Inclusionism – radical Inclusionists vote "Keep" on every § AfD they come across, while more moderate ones merely express their desire for a wide variety of topics to be covered, even if they do not fit the standard criteria for inclusion in an encyclopedia, or if the articles in question have quality problems.
Indef: Short for indefinite block.
Infobox: A consistently formatted table which is present in articles with a common subject. See Help:Infobox and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (infoboxes) for a how-to guide. See also: § Navbox, § Taxobox.
Internal link: See § Free link, § Wikilink.
Interwiki: A link to a sister project; this can be an interlanguage link to a corresponding article in a different language in Wikipedia, or a link to a project such as Wikibooks, Meta, etc. The abbreviations iw or i/w are often used in edit summaries when an interwiki link has been added or changed.
IOT: Abbreviation for "In order to".
IP, IP contributor, IP user, IP editor: An § Editor who contributes without an account. See also: § Anon.
IPA: International Phonetic Alphabet, widely used on Wikipedia to indicate pronunciation. See also Help:IPA, Help:IPA/English, the more detailed IPA chart for English dialects, and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (pronunciation).
IRC: Internet Relay Chat.
IRL: Abbreviation for "In real life".
Isolated, isolated article: An isolated article is an article that cannot be reached via a series of links from the Main Page. See also § Orphan.
ITN: Abbreviation for Wikipedia:In the news.
i/w, iw: See § Interwiki.

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J

Janitor: See § Admin.
Jimbo: Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia.

K

Kill / Kill with fire / Kill with a stick / Kill with a § Silver bullet: Dysphemisms for "deleting" a page, expressing some disgust for the existence of the page.

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L

Language link: See § Interwiki.
Laundry list: See Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Embedded lists and Wikipedia:WikiProject Laundromat.
Lead, Lede: The introduction or "lead paragraph" of a Wikipedia article; the section before the table of contents and first heading.
LCV, LGV: Edit summary abbreviation for Last Correct Version or Last Good Version (typically after a series of problematic edits).
Lightweight source: A source that only performs basic or token fact-checking; it should not be used to cite exceptional claims.
Link: See Help:Menu/Links.^{[clarification needed]}
Link farm: Link farms are articles or sections of articles consisting entirely of external or internal links. Some pages consisting of internal links are acceptable (such as disambiguation pages and list articles); others are likely to be candidates for deletion, as are any consisting entirely of external links.
Link rot: Because websites change over time, many external links from Wikipedia to other sites cannot be guaranteed to remain active. When an article's links becomes outdated and no longer work, the article is said to have undergone link rot.
List, list article: See Wikipedia:Lists.
Listcruft: See § Cruft.
Listify: To delete a category and turn the contents into a list. Sometimes used in § CFD discussions as shorthand for "this group of articles would be better if presented as a list, rather than as a category".
Lk: Landmarks: Major landmarks; also used as an abbreviation for "link" (see above).
LTA: Long Term Abuse.
Lugo: A meme associated with stagnation or the lack of sufficient updates on the Main page. It originated from an incident in 2008, when an image of President of Paraguay Fernando Lugo stayed up on the In the news section for well over a week. See also: Wikipedia:Lugo's law and Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-01-31/Dispatches – Wikipedia Signpost article on the process and history of In the news.

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M

M: On the Recent changes page, m (lower case, bold) indicates a § Minor edit.
Magic word: a symbol that is recognized by the MediaWiki software and, when seen in the non-commented text of the page, triggers the software to use the symbol directly instead of displaying it or transcluding a page with that name.
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 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.
Main Page balance: See § Balancing the Main Page.
Mainspace: The main article § Namespace (i.e., not a talk page, not a "Wikipedia:" page, not a "User:" page, etc.).
Malplaced disambiguation page: When a page title like "Foo" redirects to a page named "Foo (disambiguation)", the "Foo" title is said to be "malplaced". In this case, "Foo (disambiguation)" should be moved to the "Foo" title. See Wikipedia:Malplaced disambiguation pages
MC: The former Mediation Committee. See Wikipedia:Mediation Committee.
ME: A minor edit to an article.
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 former Mediation Committee. See Wikipedia:Mediation Committee.
Mediation: An attempt by a third party to resolve an edit war or other conflict between users. There existed a Wikipedia:Mediation Committee which can do so on a more or less official basis as the penultimate step in the 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. Contrast § Wikimedia. See also Wikipedia:MediaWiki, Wikipedia:MediaWiki namespace.
MEDRS: MEDical Reliable Source
Meh: Common edit summary used by many Wikipedians. Generally used for minor edits that no one is expected to care about. Also use (in edit summary or directly in talk page posts) in response to posts the editor feels are uninteresting or pointless, or proposals not worth considering.
Merge: Taking the text of two pages, and turning it into a single page. See Help:Merging.
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.
Meta page, meta-page: A 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.
MfD: Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion.
Minor edit: A minor edit is one the editor believes requires no review and could never be the subject of a dispute. An edit of this kind is marked in its page's revision history with a lower case, bolded "m" character (m).
Mirror: A website other than Wikipedia that uses content originally from 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).
MOS: Found in edit summaries to indicate that a change has been made to make an item comply with Wikipedia's standard writing style ("Manual of Style"). Often found in compound forms such as "MOSNUM" ("Manual of Style/Dates and numbers") and "MOSCAPS" ("Manual of Style/Capital letters"). See also § NC, Wikipedia:Manual of Style.
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.
Move war: An edit war in which two (or more, but almost always two) editors move a page back and forth. This may be the result of a dispute over the proper title for the page, or a dispute over whether the page should be in article space or moved into draft space for improvement.

