ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ:Glossary

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Glossary

Note: while the definitions below may be useful for understanding and communicating on project and discussion pages, and with edit summaries, remember to explain jargon in encyclopedic articles, and write them in language which is readily understandable without specific knowledge of the Wikipedia project.

Do not overdo the use of Wikipedia jargon such as shortcuts on talk pages and edit summaries, either, at least not without providing explanatory links to the appropriate pages. See Wikipedia:WTF? OMG! TMD TLA. ARG! for an essay on this.

Shortcuts

This is a glossary of terms commonly used on Wikipedia. For more help, see Wikipedia:Help, Wikipedia:FAQ, or Wikipedia:Contributing FAQ. For abbreviations often used in edit summaries, see Wikipedia:Edit summary legend. For common shorthands used in Articles for Deletion (AfD), see the Wikipedia:Guide to deletion. For a list of common abbreviations used within Wikipedia see Wikipedia abbreviations. For common abbreviations and slang phrases outside Wikipedia, see List of Internet slang phrases. See also Wikipedia:Manual of Style (abbreviations), Wikipedia:WikiProject Glossaries, and List of acronyms and initialisms.

ବିଷୟସୂଚୀ
!$@ 0–9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z See also

!$@

: – en:, de:, ja:, etc.; The English-, German-, Japanese-, etc.-language Wikipedia. Often used in edit summaries to indicate changes to interwiki links. For a full list of codes, see ISO 639. For a full list of Wikipedias, see m:Complete list of language Wikipedias available.
ø: The character ø is sometimes used in edit summaries to indicate a null edit.
!=: "Is not equal to". This usage comes from the relational operator in such languages as C.
!vote, WP:VOTE, WP:NOTAVOTE: Read as "not-vote" (the exclamation mark means 'not' in many programming languages). Something that looks like a vote but should not be considered a vote. The term !vote is somewhat tongue-in-cheek. See also Wikipedia:Polling is not a substitute for discussion.
+: Used to show minor addition to text. Used in edit summaries.
?: Used to show correction of odd minor error. Used in edit summaries.

0–9

1RR: Voluntary or imposed (sometimes by ArbCom) one-revert rule. See also Wikipedia:Revert only when necessary#One-revert rule.
2RR: Voluntary or imposed two-revert rule
3RR: Abbreviation for three-revert rule
0RR: Voluntary or imposed zero-revert rule. See Wikipedia:Revert only when necessary#Zero-revert rule.

A

Abcdise, ABCDise, Abcdize, ABCDize: Term sometimes used in edit summaries to indicate that the edit was to move list or other items into alphabetical order.
Admin: Short for Administrator. A user with extra technical privileges for "custodial" work on Wikipedia – specifically, deleting and protecting pages, and blocking abusive users. See also sysop.
AfC, AFC: The articles for creation project which reviews some articles created via the Article wizard.
AfD, 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, WP:AGF: Abbreviation for "assume good faith", a guideline whereby one should not assume that 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 chronic vandalism.
AMA: Abbreviation for "Association of Members' Advocates", an advocacy scheme by and for Wikipedians. It failed to achieve widespread acceptance and was closed down.
AN: Abbreviation for "Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard", a discussion location for Wikipedia administrators.
ANI: Abbreviation for "Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents", where Wikipedia administrators discuss issues which may or may not need urgent administrator attention.
Anchor: An HTML term for code that lets you link to a specific point in a page, using the "#" character. You can use them to link to a section of a page, e.g., Wikipedia:How to edit a page#Links and URLs.
Anon: Abbreviation for "anonymous user". As a user does not necessarily lose his or her anonymity by registering or logging in, this term should be avoided. See IP user.
AOTW, AotW: Abbreviation of Wikipedia:Article of the week, the former appellation of Wikipedia:Collaboration of the week.
ArbCom, Arbcom, 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.
Armwaving: Same as Handwaving.
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; alternately, 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 Audit Subcommittee. Monitors and oversees CheckUser and Oversight use, and handles complaints concerning use of those privileges.
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.

B

WP:BAD

See BJAODN.

Bad faith nomination

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

Ban

Banning is the extreme, last resort action by which someone is prevented from editing 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.

Balancing the Main Page

Copy editing the content on various Main Page sections so the text on both the left Today's featured article/Did you know column and the right In the news/On this day column are roughly about equal ("balanced"), so there are no large blank spaces at the bottom of either column. 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.

Banner

A banner is a template that is placed across the top of an article's talk page or at the top of a category to indicate specific details relating to the article or category's maintenance. 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

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 can appeal against their ban (or long-term block) after all other appeal processes have failed for them.

