# How Wikipedia Works/Appendix D

Appendix D. Glossary
Wikipedia's glossary, which contains many terms not found here, can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Glossary.

## admin

    A Wikipedia administrator; administrators are users with extra technical privileges to delete and restore articles and block accounts and IP numbers

## AfD

    Articles for Deletion; an open forum for discussing article deletion on a case-by-case basis

## AGF

    Assume Good Faith; a guideline requesting civility and mutual trust among editors

## ANI

    The Administrators' noticeboard for incidents, where Wikipedia administrators discuss and can be alerted to current problems with vandalism, edit wars, or other issues that require administrator attention

## anon

    An anonymous or IP user who is not logged in when editing

## ArbCom

    The Arbitration committee; a body that resolves on-site disputes

## arbitration

    The top-level, formal, and lengthy dispute resolution procedure performed by the ArbCom

## backlinks

    The wikilinks that link to a page, displayed by clicking What Links Here on the left-hand sidebar

## BOLD

    Short for the slogan, "Be bold in updating articles," which means if you see an article that needs work, don't hesitate to improve it

## bot

    An automated editing program operating on the site

## bureaucrat

    An administrator with power to promote other editors to administrator status

## COI

    Conflict of interest, which occurs when the editor of an article is somehow personally invested in the topic

## Commons

    See Wikimedia Commons

## contribs

    The list of contributions, or edits, made by an editor

## copyvio

    Short for copyright violation, such as an article or image that contains copyrighted material from another source

## CSD

    Criteria for speedy deletion; the policy detailing when articles may be deleted without going through a review process. See also speedy

## disambiguation page

    A page that links to alternate articles with similar titles. For example, the Boston disambiguation page lists at least 20 places named Boston, as well as the rock band and WWII-era aircraft

## dead-end page

    A Wikipedia page with no outbound wikilinks. See also orphan article

## diff

    The display showing the differences between two versions of a wiki page

## DRV

    Deletion review; the appeals system for deleted articles

## edit

    Any saved change made to a wiki page

## edit conflict

    A conflict that occurs when two editors try to save versions of a page at the same time

## edit count

    The total number of edits made by a user's account

## edit war

    An extended dispute between two or more editors over article content; during an edit war, changes to an article are reverted multiple times and no consensus emerges about the article's content

## external link

    A hyperlink leading to a site outside Wikipedia

## featured article

    An esteemed category of peer-reviewed Wikipedia articles; each day a different featured article is spotlighted on the main page

## Featured Content

    A category of Wikipedia content including featured articles, images, lists, and portals

## fork

    (verb) To split a wiki into two editing communities, with the intent to develop the existing content in different ways; (noun) the end product of such a split

## GFDL

    The GNU Free Documentation License under which Wikipedia content is released

## IAR

    Ignore All Rules; a traditional slogan suggesting Wikipedians should rise above formalities in unusual situations

## internal link

    A hyperlink on a wiki leading to another location on the same wiki; an internal link is implemented in wikitext using special syntax rather than a URL

## interwiki

    To link different wikis by extending internal link syntax; on Wikipedia, to link corresponding articles in different language versions of Wikipedia

## lead section

    The introductory section of an article, which appears before the first heading

## main namespace

    The main or article namespace is the namespace that articles appear in; this namespace does not have a prefix

## Manual of Style

    The collection of Wikipedia writing guidelines (WP:MOS)

## meatpuppet

    An account operated by someone who is acting for the benefit of another partisan editor. See also sockpuppet

## mediation

    A dispute resolution procedure, where a member of the mediation committee attempts to resolve a dispute between two or more editors through formal negotiation to reach consensus (WP:M)

## MediaWiki

    The open-source, free software used to run the Wikipedia sites and many others

## Meta, Meta-Wiki

    The site at http://meta.wikimedia.org/, for coordinating Wikimedia Foundation projects

## mirror site

    A website posting content from Wikipedia (legitimately, if GFDL conditions are fulfilled)

## monobook

    The default skin or template on Wikipedia; this is how pages appear to anyone who has not logged in and changed his or her user preferences. See also skin

## namespace

    A virtual container for different types of content on the wiki; namespaces are defined by different prefixes, such as talk: or Wikipedia:, which appear before page names; articles are in the main namespace

## Notability

    The criteria that article topics should be notable to an outside observer, as determined through outside sources

## NPOV

    Neutral Point of View; the Wikipedia policy that article content should be presented in an objective, neutral, and substantiated manner

## orphan article

    An article that has no incoming wikilinks from other articles

## OWN

    A shortcut for Wikipedia's policy on no ownership of articles (WP:OWN); in conversation, the term OWN may serve as a warning not to take control of an article's content

## page history

    The list of edits that have been made to a wiki page, displaying in reverse chronological order and viewable from the History tab

## permalink

    A link to a specific version of a Wikipedia page

## portal

    A project page that collects articles, images, and facts about a particular topic

## PROD

    Proposed deletion; the deletion process for article deletions expected to be uncontroversial
redirect:(noun) A page serving solely to send a reader to an article with another title; (verb) to redirect from one page to another

## revert

    To return an article to a previous version; often abbreviated as rvv or rv in edit summaries

## RfC

    Request for Comment; a part of the dispute resolution procedure in which editors can discuss issues such as the conduct of other users

## sandbox

    The sandbox is a page set aside for test edits Wikipedia:Sandbox

## sister project

    A Wikipedia sister project (for example, Wiktionary) is a multilingual collection of wikis set up by the Wikimedia Foundation to pursue a generally reference-related goal

## skin

    The appearance of Wikipedia pages; logged-in users can select how Wikipedia pages appear in their user preferences

## sockpuppet

    A second account operated covertly by an editor with an existing account. See also meatpuppet

## speedy

    A speedy page deletion by an administrator, in line with the criteria for the speedy deletion policy and criteria for speedy deletion

## steward

    An administrator who can change any user's status on any Wikimedia project

## subpage

    A page constructed with a forward slash (/), as in User:Abelard/Letter to Heloise; subpages are not allowed in the main article namespace

## sysop

    Short for system operator; a synonym for administrator

## Three-Revert Rule (3RR)

    The prohibition on reverting an article more than three times in 24 hours, except for reverting vandalism

## transclusion

    To include content stored on one page within another page, for example, by adding a template to a page

## transwiki

    To move an article to another wiki (usually deleting the original article)

## user page

    A registered user's personal page, usually containing information about the editor and his or her interests

## userfy

    To move an article into the User namespace as a subpage

## watchlist

    A personal list of articles that can be maintained by any logged-in user that lists all recent edits to the articles on the list

## wiki

    An online database of freely editable web pages, forming an evolving hypertext; Wikipedia is just one example of a wiki

## wiki engine

    The software underlying a wiki. See also MediaWiki

## wiki markup language

    The special simplified syntax for wiki page editing and formatting; also called wiki syntax

## wikify

    To add appropriate internal links to existing text and to impose standard format and other house style

## wikilawyer

    A pedantic, over-literal interpreter of Wikipedia policy and custom

## wikilink

    A synonym for an internal link. See also internal link

## Wikimedia

    Commons A project of the Wikimedia Foundation to collect free media (images and video); Wikipedia articles can contain links to files on Commons

## Wikimedia

    Foundation (WMF) The nonprofit organization that has overall responsibility for running the Wikipedia sites and sister projects

## wikitext

    The text of a wiki page visible when editing (as opposed to what readers see)