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N

N: On the Recent changes page, N (upper case, bold) – with a red exclamation mark – N! indicates a new page or article that has not yet been patrolled.
N/a: An abbreviation for new article, often used in edit summaries. Easily confused with the common non-Wiki use, "not applicable" or "not available".
NAC: An abbreviation for non-admin closure. Signifies a closure of a discussion which was performed by someone without § Admin privileges.
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.
Name drop: A concern in Notability discussions when a source mentions a subject only by name without going into any other detail
Navbox, Navigation template: A navbox is a type of template placed at the bottom articles to enable the reader to navigate easily to other articles on related topics. See also: § Infobox, § Taxobox.
NC: Found in edit summaries to indicate that a change has been made to make an item comply with Wikipedia's standard naming conventions. See also § MOS, Wikipedia:Article titles.
Newbie 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: Abbreviation found in comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion and in edit summaries, indicating that the article's subject is not notable enough for a Wikipedia entry.
nom: Short for "nomination" or "nominator". Often found on deletion process pages as part of the phrase Delete per nom, indicating a voter's assent to and/or agreement with the main nomination for deletion.
NOR: The Wikipedia policy that No Original Research is allowed in citing sources in articles.
Notability, Notable: A test used by editors to determine whether a given topic deserves its own article. A notable topic is one that "is suitable for a stand-alone article or list when it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject." Note that "notability" is a property of a topic, and has nothing to do with the quality of an article, or whether an article exists for the topic.
Notice board: A page that 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.
NPA: No Personal Attacks. A special case of civility, saying that criticism must be directed at content and editing behavior, not at editors personally.
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 complies with Wikipedia's NPOV policy.
NPP: Wikipedia:New Pages Patrol.
Null edit: A null edit is made when an editor opens the edit window of a document then re-saves the page without having made any text changes. This is sometimes done as a lazy way to purge – to update the functioning of templates (which require articles containing them to be edited in order for any changes to take effect). The term also applies to making a very small, non-substantive change (e.g., removing an unneeded blank line or adding one) in order to get the article history to register a change, for the purpose of leaving an edit summary that responds to a previous one.
Nupedia: A Wikipedia predecessor project that shut down in 2003. It is currently inactive and there are no plans to resurrect it. See also: WP:Nupedia and Wikipedia.

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O

OBE: Abbreviation for Overcome By Events or Overtaken By Events.
Office actions: May refer to administrative interventions on Wikipedia by WMF staff. See Wikipedia:Office actions.
OP: Abbreviation for § Original post (or "Original poster"). Can also stand for Open Proxy. Or, in the context of § IRC, "op" can refer to "ChanOp" (Channel Operator), and to "get ops" or "be opped" means to attain a higher access level within a channel.
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 post, original poster: In a discussion § Thread, refers to the topic/person/message which started the discussion. Depending on context, OP may stand for either "original post" (the message which started the thread), or "original poster" (the person who started the thread). Often used on Wikipedia's discussion pages and commonly seen on the WP:Reference desk.
Original research: In Wikipedia, original research (sometimes abbreviated OR) is material 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 Wikipedia articles be used for substantiation of Wikipedia's own article content. Do not confuse original research with § uncited content. If someone can find a published reliable source for the content, it's not original research.
Orphan, orphan article, orphaned article, orphan image, orphaned image: An orphaned article is an article with no links from other pages in the main article § Namespace. An orphaned image is an image with no links 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 Wikiproject Orphanage.
OTD: Abbreviation for On This Day, a selection of anniversaries that are displayed on the main page.
OTRS: Abbreviation for § Open Ticket Request System. See also Wikipedia:Volunteer Response Team.