Be Bold, be bold, BOLD, WP: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, WP:BEANS

A reference to the essay on not warning people to do things they wouldn't have thought of doing (it just gives them ideas): Don't stuff beans up your nose

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. If blanking is done to a vandalized brand-new page, it is maintenance, and the page will be deleted by an administrator within a few hours if no dispute arises. {{Delete}} should be added to the blanked page to draw attention to it, rather than just blanking it. Newcomers often mistake blanking for deletion.

Block, WP:BLOCK

Action by a sysop, 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, WP:BLP

Abbreviation for Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons — official Wikipedia policy, whereby articles about living people must be handled with great care.

Blue link, bluelink

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.

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 Wikipedia:Boilerplate text, and Boilerplate (text).

Bot

A program that automatically or semi-automatically adds or edits Wikipedia-pages. See Wikipedia:Bots, Rambot, Vandalbot.

Broken link

A link to a nonexistent page, usually colored red, depending on your settings. 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.

Bureaucrat

A Wikipedia Administrator who has been entrusted with promoting users to sysops. See also Crat, Wikipedia:Bureaucrats.

BURO

NOT:Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy

C

Cabal: Sometimes assumed to be a secretive organization responsible for the development of Wikipedia, the word is usually used as a sarcastic hint to lighten up when discussions seem to become a little too paranoid. Discussions involving the term may have links to POV / NPOV issues, admin problems, or pretty much anything to do with the foundation of 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. Compare Troll. See also m:Cabal, There Is No Cabal, Wikipedia:Mediation 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, "McDonald's" or "iPod". See also Wikipedia:CamelCase and Wikipedia.
Canvassing, WP:CANVAS: Canvassing is sending messages to multiple Wikipedians with the intent to inform them about a community discussion. Under certain conditions, canvassing is acceptable to notify other editors of ongoing discussions (see Friendly messages), but inappropriate messages, written to influence the outcome rather than to improve the quality of a discussion, are considered disruptive since they compromise the consensus building process. See Wikipedia:Canvassing.
Cat, 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 are in the form Category:Computers. The part after the ":" is the name of the Category. Adding a category tag causes a link to the category and any super-categories to go to the bottom of the page. As stated, it also results in the page being added to the category listing. A list of basic categories to browse through can be found at Category:Fundamental categories, though a more user-friendly way to find a category is at Wikipedia:Browse.
Category declaration: A category name placed at the bottom of any page. Pages are made members of 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 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
CDT: Current date and time
CE: Copy-edit
CfD, 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 only granted to certain members of the Arbitration Committee and other trusted users. See also Wikipedia:CheckUser.
Child: A subpage or (more often) subcategory. Compare Parent.
Civil: Civility
CLS: Cats, lists, boxes
Cleanup: The process of repairing articles that contain errors of grammar, are poorly formatted, or contain irrelevant material. Cleanup generally requires only editing skills, as opposed to the specialized knowledge that is more often called for by pages needing attention. See also: 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: 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. It can often be found 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). See Wikipedia:Consensus for more information.
Contribs, contributions: Short for contributions. A user has made these edits. 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 that other editors do not like. See Wikipedia:convenience links
Copyedit: A change to an article that only affects formatting, grammar, and other presentational aspects. See also Copyedit and Wikipedia:How to copy-edit.
Copyvio, CopyVio, copy vio, copyviol: 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: Short for Bureaucrat, used only occasionally.
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, CNRWikipedia: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 Pokécruft (Pokémon-cruft) and Roadcruft (cruft articles about roads). Cruft articles are often on topics such as minor characters from television series, or very specific lists of songs (such as "List of songs which includes the word 'death' in the lyrics"). Cruft is often deleted or merged into other articles by the Wikipedia community.
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.
Cut-and-paste move, cut and paste move, cut 'n' paste move, cut-n-paste move, etc.: Moving a page by taking the text of the page, and putting it into the edit window for the second page. Generally considered worse than the 'move page' option, because it splits the page and its edit history. Cut and paste moves can be fixed by administrators. See also Wikipedia:How to fix cut and paste moves.
CV, cv: Abbreviation of Copyvio.
CVG: Computer and video games.

