Help:Wiki Terminology

Wiki Help Editing The Wiki  Wiki Terminology

A-F

 * Archive - A subpage of a Talk page to which some parts of the discussion are transferred, to reduce the size of the Talk page.
 * Banned or Blocked (User/IP) - the wiki czar may block some users from the wiki (keeping them from editing or creating new pages), as a last resort when their behavior violates wiki etiquette.
 * Boilerplate Text - A standard message which can be added to an article using a template.
 * Boolean - Boolean is a technical term that determines whether something is false or true. For the purposes of the FamilySearch Wiki, boolean refers to a type of search that allows the user to include terms "AND," "OR," or "NOT" in a search to narrow or expand search results. To learn more about Boolean searches click here.
 * Bot - A program that automatically or semi-automatically adds or edits Wikipedia-pages
 * Broken Link - A link to a nonexistent page, usually colored red.
 * Categories Groups of pages with related content. Pages can belong to more than one category, and categories can be sub-categories of other categories.
 * Contributors People who contribute to wiki content. At some wiki pages people need to be registered and logged in to edit. At other wiki pages, anyone can edit, but if they don't have a wiki account, their IPs are logged and displayed with their edits.
 * Creative Commons - an organization that discusses copyright, GFD (Gnu Free Documentation licensing), public domain and other such related matters.

D-K

 * Diff - The difference between two versions of page, as displayed using the Page history feature, or from Recent Changes.
 * Disambiguation - The process of resolving the conflict that occurs when articles about two or more different topics have the same title.
 * Edit Summary - The contents of the "Summary:" field below the edit box on the "Edit this page" page.
 * Edit wars Disagreements between two or more editors over page content in which the editors keep reverting the other editor's changes.
 * FCK Editor - The FCK Editor is a rich text editor that allows users to format and organize text within a page or article without having to type in the actual code behind the text. Is no longer used, see Visual Editor.
 * Hatnote - A short note placed at the top of an article before the primary topic.
 * History - All previous versions of an article, from its creation to its current state.


 * Hypertext - text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence.
 * Infobox - A consistently formatted table which is present in articles with a common subject.

L-Q

 * Magicword - a symbol recognized by the software and which when seen in the non-commented text of the page, triggers the software to do something other than display that symbol.
 * Merge - Taking the text of two pages, and turning it into a single page
 * 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, bold "m" character (m).
 * Namespaces The optional prefix (before a colon) of wiki page names using MediaWiki software. The main namespace is for wiki-topic content and has no prefix. The Prefix index shows the namespaces in use, which also appear with some search results.
 * Nav Box/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.
 * 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 "|" . 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.

R-V

 * Random Page Link - Will take you to an article that is chosen by a computer algorithm without any deliberate pattern or meaning to the choice.
 * Redirect - (noun or verb) To direct a page to redirect to another page. In addition, redirects are created automatically when a page is moved (renamed).
 * Rollback (noun or verb) The action of rolling back a number of edits to return a page to an earlier state. A rollback may be done after an editing war has taken place or if someone has vandalized the page.
 * Sandbox - A page that’s just for experimenting with wiki formatting.
 * Special Pages - A collection of pages with lists and other information relevant to wiki users, such as most linked-to pages and categories, broken redirects, and short and long pages.
 * Sysops - Another word for wiki admins.
 * Stubs - Pages that have been started but have minimal content.
 * Talk pages - Pages where users can discuss if and how to change the content of a page. The Talk link at the top of each article, category, and template page leads to the talk page for that page.
 * Visual Editor - The Visual Editor is a text editor that allows users to format and organize text within a page or article without having to type in the actual code behind the text. This has replaced both FCK and Rich Editor.

T-Z

 * Transclude - Institute a programming step of substituting a template or other input for its rendered text, such as when parsing wikitext.
 * User pages - Pages where wiki users can write about their wiki interests and other interests. When you click on a wiki username, the link goes to the talk page for that user.
 * Watchlist - A user-specific list of pages that the user has chosen to watch. Users can choose to receive email notification of pages that have changed or just check their watchlist online for updates to watched pages.
 * Wiki = Wiki means fast in Hawaiian. Today, the term wiki is used to describe software that allows users to collaboratively create, edit, link and organize content in a website.


 * Wikitext, Wiki markup, Wikitext language - a lightweight markup language used to write pages in wiki websites, such as Wikipedia, and is a simplified alternative/intermediate to HTML. Its ultimate purpose is to be converted by wiki software into HTML, which in turn is served to web browsers.