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P

Page: Any individual topic within Wikipedia; the web page without the top, bottom and sidebars. Pages include articles, stubs, redirects, disambiguation pages, user pages, talk pages, files, documentation and special pages.
Parent; Parent category: A larger, more general category of which the category under discussion is a subcategory (for example, Category:Aquatic organisms is a parent category of Category:Fish). Compare § Child. See also Help:Categorization.
Parent article: An article which is one of two or more articles related in a one-to-many hierarchical fashion, and which contains one or more other articles subsidiary to it which are known as § Child articles. The article World War II is the parent article of Causes of World War II, Pacific War, and numerous other child articles. See § Summary style.
Parent-only category: A category which contains only subcategories.
Patent nonsense.: A pejorative applied to articles that are either completely unintelligible or totally irrelevant. Patent nonsense is one of the more obvious but less common reasons for speedy deletion.
Patrol: Wikipedia:Recent changes patrol and/or Wikipedia:New page patrol. May also be used as a synonym for "review closely".
Passing mention: A concern in Notability discussions involving a source that mentions a topic without going into any significant detail. See § name drop.
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.
Permastub: Any § Stub article which is unlikely to grow to a more respectable size; an article on a subject about which little can ever be written. These articles are often potential candidates for merging into larger articles.
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.
Permalink, permanent link: A link to a specific version of a Wikipedia page, which will not reflect later edits to the page.
: 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. See also Wikipedia:What does "per" mean?
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 before 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 1.43.0-wmf.13 (8eaf4e5) (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.
Pipe, 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. Piped links may also be used to sort pages in categories by other than their name, e.g., if [[Category:Foo|Bar]] is placed on an article, the article will be listed alphabetically at "Bar" in category "Foo", irrespective of its title. See also Help:Pipe trick, and m:Help:Piped link § Automatic conversion of the wikitext.
POINT, WP: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!". 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.
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 "biased", as in "That reply was POV, not neutral".
POV warrior: An editor who aggressively distorts coverage of certain topics to suit their 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 there is a problem with the present version of the article (e.g., lack of sources) and re-creation 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).
Primary landing page: The page at the base name, to which wikilinks to that name will therefore link.
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, PROD: Proposed deletion. A process by which articles that 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 a verb (To prod an article). See also Wikipedia:Guide to deletion.
Project: See § WikiProject.
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 ("On 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 becomes available. Generally seen as bad style that should be avoided.
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 still in the embryo stage of language development and remains too obscure to be classified as a neologism. 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: A nickname for Wikipedia:Village pump. See also § VP.

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Q

Quack: See § Duck.

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R

RA: Wikipedia:Requested articles, a place to ask people to create articles that should exist but do not.
RAA: Request for Administrator Attention.
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.
Randallism: Vandalism prompted by Randall Munroe publishing a new XKCD strip that references Wikipedia. See Wikipedia talk:Xkcd in popular culture#Randallism
Randy in Boise: A generic name for editors who don't give enough deference to experts.
RC: An abbreviation for § Recent changes
RC Patrol: A group of volunteer editors who examine § Recent changes logs for vandalism and other undesirable edits.
Re: Abbreviation for Remark, Reply, or Regarding.
Re-creation: A posting of the same or substantially the same text as a deleted article by a new user, or of the same text or different text of a deleted article by the original creator. Sometimes misspelled "recreation".
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, redir, rd: A page title which, when requested, sends the reader to another page. This is used for synonyms and ease of linking. The name of the redirected page is shown under the title of the resulting target page. For example, impressionist might redirect to impressionism. For an introduction to what a redirect is, see Help:Redirect. For the guidelines on handling redirects on Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Redirect.
Red link: A wikilink to an article that does not exist shows up red. See also § Blue link, WikiProject Red Link Recovery, and Wikipedia:Red link.
Ref: Abbreviation for § reference (with the plural abbreviation being refs) or refer.
Refactor: To restructure a document, usually applied to the ordering and summarizing of talk pages. See also: Wikipedia:Refactoring talk pages.
Reference: Several meanings, depending on context. Sometimes used as a synonym for § Source or as a synonym for § Citation. In the plural, References may refer to the dedicated section found near the bottom of almost every Wikipedia article, where the § Footnotes are rendered. Because of the multiple meanings, it's not always clear how to entitle the article section that contains the footnotes or references; for a discussion, see MOS:NOTES.
Reincarnation: A new user account created by a banned user to evade the § Block. See § Sock puppet.
Reliable source: A source that editors are willing to "rely on" for a particular statement: This link to his Twitter account is a reliable source for this material about what he posted that day.; A source that is likely to be accepted by editors for most normal uses in an article, due to its generally desirable characteristics, such as a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy: Before you start the article, see if you can find some reliable sources. See Wikipedia:Reliable sources (shortcut: WP:RS).
Rename: "Renaming" may refer to a variety of operations on Wikipedia, including a § page move; see Help:Rename.
Render: How a page appears on the computer screen, used especially on Wikipedia (in the form "rendered page") when discussing how changes an editor makes in the edit window will appear once the page is saved. 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 it leads to a more appropriate article. The term § Retarget is also frequently used.
Req: Abbreviation for "Request".
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.
Retired: Describes an editor who has left Wikipedia. See Wikipedia:Retiring.; See § Inactive.
Revdel: Abbreviation for Revision deletion. Not to be confused with § Delrev, which is short for Deletion review, a completely different process.
Revert: An edit that reverses edits made by someone else, thus restoring the prior version. The term is sometimes used to imply that something more stringent than undoing was done, such as a § rollback. See also Help:Reverting.
Revert war: See § Edit war.
RfA: Can mean Wikipedia:Requests for adminship or (rarely) Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration, depending on the context. The latter is frequently abbreviated RfAr to avoid the ambiguity.
RfA cliché #1: Sometimes used in support at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship, to indicate that one thought the candidate already was an admin. See also § ITHAWO.
RfAr: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration.
RfB: Wikipedia:Requests for bureaucratship.
RfC: Wikipedia:Requests 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.
RfD: The Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion page.
RfM: Request for § Mediation, which was part of the dispute resolution process (at the discontinued Wikipedia:Requests for mediation).
RHS: The right-hand side of the § Main page. On en-wiki, includes § ITN and OTD.
RL: See § IRL
Rm: Remove. Used in edit summaries to indicate that a particular piece of text or formatting has been deleted.
RM: A requested move (WP:RM), a formal process to propose and discuss the renaming of a page.
Rmv: 1. Remove (§ Rm) 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 also § Rvv.; 2. Same as § Rm.
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. § Administrators and § Rollbackers have special tools to do this more easily. See Wikipedia:Rollback feature.
Rollbacker: A class of users who can use the § Rollback feature. This feature is automatically enabled for all administrators.
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 that the affected users may not like (such as blocking vandals and deleting bogus pages).
Round-robin move: Page move that swaps the titles of two pages using a third location as a temporary container. See WP:ROUNDROBIN
RS: Wikipedia:Reliable sources – a guideline that articles should be based on reliable published sources.
Rv: § Revert. An edit summary indicating the page has been reverted to a previous version, often because of vandalism. See also Help:Reverting.
Rvt: Same as § Rv.
Rvv: § Revert of vandalism. See also § Rv.

