Wikipedia glossary
As you know, we have a lot of specialized lingo on Wikipedia. Even
worse, since anyone can edit, people are always adding new TLAs,
shortcuts, and neologisms to our jargon. For those of you who haven't
been keeping up, here are some handy definitions:
- AfD
- Something that used to be called VfD, but had to be changed when Lemony Snicket complained about trademark infringement.
- Consensus
- Fewer than two Wikipedians.
- Cruft
- The stuff that lives in the internet's series of tubes and delays loading of pages from Wikipedia. Sorry, buying more servers doesn't actually help.
- Edit count
- A way of picking admins that makes about as much sense as, say, buying a website based purely on its traffic numbers.
- Good faith
- An anagram for "swift boat".
- Guideline
- See: Policy
- Infobox
- A large table. There are usually supposed to be some chairs with it to make it useful, but many of the legs are often missing.
- Instruction
- See: Process
- Jimbo
- The co-founder of Citizendium.
- Mailing list
- Place to write something you're not willing to have edited mercilessly.
- Policy
- See: Instruction
- Process
- See: Guideline
- Redirect
- To repeat a command already given to somebody who is behaving inappropriately, for example by using the various vandalism warning templates. "Stop, or I'll say 'Stop' again!" is a double redirect.
- Sockpuppet
- Something to wear when walking on astroturf.
- Stub
- An article with more categories than it has words.
- Userbox
- A coffin.