[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia glossary

Wed Nov 15 06:31:56 UTC 2006

As you know, we have a lot of specialized lingo on Wikipedia. Even 
worse, since anyone can edit, people are always adding new TLAs, 
shortcuts, and neologisms to our jargon. For those of you who haven't 
been keeping up, here are some handy definitions:

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

--Michael Snow