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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/" means "replace all occurrences of word1 with word2" (s stands for "substitute").

Salt, salted

(From "salting the earth".) Administrators can prevent the creation of pages through the page protection interface and if so the page title is said to have been "salted." This is useful for articles that have been deleted but repeatedly recreated with undesired content. See also WP:SALT.

Sandbox

A sandbox is a page 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.

Scap

A scap occurs when § MediaWiki, the software that runs Wikipedia, is updated. Scap stands for "sync-common-all-php", the internal script used to deploy the update.

Sea of blue

The undesirable result of placement of two or more wikilinked terms adjacent to each other, with no intervening plaintext, so they look like a single link, as in [[Ireland|Irish]] [[Chess]] [[Championship]] (Irish Chess Championship).

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 easier to find the exact spot where one wants to edit, and helps you avoid 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 in most cases. See also: § Circular reference, § Internal link.

Self-ref

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

Self-redirect

See § Circular redirect.

Self-revert

An editor self-reverts when they revert or undo an edit they had previously made. This may be because the editor was merely making a test, or because the editor later realised their edit was faulty, or because they wish to show good faith after a three-revert rule violation. See § Revert.

Set index articles

A set index article (SIA) is a list article about a set of items of a specific type that also share the same (or similar) name. Not to be confused with a § Disambiguation page.

SfD

The Wikipedia:Stub types for deletion page; abolished in 2012.

Sharpen cat

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

Sheep vote

A vote on Wikipedia that 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 also Wikipedia:Shortcut for the policy on these redirects, and Wikipedia:List of shortcuts for a complete list.

SIA

See § Set index article.

Silver bullet

From fantasy literature; see silver bullet, sometimes the only or preferred method of killing monsters. In deletion discussions, Delete with a silver bullet implies the page to be deleted is a monster.

Skin

The appearance theme in Special:Preferences. Currently, four are available: Cologne Blue, Modern, Monobook, and Vector.

Sleeper

An informal term for an account that appears to be dormant. May become active at any time as long as it is compliant with Wikipedia policy and guidelines, but sometimes becomes an issue in § Sockpuppetry. Also sleeper account.

SME

An acronym for subject matter expert.

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

To § Retarget a double redirect to point to the ultimate target.

SNG

A Subject-specific Notability Guideline, see Category:Wikipedia notability guidelines.

snowball clause (snowball delete)

Sometimes entries on process pages are closed early when it becomes obvious 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. Later showball keep came into the usage in AfD pages, by an analogy.

snow close

A verb meaning to close a discussion, per the snowball clause. Can be used as a noun ("The Willy on Wheels RfA was an instant SNOWCLOSE") or a verb ("The Main Page AfD nomination was SNOWCLOSEd after two minutes").

Sockmaster

The first account of a user that operates multiple sockpuppet accounts

Sock puppet, sock

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.

Soft redirect, soft 404

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). Contrast: § 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, e.g., "John Smith" under "Smith, John", or "The Who" under "Who, The". Can be assigned to a specific category, or as a {{DEFAULTSORT:}}. See also Help:Category § Sort key.

Source

The person, place, or thing that the information in an article came from. The source might be reliable or unreliable for that particular information. Frequently, in discussions, the word source is specifically used to mean one of these specific aspects of a source:

The work itself (the article, book: "That book looks like a useful source for this article.") and works like it ("An obituary can be a useful biographical source", "A recent source is better than an old one")
The creator of the work (the writer, journalist: "What do we know about that source's reputation?") and people like them ("A medical researcher is a better source than a journalist for..").
The publication (for example, the newspaper, journal, magazine: "That source covers the arts.") and publications like them ("A newspaper is not a reliable source for medical facts").
The publisher of the work (for example, Random House or Cambridge University Press: "That source publishes reference works.") and publishers like them ("An academic publisher is a good source of reference works").

