Wikipedia:Glossary

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[edit] Glossary

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 Appendix:English Internet slang. See also Wikipedia:Manual of Style (abbreviations), Wikipedia:WikiProject Glossaries, and List of acronyms and initialisms.

[edit] !$@

 

– en:, de:, es:, fr:, ja:, etc.

The English-, German-, Spanish-, French-, 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: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.

[edit] 0–9

0RR

Voluntary or imposed zero-revert rule. See Wikipedia:Revert only when necessary#Zero-revert rule.

1RR

Voluntary or imposed (sometimes by ArbCom) one-revert rule. See also Wikipedia:Revert only when necessary#One-revert rule.

2RR

Voluntary or imposed two-revert rule

3RR

Abbreviation for three-revert rule

[edit] 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.

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.

[edit] 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

Bit, the bit, admin bit

Most often refers to an account being given the administrator rights. When a user gets the admin bit they have just become an administrator. Also known as a flag or the admin flag. See Wikipedia:User access levels for more further information.

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 an administrator, removing from a certain IP address or username the ability to edit Wikipedia. Usually done against addresses that have engaged in vandalism or against users who have been banned – see Wikipedia:Blocking policy. See also: Ban.

BLP, 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.

Blurb

A short (one sentence) summary of a recent news item for ITN.

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. May also refer to dead links. See also: edit link, red link, and Wikipedia:Red link.

Broken redirect

Redirect to a non-existing page. Common opinion is that these should be removed.

Bureaucrat

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

BURO

NOT:Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy

[edit] 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.

Child

A subpage or (more often) subcategory. Compare Parent.

Civil

Civility

CLS

Cats, lists, boxes

Cleanup, cl

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 start of the comment text and --> 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).

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.

Copyedit

A change to an article that only affects formatting, grammar, and other presentational aspects. See also Wikipedia:Basic copyediting.

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.

[edit] 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.

Desc

Abbreviation for description. Often used in edit summaries.

De-sysop

Take away someone's sysop (Administrator) status. Used very rarely, in cases where someone has voluntarily elected to resign such status, or is judged to have misused their admin powers. See also Wikipedia:Requests for de-adminship.

Developer, dev

Usually capitalized. A user who can make direct changes to Wikipedia's underlying software and possibly also the database, often being one of the MediaWiki developers (see next definition) or other Wikimedia Foundation technicians. Technically, it is the highest user access level, but Developer privileges are generally 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.

Disambiguation, disambig

The process of resolving the conflict that occurs when articles about two or more different topics have the same natural title. See also dab

Disambiguation page, DAB page, dab page

A page that contains various meanings of a word, and refers to the pages where the various meanings are defined. In cases when there is a prevailing meaning of the term, disambiguation pages are named subject (disambiguation).

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.

[edit] 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.

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.

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.

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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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.

GF

Good faith, a tenet of Wikipedia.

GFDL

GNU Free Documentation License. Many of Wikipedia's articles are released under this license. See also Wikipedia:Copyrights.

GFE

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.

gloss, glosses, glossing

In editing, a gloss is brief explanation that accompanies a text. It can also refer to the addition, modification, or deletion of hyperlinks like this one.

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

[edit] H

Hagiography

Wording that is excessively fulsome, adulatory or glowing in a biographical article, to the point of violating NPOV.

Handwaving, armwaving

An assertion not supported by evidence; most frequently seen in articles for deletion discussions, when editors may assert that a subject is notable, but fail to make a convincing case. Such arguments are usually given less weight. See also Handwave.

Hatnote

A short note placed at the top of an article before the primary topic.

Hatted, Hatting

Refers to using {{hat}} (Template:Hidden archive top) to close and collapse a discussion to discourage further editing, without removing it completely from the page.

History

All previous versions of an article, from its creation to its current state. Also called page history. See also: Help:Page history.

Hook

A short entry at Wikipedia:Did you know.

Hopelessly POV

Describing an article which, in the opinion of some Wikipedians, is so closely tied to a particular point of view as to be inherently in violation of Wikipedia policy and u