D

Dab, WP:D: Abbreviation of Disambiguation (or disambiguate[d]) (from the Wikipedia:Disambiguation shortcut WP:DAB).
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: 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 De-sysop.
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 that it is not the topic of the article at all. Common situations when one would de-bold include: bold foreign words (should instead be italicized) and bold Wikilinks (which, according to current Manual of Style, should be plain). See also un-bold.
Deletionist: Someone who actively attempts to delete pages that others prefer to keep. Deletionism is the idea that Wikipedia should follow the same rules for inclusion as existing paper encyclopedias (mostly Encyclopedia Britannica). Often used as a derogatory term. The term 'inclusionist' for the opposite party is less used. See also m:deletionism, m:inclusionism, and Deletionism and inclusionism in Wikipedia.
Delrev, DRV: Abbreviation for Deletion review.
Deorphan, De-orphan: To make a page no longer an orphan. See also Wikipedia:Orphan
Deprecated: 1. 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".
De-sysop: Take away someone's sysop status. Used very rarely, in cases where someone has voluntarily elected to resign such status, or is judged to have misused their sysop powers. See also de-admin, 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 only used 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. See also Help:Diff.
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, Wikipedia:Disambiguation.
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)".
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.
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.

E

EC, ec, e.c., Ec, (e/c), etc.: Same as Edit conflict.
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. See also Help:Edit conflict.
Editcountitis: A humorous term for having an unhealthy obsession with the number of edits that 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. See also Wikipedia:Editcountitis.
Edit creep, editcreep, 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. See also Help:Edit summary.
Editor: Anyone who writes or modifies articles in a Wikipedia. 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 on a talk page that could not be resolved. Edit wars are not permitted and may lead to blocks. Sometimes termed "revert war", see also the three revert rule.
Emphazi: See Suitly Emphazi.
Eponymous: An eponymous category is a category that has the same name as an article and vice versa. For example George W. Bush and the eponymous Category:George W. Bush. See also key article.
Esperanzify: Motion to close a process or other "Wikipedia:" namespace page by preserving the page itself, tagging it historical (and adding explanation on why the page was closed), and redirecting (or deleting) subpages. This is the solution that was implemented to close Wikipedia:Esperanza, a goodwill "club" that was shut down.
External link, ext. ln., extlink, ext lk, EL, etc.: 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.

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.
FARC: Featured article removal candidate, a featured article whose "featured" status is considered for removal, either because the featured article criteria or the article itself changed.
FfD, FFD, IfD, IFD: An abbreviation for Files for deletion (previously Images and media for deletion).
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 that 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.
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.
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.
fmt: Format. Abbreviation commonly used in edit summaries to signify formatting of the page, or wikification.
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 that 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.

G

GA: Good article.
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.
Geogre's Law: A law attributed to User:Geogre (although he may not have been the first person, and has certainly not been the only person, to observe this correlation), and most frequently referred to in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion. Paraphrased, the law states that there exists a strong correlation between the lack of proper capitalization of a person's name in the title of a biographical article, and the failure of the subject of that article to satisfy the criteria for inclusion of biographies.
GFDL: GNU Free Documentation License. Many of Wikipedia's articles are released under this license. See also Wikipedia:Copyrights.
GFE: A good faith edit; A good faith editor. See also giffee
Ghits, G-hits, GHits: "Google hits" – the number of successful searches for a particular word or phrase using the Google search engine. Sometimes used as a very rough assessment of notability on AFD. See also Google test.
Giffee: Same as GFE, definition 2.
Godwin's Law: Godwin's Law is particularly concerned with logical fallacies such as reductio ad Hitlerum, wherein an idea is unduly dismissed or rejected on the ground of it being associated with persons generally considered "evil". Godwin's Law is: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 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.
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, 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

H

Hagiography: Wording that is excessively fulsome, adulatory or glowing in a biographical article, to the point of violating NPOV. See Hagiography.
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. See also Wikipedia:Hatnote.
History: All previous versions of an article, from its creation to its current state. Also called page history. See also: Help:Page history.
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.

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.
IAW: An abbreviation for "in accordance with", as in "IAW WP:RS"^[୧]
ICBH: An abbreviation for I couldn't be happier.
FfD, FFD, IfD, IFD: An abbreviation for Images and media for deletion, the old name for Files for deletion.
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.
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.
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 for 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.
ITHAWO: I thought he already was one. Used about people listed in 'admin' requests.
ITN: Abbreviation for Template:In the news
i/w, iw: See Interwiki.

J

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

K

Key article: A category's eponymous article, or any other article which deals directly with the subject of a category.
Kill / Kill with fire / Kill with a stick: Dysphemisms for "deleting" a page, expressing some disgust for the existence of the page.

L

Language link: See Interwiki.
Laundry list: See Wikipedia:Embedded list 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.
Link: See Help:Contents/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: See Wikipedia:Lists.
Listify: To delete a category and turn the contents into a list. Sometimes used in CFD discussions as shorthand for saying that "this group of articles would be better if presented as a list, rather than as a category."
Lk: Landmarks: Major landmarks
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:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-01-31/Dispatches - Wikipedia Signpost article on the process and history of In the news.