sp: Short for spelling correction or space. 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 be indefinitely blocked.
Spam: In Wikipedia context, any promotional content in an article, whether in the § body of the article, external links, citations, or elsewhere.
Spamming: The inappropriate canvassing technique of attempting to sway consensus by posting an excessive number of messages to individual users, or to users with no significant connection to a community discussion.
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) before 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 all ended the same way).
Split: Separating a single page into two or more pages.
Sprot: Short for semi-protect [ion]. Articles that are semi-protected cannot be edited by unregistered or newly registered users.
Stealth canvassing WP:STEALTH: The inappropriate § canvassing technique of notifying editors off-wiki about ongoing Talk page discussions.
Steward: A user who has been empowered to change any user's status on any Wikimedia Foundation project, including granting and revoking Administrator status and granting § Bureaucrat status. See also Wikipedia:Administrators § Stewards.
Stillborn: Having failed to initiate. Used in deletion discussions, for instance of a WikiProject that never had members except its originator.
Strike out, strike-through: To place text in strikeout (HTML <del>...</del> or <s>...</s>) tags. This is very rarely used in articles, but is relatively common in votes and discussions when a contributor changes their opinion. As not to cause confusion, the outdated comments are struck out (~~like this~~). The inserted material (HTML <ins>) tag is sometimes used with it to show a replacement for the struck material (like this). Generally, one should strike out only one's own comments. Some editors prefer to simply remove or alter their updated material, though this is discouraged if others have responded to it and their responses would no longer make sense after the change. Note: <strike> will not exist in HTML 5/XHTML 2, so <s> is recommended.
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.
Stubify: To turn an article into a stub because majority of it was unusable
Sub-article: 1. An article that has been split from an original, larger main article to keep the main article readable and to better develop the sub-topic of the split into a richer article in its own right. Contrast § Subpage. See also Wikipedia:Summary style.; 2. A page in multi-page list that was split to reduce list article size. See also Wikipedia:Stand-alone lists.
Subject page: In mainspace, this is the article page as opposed to its § Talk page. In other namespaces the subject pages are the content pages as opposed to their talk pages.
Subpage: A page connected to a parent page, such as Page name/Arguments. You can create subpages only in certain namespaces. Do not use subpages in the main article space. Contrast § Subarticle. See also Wikipedia:Subpages.
Subst, subst'ing: Short for "substituting" a template which permanently copies the substituted content and breaks the link with the source template page. Contrast § Transclusion, a live updated reference to the source template page.
Subscription: Subscription is a feature which adds a [subscribe] link to discussion section headings on Talk pages, which enables users to receive a notification to topics they subscribe to.
Substub: A very short § Stub article, typically only one sentence.
Succession box: A type of § Template, usually placed at the foot of an article, linking to articles on the immediate predecessors of and successors to the subject of the article. Thus, for example, an article on the tenth president of § Foo would be linked by succession box to articles on the ninth and eleventh presidents. Compare § Infobox.
Suckpoppet: Sockpuppet or Sockpuppetry, silly typo occasionally used esp. in deletion discussions to indicate the page under discussion is of illegitimate origin and should be deleted
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.
Summary style: Summary style is an editing guideline comprising an organizational approach for writing articles on topics that are too large to contain in a single article. Summary style calls for the creation of a hierarchy of articles, with the main topic, called the § Parent article, sitting at the top of a pyramid, with one or more § Child articles beneath it. An example is the topic World War II: this is represented in Wikipedia in summary style, with the parent article World War II at the top, and many child articles, such as Causes of World War II, Pacific War, and many others subsidiary to it. See Wikipedia:Summary style.
Super Mario problem: A problem that arises during arbitration when conduct that would normally get a non-administrator banned only gets an administrator desysopped. It is named after the Super Mario Bros. video game: when Super Mario gets hit, he turns back into small Mario; when small Mario takes the same hit, he dies. There is an essay about the problem.
Supervote: a term used in reference to a formal discussion closure that ought to reflect community opinion as shown in the discussion, but that instead reflects the opinion of the closer.
SWAG: Scientific Wild-Ass Guess.
Sysop: A less-used name for Administrator. See also § Desysop. and the Sysop article.
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.

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T

Tag

A MediaWiki tag, brief message applied next to certain revisions by the software.
An HTML element. See also Help:HTML in wikitext and Help:Table.
A metadata item attached to an entity, such as File copyright tags like 'license' or 'source'.
A template call that marks a page as having some property, such as needing maintenance, or marks part of a page, or marks a place in a page, such as the the beginning of a closed discussion
A category declaration
A § Magic word which allows you to evaluate a Magic word inside a ref or other tag; see Help:Magic words#mwtag.
(verb) To apply a tag to a page.

Talk page: A page reserved for discussion of the page with which it is associated, such as the article page. All pages within Wikipedia (except pages in the Special namespace, and talk pages themselves) have talk pages attached to them (accessed via the "Talk" link at the top).
Talk page stalker: A humorous term for an editor who involves themselves in discussions on other users' talk pages (often after a previous conversation with that user has left the page on the editor's Watchlist). TPS involvement should be constructive or humorous, and is distinguished from § Wikihounding.
Taskforce: 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 on 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.
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.
Templatise: To delete a list or category and turn the contents into a § Template, usually either a § Navbox or § Infobox. Sometimes used in § CFD discussions as shorthand for "this group of articles would be better if presented in template form rather than as a category." See also: listify.
Test edit: Same as § Newbie test.
TfD, TFD: The Wikipedia:Templates for discussion page.
Thread: A talk page discussion, usually with more than two indented replies. May refer to either a complete second level section (i.e., a section with heading surrounded by ==) of posts as is defined by talk page archiving bots. For this type of thread, the age is the time interval from the most recent post to current time. It can also refer to an individual sequence of indented paragraphs.
Three-revert rule, 3RR: A rule whereby no one is allowed to § Revert a single article more than three times in one day (with a few exceptions).
TLDR, tl;dr: Short for "Too long; didn't read". For example where a reply to a query is very long and detailed. See Wikipedia:Too long; didn't read.
TINC: Short for "there is no cabal". See § Cabal.
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.
TNT: The essay Wikipedia:Blow it up and start over, which states that a page that is hopelessly irreparable but could be useful can be deleted and replaced by a new one, or the action of carrying out its doctrine.
TOC: An article (or other page)'s table of contents, which lists the subsection headings within the page. This is usually close to the top left of the page, but may be placed at the top right, floated, or omitted entirely.
Topic: The main subject of an article, or discussion.; 1. Term often used in Articles for Deletion debates to determine the notability of the main subject of an article.; 2. Term used for article writers to stay focused on the main subject of an article. See WP:TOPIC; 3. Term used for editors to stay focused on the main subject in talk page discussions. (e.g ., "Stay on topic.") See WP:TALKOFFTOPIC
TPA: Talk page access. When an editor is blocked, they typically retain the ability to write on their own talk page, as that is the first resort for appealing their block or requesting clarification about it. However, a blocked editor who abuses this privilege can have their talk page access removed as well.
Trainwreck: A nomination of a group of related pages for deletion or renaming which fails due to the disparate nature or 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 the pages later nominated separately. Examples include Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Warcraft character articles and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mayoral elections. This can also happen in non-deletion discussions, for example this discussion on Wikipedia talk:Notability (sports).
Transclusion: Transclusion is the inclusion of the content of a document into another document by reference. On Wikipedia, it is done (typically for templates) by enclosing the pagename in curly brackets, e.g. Template:Nac is transcluded by typing {{Nac}}. Typically, transclusion uses the template functionality of MediaWiki to include the same content in multiple documents without having to edit those documents separately. See also 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, or Wikisource. See also m:Transwiki and Wikipedia:WikiProject Transwiki. The verb is to transwikify.
Tranche Alpha: Said of Arbitration Committee members whose term does not expire in a given year and hence not up for re-election. Perhaps derived from french "wikt:tranche", to cut.
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 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 m:What is a troll?
Trout, trout-slapping: A rebuke.
Tweak: A small edit. See Tweaking.
Tyop: A silly misspelling of typo. Used as an edit summary when correcting typos. See also Wikipedia:typo.
Typofix: A contraction of typo and fix. Any other word may be used in the place of typo to form -fix words.

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U

UAA: Usernames for Administrator Attention. A noticeboard at which clearly problematic usernames are raised to be dealt with.
umbrella nomination: A nomination (e.g., on CfD) that contains several items (e.g., categories) which are normally nominated individually. Can become a trainwreck.
Unactionable: See § Actionable.
uncited: Material in an article that is not followed by an inline citation. The uncited material may be § verifiable (editors could locate a reliable source that supports this material, if they tried to) or § unverifiable (nobody can find a reliable source that directly supports this material).
Undisambiguated: An article title without a disambiguator is said to be the undisambiguated title or base name. For example Joker (film) is a disambiguated title, while the title Joker is undisambiguated.
Unencyclopedic: Saying something is unencyclopedic implies that it would not be expected to appear in an encyclopedia, and thus in Wikipedia. (One must remember however that Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, hence does not have the space/length limitations of a paper encyclopedia).
Unnecessary disambiguation: Adding a § Disambiguator to a basename in a title of an article when it is not necessary to disambiguate this title from other titles on WP, either because it is the only use of that basename as a title on WP, or because the article's subject is the primary topic for that basename.
Unregistered user: See § IP user.
unverifiable: Material in an article for which editors are unable to find any reliable sources that could be cited to support it. Unverifiable information may be § cited (e.g., to an unreliable source or to a source that doesn't support the material) or § uncited. Determining whether material is truly unverifiable may require substantial effort.
Un-wiki: Going against the character of a Wiki. Usually, saying something is "un-wiki" means it makes editing more difficult (or impossible).
Un-wikify, unwikify: Same as § De-wikify.
UPE: Acronym for Undisclosed Paid Editing. See WP:COI for conflict of interest concerns.
Upmerge: A term frequently used on categories for discussion, 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 themself. 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. The process of Registration does not generate user pages automatically. A user page is linked to as [[User:SomeUserNameHere|SomeUserNameHere]] and appears as SomeUserNameHere.
Userspace draft: A draft created in a user's "userspace".