M

m: On the Recent changes page, m (lower case, bold) indicates a minor edit.
Magic word, magicword, magic-word: a symbol recognized by the MediaWiki software and which when seen in the non-commented text of the page, triggers the software to do something other than display that symbol, or transclude a page with that name, but instead to use the symbol directly.
Main Page: The page to which every user not specifying an article is redirected. The Main Page contains links to current events, presents certain articles (like a featured article of the day and links to Wikipedia's newest articles), and 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.)
Mastodon: Refers to the fight or flight reflex that sometimes happens while editing Wikipedia. Generally mentioned to request for calm. "Nobody ever got trampled to death because they were editing an encyclopedia." Frequently misspelled "mastadon". See also the essay no angry mastodons.
MC: The Mediation Committee. See Wikipedia:Mediation Committee.
Meat puppet: An account created only for the illegitimate strengthening of another user's position in votes or discussions. Unlike a sock puppet, the account is used by another person. Meat puppets are treated exactly like sock puppets in most cases, making the distinction between them largely academic.
MedCab, Medcab, MEDCAB: The Mediation Cabal. See Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal.
MedCom, Medcom, MEDCOM: The Mediation Committee. See Wikipedia:Mediation Committee.
Mediation: An attempt by a third party to resolve an edit war or other conflict between users. There exists a Wikipedia:Mediation Committee which can do so on a more or less official basis as the penultimate step in the Wikipedia:dispute resolution process, and a Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal which acts as an informal alternative. See also: Wikipedia:What is mediation?; Wikipedia:Mediation.
MediaWiki: The software behind Wikipedia and its sister projects, as well as several projects not related to Wikimedia, and a namespace. Contrast Wikimedia. See also Wikipedia:MediaWiki, Wikipedia:MediaWiki namespace.
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 that 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 and moving pages
Mergist: A user who adheres to the principle of Mergism, which is a compromise between the Inclusionist and Deletionist principles. A Mergist is of the opinion that while many topics merit inclusion, not every topic deserves its own article, and tries to combine these "side" topics into longer, less specific articles.
Meta: A separate wiki ([୧]) used to discuss general Wikimedia matters. In the past, this has been called Metapedia, Meta Wikipedia, Meta Wikimedia, and many other combinations. See also Wikipedia:Meta.
Meta page, 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. See also Wikipedia:Meta page.
MfD, MFD: Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion.
Minor edit: A minor edit is one that 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 original to Wikipedia as a source for at least some of its content. See also Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks.
Mop: A term used to refer to administrator duties (compare Janitor). Often seen in the phrase to give someone a mop (i.e., to make someone into an administrator).
MOS, 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.

N

N: On the Recent changes page, N (upper case, bold) indicates a new page or article.
N/a: An abbreviation for new article, often used in edit summaries. Easily confused with the common non-Wiki use, "not applicable" or "not available".
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.
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, NCs: 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, newb 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, nn: 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.
Notice board, noticeboard: 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.
NPOV, 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: Wikipedia:Nupedia and Wikipedia.
Nutshell

O

OBE: Abbreviation for Overcome By Events or Overtaken By Events.
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 Wikipedia:Reference desk.
Original research: In Wikipedia, original research (sometimes abbreviated OR) is material added to articles that has not been published already by a reputable source. As an encyclopedia, Wikipedia is not the appropriate place to publish original research, nor can it be used for substantiation of article content.
Orphan, 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. ଛାଞ୍ଚ:Ccl contains orphaned articles organized by month. See also Wikipedia:Orphan and Wikiproject Orphanage.
OTRS: Abbreviation for Open Ticket Request System. See also Wikipedia:Volunteer response team.