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V

Vandal: One who engages in significant amounts of § Vandalism. (Adjective: Vandalic)
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 vandalistic edits in a short time. In the worst cases, these have created or vandalized hundreds of pages in several Wikipedias in only minutes. See also m:Vandalbot.
Vandalism: Deliberate defacement of Wikipedia pages. This can be by deleting text or writing nonsense, bad language, etc. The term is sometimes improperly used to discredit the views of an opponent in edit wars. Vandalism can be reported at Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism.
VandalProof: A no longer used tool for finding and removing vandalism. See also User:AmiDaniel/VandalProof.
verifiable: Something that people are "able" to "verify". Specifically within the meaning of the Wikipedia:Verifiability policy, it is information that someone (although not necessarily you) could, with enough effort and expense, determine has been published in a § reliable source, even if no source is provided in the article. Contrast § uncited.
VFD: Used to refer to the "Votes for deletion" page. Although this has been replaced with § AFD (WP:AFD), you may still see the term in older talk pages.
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.
vote: See !vote.
Votestacking: The inappropriate § canvassing technique of attempting to sway § Consensus by selectively notifying editors who have or are thought to have a predetermined point of view or opinion, and thus encouraging them to participate in a discussion.
VP: Shorthand for § Village pump or for § VandalProof.

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W

Wall of text: An unusually long paragraph, presenting a solid block of text. Used in a negative sense, and most typically in the context of opinions in a discussion. See also Wikipedia:Too long; didn't read (TLDR, TL:DR, WP:TLDR).
Walled garden: A set of pages or articles that link to one another but aren't interlinked with the rest of the encyclopedia.
Watcher: An editor who has a particular page on their watchlist. Example usage: "User:Jimbo Wales has over 3,000 watchers."
Watchlist: A set of pages selected by the user, who can then click on Watchlist in the links next to the user's username to see recent changes to those pages. See also Help:Watching pages.
Weasel words: Phrases such as "Some say that ..." or "It has been argued ..." which introduce a point of view without attributing it more specifically. See also WP:Neutral point of view § Attributing and specifying biased statements.
Wheel war: A dispute between Wikipedia administrators who use the privileges of Wikipedia administrators (such as blocking) as weapons in an § Edit war. See also Wheel war.
Wiki: Any website that allows easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language. Wikipedia is the most well known example of a wiki.
WikiBlame: A tool for searching past versions of a particular article for a particular string of text. Usually used to determine who added the string of text. It is an external tool, available at wikipedia.ramselehof.de/wikiblame.php or via the "Revision history search" link on the article's history page.
Wikibooks: A Wikipedia sister project which works to develop free textbooks, manuals, and other texts online. Not to be confused with Wikipedia books (PDFs made of multiple articles), WikiProject Wikipedia-Books, WikiProject Books, or Wikipedia:Notability (books).
Wikibreak, wikivacation: When a Wikipedian takes a break from Wikipedia.
Wikicode: See § Wiki markup.
WikiCrime, wikicrime: An egregious case of or clear pattern of editing that violates Wikipedia policies, such as vandalism, spam, disruptive editing, tendentious editing, canvassing, hoaxing, adding unverifiable information, self-aggrandizement or promotion, removing well-sourced or adding unsourced information to suit personal biases
WikiFairy, Wikifaerie: 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 § WikiOgre.
Wikify: To format using § Wiki markup (as opposed to plain text or HTML). It commonly refers to adding internal links to material (Wikilinks) but is not limited to just that. To wikify an article could refer to applying any form of wiki-markup, such as standard headings and layout, including the addition of infoboxes and other templates, or bolding/italicizing of text. Noun: wikification; gerund: wikifying; practitioner: wikifier. See also Wikipedia:How to edit a page, Category:Articles with too few wikilinks, Wikify project, Wikipedia:Guide to layout and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking#Overlinking and underlinking.
WikiGnome: A Wikipedian who makes minor, helpful edits without clamoring for attention or praise for what they did. See also § WikiFairy, § WikiOgre.
WikiHate: Counterproductive editing attitude and behavior, especially tendentious, biased and personally antagonistic types of edit-warring.
Wikihounding: The singling out of one or more editors, and joining discussions on multiple pages or topics they may edit or multiple debates where they contribute, in order to repeatedly confront or inhibit their work, with an apparent aim of creating irritation, annoyance or distress to the other editor. Note that editors can and do follow others in good faith with constructive intent; it is the manner and motivation which distinguishes wikihounding.
Wikilawyering: Attempting to inappropriately rely on technicalities in a legalistic manner with respect to Wikipedia:Policies or Wikipedia:Arbitration.
Wikilink, wl, internal link: A link to another Wikipedia page or to an § Anchor on the same page, as opposed to an § External link. For policy, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking#Overlinking and underlinking and Wikipedia:Build the web. For mechanics, see Wikipedia:Canonicalization, Help:Section § Section linking, Help:Wiki markup § Links and URLs, and Wikipedia:Citing sources/Further considerations § Wikilinks to full references. See also § Free link and § Piped link.
WikiLove, wikilove: A general spirit of collegiality and mutual understanding among Wikipedians. The term pre-dates Wikipedia. WikiLove is achieved through wikiquette, civility, assumption of good faith about other editors, neutrality, respect for policies and guidelines, and calm editing and discussion.
Wiki markup, wikitext, wikicode: Markup-language code like HTML, but simplified and more convenient like a more powerful BBCode: for example, it uses three apostrophes on either site of text to create '''boldfaced text''' instead of <B>boldfaced text</B>.; Wiki markup is the source code stored in Wikipedia's database and shown in the edit box, and then rendered into HTML to appear correctly in a reader's internet browser. Searching by the Wikipedia software is done in the wikitext, as opposed to searching by external search engines, which is done in the resulting HTML. The size of a page is the size of the wikitext. See also Wiki markup, Help:Wiki markup, Wikipedia:How to edit a page, Wikipedia:Guide to layout.
Wikimedia: Properly Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. (WMF), a non-profit organization that provides a legal, financial, and organizational framework for Wikipedia and its sister projects and provides the necessary hardware. Contrast § MediaWiki.
WikiOgre: A Wikipedian who makes large edits from time to time but generally keeps to WikiGnomery. See also § WikiFairy.
Wikipediholic: A Wikipedian who obsesses over the project to the point where interacting with Wikipedia becomes akin to a psychological addiction.
Wikipe-tan, Wiki-tan: One of the personifications of Wikipedia. She is the mascot character of various WikiProjects.
Wikipipe: See § Pipe
Wikiportal: Pages intended to be the main pages for readers and editors interested in a specific area of knowledge, helping them to find the information on the specific topic and, for editors, to be inspired to develop the articles connected with it. Such editors might want to join a related § WikiProject. See also Wikipedia:Portal.
WikiProject: An active group of Wikipedia editors working together to improve a specific group of articles and files, usually those on one or more related topics. This often includes standardizing the content and style of the articles using an agreed upon standard format.; The members of a WikiProject might work to improve and maintain a § Wiki portal of the same or related name.
Wikiquette: The etiquette of working with others on Wikipedia. See also Wikipedia:Etiquette.
Wikiquote: A Vanchor sister project to create a free online collection of quotations.
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.
Wikispace: The Wikipedia namespace. See Wikipedia:Namespace § Pseudo-namespaces and Wikipedia:Shortcut directory (also known as WP:WP).
Wikispam: Articles or sections created to promote a product or meme. Spamming also includes adding extraneous or irrelevant links to promote an outside site, particularly for commercial purposes. No type of spamming is allowed on Wikipedia.
Wikispecies: A Wikipedia sister project. It is a wiki-based, species directory which provides a solution to the problem that there is no central registration of species data in Wikipedia. Wikispecies provides 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 the Wikistress template, the Bosch Wikistress Meter, and Wikistress.
WikiTerrorism: A melodramatic term for the act of purposely trying to damage Wikipedia on a large scale. It can be vandalism, but it could include trolling, edit warring, or anything that could disrupt Wikipedia on a large scale. WikiTerrorism could also be "blitzing" Wikipedia, or vandalizing several articles in rapid succession. Such actions should be reported immediately to administrators and will usually be blocked. Some may consider this term in bad taste or hyperbolic.
wikitext: See § Wiki markup.
Wiktionary, wikt.: A Wikipedia sister project to create a free online dictionary of every language. Note that it is not spelled Wikitionary; there is no I between the K and the T.
WMF: See § Wikimedia.
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.
WP: 1. Common abbreviation for Wikipedia, especially for pages in the Wikipedia namespace. See also Wikipedia:Namespace § Pseudo-namespaces and WP:WP.; 2. Also sometimes used as an abbreviation for § WikiProject. See also § WPP.
WPP: Abbreviation for § WikiProject.

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XfD, XFD: Generic term for the collection of deletion discussion pages such as MfD, AfD, CfD, RfD, FfD, et al. where the "X" stands in for Miscellany, Article, Category, Redirect, File etc.; "fD" stands for " for deletion" (or discussion in some cases).
XNR: Acronym for § Cross-namespace redirects. Used mainly at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion to emphasize for deletion. Sometimes given as § CNR.
XWiki: Abbreviation of "Cross-Wiki", used to describe something taking place on multiple Wikimedia sites because of a common source.

Notes

^ Wikipedia's definition of an anchor at Help:Link is in accordance with the definition of the W3C, which says: "A link has two ends -- called anchors -- and a direction. The link starts at the 'source' anchor and points to the 'destination' anchor." The anchor in Html is the text enclosed by an A tag, and the starting point is the location of the A tag that defines the link. This 'source anchor' sense is rarely used at Wikipedia, which is inconsistent in how it does refer to source anchors, using various terms such as "link text", "link label", or "display text" of a wikilink.

[1] Wikipedia's definition of an anchor at Help:Link is in accordance with the definition of the W3C, which says: "A link has two ends -- called anchors -- and a direction. The link starts at the 'source' anchor and points to the 'destination' anchor." The anchor in Html is the text enclosed by an A tag, and the starting point is the location of the A tag that defines the link. This 'source anchor' sense is rarely used at Wikipedia, which is inconsistent in how it does refer to source anchors, using various terms such as "link text", "link label", or "display text" of a wikilink.

[a]

.mw-parser-output .vanchor>:target~.vanchor-text{background-color:#b1d2ff}!$@

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