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, 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-only category: A category which only contains subcategories
Patent nonsense: A humorous pejorative applied to articles that are either completely unintelligible or totally irrelevant. See Wikipedia:Patent nonsense.
Patrol: Wikipedia:Recent changes patrol and/or Wikipedia:New page patrol. May also be used as a synonym for "review closely".
PD: Material not presently under copyright and thus available for use without permission. Public domain
Peer Review: A request to have fellow Wikipedians review and help improve an article. Wikipedia has a page specifically for posting such a request and offering up your work for review. See Wikipedia:Peer Review.
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.
Per, per nom, per X: A comment on a page such as RFA or AFD may be accompanied by the note "per nom", which means "for the reasons given by the nominator". Similarly, a comment may be noted "per X" where X is the name of one of the other commenters, or a reference to some page that explains the reasoning. 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 1.44.0-wmf.2 (8fd6c9c) (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 Wikipedia:Piped link, 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. See also Wikipedia:Pokémon test.
Portal: Portal
POTD, PotD: Picture of the day
POV, 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, PoV warrior: An editor who aggressively distorts coverage of certain topics to suit his/her biases despite community norms of neutrality and the Wikipedia policy of NPOV.
Prejudice: As in, "delete without prejudice" and variations, based on the legal term. Deletion without prejudice indicates that there is a problem with the present version of the article (e.g., lack of sources) and that recreation of the article is viable if that problem is fixed. Deletion with prejudice indicates that there's a problem with the subject of the article, and that it should not be recreated in any form (although deletion review can overturn this).
Process page: A wikispace page dedicated to discussion and (usually) voting on specific pages or users, or for similar administrative reasons. Examples include CFD, RFA, and AFD.
Prod, 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 both a noun and a verb (To prod an article). See also Wikipedia:Guide to deletion.
Project namespace: The project namespace is a namespace dedicated to providing information about Wikipedia. Pages in the project namespace always start with "Wikipedia:".
Proseline: From "prose" and "timeline": chronological list of events narrated in a prose form, usually a lot of paragraphs that begin with a date or time ("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. See also Wikipedia:Proseline.
Protected page: This term indicates a page that cannot be edited except by administrators, or in some cases, established users. Usually this is done to cool down an edit war. See also Wikipedia:This page is protected.
Protologism: A word that is created and used in the hope that it will become widely used and an accepted part of the language. A successful protologism becomes a neologism. The term protologism has been adopted as jargon for use within Wiki communities, but is not in common usage outside this context. "Protologism" itself can be considered either a protologism or neologism. Coined by Mikhail Epstein from Greek protos, first + Greek logos, word. See also protologism and list of protologisms.
The Pump: A nickname for Wikipedia:Village pump. See also VP.

Q

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

R

RA: Wikipedia:Requested articles, a place to ask people to create articles that should exist but do not.
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.
Randy in Boise: A generic name for editors who don't give enough deference to experts. See Wikipedia:Randy in Boise.
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: Remark or Regarding
Reader-facing template: See: Wikipedia:Neutral point of view.^{[clarification needed]}
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: A page title which, when requested, merely sends the reader to another page. This is used for synonyms and ease of linking. For example, impressionist might redirect to impressionism. For an introduction to what a redirect is, see Help:Redirect. For the guidelines on handling redirects on Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Redirect.
Red link, redlink: A wikilink to an article that does not exist shows up red. See also blue link, WikiProject Red Link Recovery, and Wikipedia:Red link.
Refactor: To restructure a document, usually applied to the ordering and summarizing of talk pages. See also: Wikipedia:Refactoring talk pages
Reincarnation: A new user account created by a banned user to evade the block. See sock puppet.
Render: In the context of the World Wide Web, rendering is the operation performed by the user's browser of converting the Web document (in HTML, XML, etc. plus image and other included files) into the visible page on the user's screen.
Repoint, re-point: To change the destination article of a redirect, either to avoid a double redirect or to change the redirect so that it leads to a more appropriate article. The term retarget is also frequently used.
Rescope, re-scope: 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, re-target: See Repoint.
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. See also Help:Reverting
Revert war: See Edit war.
RfA, 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, RFAR: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration.
RfC, 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, RFD: The Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion page.
RfM, RFM: Request for mediation, part of the dispute resolution process. See also: Wikipedia:Requests for mediation.
RHS: The right-hand side of the main page. On en-wiki, includes ITN and OTD (also known as SA).
RL: See IRL
Rm: Remove. Used in edit summaries to indicate that a particular piece of text or formatting has been deleted.
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. Sysops 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).
RS: Wikipedia:Reliable sources – a guideline that articles should be based on reliable published sources.
Rv: Revert. An edit summary indicating that the page has been reverted to a previous version, often because of vandalism. See also Help:Reverting.
Rvt: Same as Rv.
Rvv: Revert of vandalism. See also Rv.

S

s/word1/word2/: Replace word1 with word2. Used in edit summaries. It is a reference to the command for "find and replace" in languages such as sed and Perl. "s/word1/word2/" means "replace all occurrences of word1 with word2" (s stands for "substitute").
Salt: (from "salt the earth") Administrators can prevent the creation of a page through the protection interface. This is useful for articles that have been deleted but repeatedly recreated. See also WP:SALT.
Sandbox: A sandbox is a page that users may edit however they want. Though it is meant to help users experiment and gain familiarity with Wiki markup, the public sandbox at Wikipedia:Sandbox is often filled with strange things and patent nonsense. In addition to the public sandbox, users may create private sandboxes on subpages of their user page.
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 hard-to-read effect of far too many blue links in an article, caused by over-wikilinking. See also De-wikify.
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.
Self-ref, selfref, 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-revert: An editor self-reverts when he or she reverts or undoes an edit that he or she had previously made. This may be because the editor was merely making a test, or because the editor later realised his or her edit was faulty, or because he or she wishes to show good faith after a three-revert rule violation. See Revert.
SfD, SFD: The Wikipedia:Stub types for deletion page.
Sharpen cat: To place an article within a more specific category, e.g., placing a biography article from Category:Kenya into Category:Kenyan people. 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.
Skin: The appearance theme in Special:Preferences. Currently, nine are available: Chick, Classic, Cologne Blue, Monobook, Modern, MySkin, Nostalgia, Simple, and Vector.
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: Retarget a double redirect to point to the ultimate target.
SNG: A Subject specific Notability Guideline, see Category:Wikipedia notability guidelines
Snowball clause: Sometimes entries on process pages are closed early when it becomes obvious that they have "a snowball's chance in Hell" of passing the process. This removal is "per the Snowball clause". The verb "snowballing" is sometimes used for this action. See also Wikipedia:Snowball clause.
Sock 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. See also Wikipedia:Sock puppet.
Soft redirect: A very short article or page that essentially points the reader in the direction of another page. Used in cases where a normal redirect is inappropriate for various reasons (e.g., it is a cross-wiki redirect). See also Wikipedia:Soft redirect.
Sort key: A device to make an article file alphabetically (in a category or other list of articles) other than by the article title, 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.
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.
Spamectomy: Removing spam from an article so that it is less of a POV issue.
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 have ended in the same way).
Split: Separating a single page into two or more pages.
Sprot, sprotect, sprotection: Short for semi-protect [ion]. Articles that are semi-protected cannot be edited by unregistered or newly registered users.
Steward: An Administrator who has been empowered to change any user's status on any Wikimedia Foundation project, including granting and revoking Administrator status and granting bureaucrat status. See also Wikipedia:Administrators#Stewards.
Strike out, strike-through, strikethrough, etc.: To place text in strike-through (HTML <del>...</del>, <strike>...</strike>, or <s>...</s>) tags. This is very rarely used in articles, but is relatively common in votes and discussions when a contributor changes his or her 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: Neither <strike> nor <s> will exist any longer in HTML 5/XHTML 2, so <del> 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.
Subarticle, 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.
Subpage, sub-page: A page connected to a parent page, such as Somepage/Arguments. You can only create subpages in certain namespaces. Do not use subpages in the main article space. Contrast subarticle. See also Wikipedia:Subpages.
Subst, subst'ing: Short for "substituting" a template, which permanently copies its contents and breaks the link with the source template page. Contrast transclusion, a live updated reference to the source template page.
Substub: A very short stub article, usually consisting of 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.
Suitly emphazi: A phrase with no known exact meaning, but which has a general allusion to positive things, such as improvement, or a request for clarification or elucidation. Originally started as an in-joke on the Wikipedia Reference desk. (See here for the original usage.)
SUL: Abbreviation for "Single user login", which refers to the process of unifying individual accounts with the same name across Wikimedia projects into one global account.
Sysop, Sys-op, Sys-Op: A less-used name for Administrator. See also De-sysop.
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.

T

Tag: 1. A wiki template, in general.; 2. Specifically, a template that will assign an article to a category (most often a stub template); 3. Specifically, a template applied to an article that indicates that it needs cleanup or that something about it is disputed.; 4. Specifically, a template applied to a page that indicates that it has been nominated for deletion.; 5. Specifically, a WikiProject banner template applied to a talk page.; 6. Frequently: A category. Alternative for category declaration.; 7. Verb: To apply any such template to a page, or to add a category.; 8. An HTML element. See also Help:HTML in wikitext and Help:Table; 9. A mediawiki tag, brief message applied next to certain revisions by the software
Talk page: A page reserved for discussion of the page with which it is associated, such as the article page. Very confusingly, the link to a talk page is labelled "discussion". All pages within Wikipedia (except pages in the Special namespace, and talk pages themselves!) have talk pages attached to them. See also Wikipedia:Talk page.
Talk page stalker, TPS: 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 wikistalking.
Task force: A smaller group of editors in a WikiProject dedicated to a more specific field within the scope of the parent project. Task forces are located on WikiProject subpages. They generally have a less formal bureaucratic structure than full-fledged WikiProjects. See also Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide/Task forces.
Taxobox: A type of infobox, a taxobox is a taxonomy table positioned at the right side of an entry for a species or organism (or for a genus or family), giving a chart of the kingdom, phylum, etc. of the creature. Taxoboxes are also used for similar standardized tables. See also Wikipedia:Taxobox.
Template: A way of automatically including the contents of one page within another page, used for boilerplate text, navigational aids, etc. See also: Wikipedia:Template namespace.
Templatise, Templatize: 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 saying that "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 2 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: A rule whereby no one is allowed to revert a single article more than three times in one day (with a few exceptions). See Wikipedia:Three-revert rule.
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.
TOC, 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.
top: On a user's list of contributions, (top) indicates that the article has not been edited by anyone else since the user last edited it.
Trainwreck: A nomination of a group of related pages for deletion or renaming which fails due to the disparate 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 of the pages later nominated separately. See for example Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Warcraft character articles.
Transclusion: Transclusion is the inclusion of the content of a document into another document by reference. In Wikipedia, it is typically the use of 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
Troll: A user who incites or engages in disruptive behavior (trolling). There are some people who enjoy causing conflict, and there are those who make a hobby of it. However, these are few in number and one should always assume good faith in other editors. Calling someone a troll in a dispute is a bad idea; it has an effect similar to calling someone a Nazi – no further meaningful debate is likely to occur. See also m:What is a troll?
Trout, trout-slapping: A rebuke. See Wikipedia:Trout.
Tweak: A small edit. See Tweaking.
Tyop: A silly misspelling of typo. Used as an edit summary when correcting typos. See also Wikipedia:typo.

U

Umbrella nomination: A nomination (e.g., on CfD) that contains several items (e.g., categories) which are normally nominated individually. Can become a trainwreck.
Unencyclopedic: Saying that something is unencyclopedic to imply 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, and hence does not have the space limitations of a paper encyclopedia). See also Wikipedia:Unencyclopedic.
Unregistered user: See IP user.
Un-wiki: Going against the character of a Wiki. Usually, saying that something is "un-wiki" means that it makes editing more difficult or impossible.
Un-wikify, unwikify: Same as de-wikify.
Upmerge: A term frequently used on categories for discussion and stub types for deletion, it means "merge into parent category". In the case of stub types, this usually means to keep any associated template but to link it with the parent category rather than the category under discussion. In contexts such as WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals, creating an upmerged template means a stub template, only, feeding into a more general stub type.
Upscope: A portmanteau of upmerge and rescope. See rescope.
User: See Editor.
Userbox: A small box which is stored in the template space, and which includes a small piece of information about a user (such as "This user likes cheese"). Many users use userboxes on their user page, although some look down upon it. See also Wikipedia:Userboxes.
Userfy: Wikipedia:Userfication is the process by which material posted in a Wikipedia article, project, or template space is moved into the user space: into a user page or subpage. A common case is where an inexperienced user who is not a notable person has created an article about himself/herself. The article would be deleted after userfying – moving its content to a user page.
User page: A personal page for Wikipedians. Most people use their pages to introduce themselves and to keep various personal notes and lists. They are also used by Wikipedians to communicate with each other via the user talk pages. The process of Registration does not generate user pages automatically. A user page is linked to as [[User:SomeUserNameHere|SomeUserNameHere]] and appears as SomeUserNameHere. See also Wikipedia:User page.
Userspace draft: A draft created in a user's "userspace". See Help:Userspace draft.

V

Vandal: One who engages in significant amounts of vandalism.
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 a time span of 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. See also Wikipedia:Vandalism.
VandalProof: A tool for finding and removing vandalism. See also User:AmiDaniel/VandalProof.
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.
VP: Shorthand for Village pump or for VandalProof.

W

Wall of text: An unusually long paragraph, presenting a solid block of text of a dozen or more lines. Walls of text are visually unappealing and difficult to read. A wall of text in an article may simply be a sign of an inexperienced editor unfamiliar with Wikipedia markup, or may be a sign of a more serious issue such as copy-and-paste copyright violation. A wall of text in a talk page may be taken to be a sign of soapboxing or shotgun argumentation. See also: Wikipedia:Too long; didn't read (TLDR, TL:DR, WP:TLDR)
Watchlist: A set of pages selected by the user, who can then click on My watchlist to see recent changes to those pages. See also: Help:Watching pages.
Weasel words: Phrases such as "Some say that..." or "It has been argued..." that introduce a point of view without attributing it more specifically. See Wikipedia:Weasel words; see also Wikipedia:Neutral point of view#Attributing and substantiating 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: Wikipedia:Wheel war, Wheel war.
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 that works to develop free textbooks, manuals, and other texts online. See also Wikibooks.
Wikibreak, wikivacation, Wikiholiday, Wiki-break, etc.: When a Wikipedian takes a break from Wikipedia. See also Wikipedia:Wikibreak.
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, etc. See WP:WikiCrime.
WikiFairy, Wikifaerie, Wiki-fairy, etc.: 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, Wikipedia:WikiFairy.
Wikify, wfy, wikiize, wiki-ise, etc.: 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. See also Wikipedia:How to edit a page, Category:Articles that need to be wikified, Wikipedia:Guide to layout and Wikipedia:Make only links relevant to the context.
WikiGnome, wikignome, Wiki-Gnome, wiki-gnome, etc.: A Wikipedian who makes minor, helpful edits without clamoring for attention or praise for what they did. See also WikiFairy, WikiOgre, Wikipedia:WikiGnome.
WikiHate, wikihate: Counterproductive editing attitude and behavior, especially tendentious, biased and personally antagonistic types of edit-warring. See WP:WikiHate.
Wikilawyering: Attempting to inappropriately rely on technicalities in a legalistic manner with respect to Wikipedia:Policies or Wikipedia:Arbitration. See Wikipedia:Wikilawyering
Wikilink, wl: A link to another Wikipedia page or to an anchor on the same page, as opposed to an external link. For policy, see Wikipedia:Only make links that are relevant to the context and Wikipedia:Build the web. For mechanics, see Wikipedia:Canonicalization, Help:Section#Section linking, Wikipedia:How to edit a page#Links and URLs, and Wikipedia:Citing sources/Further considerations#Wikilinks to full references. See also free link and piped link.
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. See WP:WikiLove.
Wiki markup, wikitext, wiki text, wiki-text, etc.: Code like HTML, but simplified and more convenient, for example '''boldfaced text''' instead of <B>boldfaced text</B>. It is the source code stored in the database and shown in the edit box. Searching by the Wikipedia software is done in the wikitext, as opposed to searching by external major search engines, which is done in the resulting HTML. The size of a page is the size of the wikitext. See also Wikitext, 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, Wiki-ogre, wikiogre, etc.: A Wikipedian who makes large edits from time to time but generally keeps to WikiGnomery. See also Wikipedia:WikiOgre, WikiFairy
Wikiportal: Pages intended to be the main pages for Wikipedians interested in a specific area of knowledge, helping both to find the information on the specific topic and to develop articles connected with it. See also Wikipedia:Portal.
Wikipediholic, Wikiholic: 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. See also Wikipedia:Wikipe-tan.
WikiProject: An active group of Wikipedia editors working together to improve a specific group of articles, usually those on one or more related topics. This often involves an attempt to standardize the content and style of the articles using an agreed standard format. See also Wikipedia:WikiProject.
Wikiquette: The etiquette of working with others on Wikipedia. See also Wikipedia:Etiquette.
Wikiquote: A Wikipedia sister project to create a free online collection of quotations. See also Wikiquote.
Wikislap: Providing someone with the URL of a Wikipedia article when he or she expresses a lack of knowledge about a particular topic.
Wikisource: A Wikipedia sister project to create a free online compendium of primary source texts. See also Wikisource.
Wikispace: The Wikipedia namespace. See Wikipedia:Namespace#Pseudo-namespaces and Wikipedia:Shortcuts (Wikipedia:WP).
Wikispam: Articles or sections created to promote a product or other meme. Spamming can also include adding extraneous or irrelevant links to promote an outside site, particularly for commercial purposes.
Wikispecies: A Wikipedia sister project. It is a wiki-based, species directory that provides a solution to the problem that there is no central registration of species data in Wikipedia. Wikispecies will provide a central, more extensive database for taxonomy. Wikispecies is aimed at the needs of scientific users rather than general users.
Wikistalking, 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 wikistalking.
Wikistress, Wiki-Stress, wiki-stress, etc.: Personal stress or tension induced by editing Wikipedia, or more often by being involved in minor conflict with another editor. Some users maintain a Wikistress meter on their user page. See Wikistress template, The Bosch Wikistress Meter, Wikistress
WikiTerrorism, wikiterrorism, WikiTerror, wikiterror: 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.
Wiktionary: A Wikipedia sister project to create a free online dictionary of every language. See also Wiktionary.
WMF: See "Wikimedia" entry.
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 Wikipedia:Shortcuts.; 2. Also sometimes used as an abbreviation for WikiProject (see also WPP).
WPP: Abbreviation for WikiProject.

X

XfD, XFD: Generic term for the collection of deletion discussion pages such as MfD, AfD, RfD, IfD, et al. where the "X" stands in for Miscellany, Article, Image, Redirect 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.