In the outside world, "Autofellatio" means just what the article says. On Wikipedia, Autofellatio is connected to several issues, including censorship (by removing a photograph of the act that used to be on there) and vandalism (by inserting said photograph into user pages) and trolling (by igniting flamewars for or against the inclusion of said photograph). Due to this, and the term's otherwise obscurity, Autofellatio has become an internal Wikipedian meme.
Be Bold
The exhortation that users should try to fix mistakes in articles themselves, rather than complain about them. See Wikipedia:Be bold in updating pages.
BEEFSTEW
A proposed rubric that some editors use for judging the quality of articles on high schools (and, by extension, elementary schools). See User:Dpbsmith/BEEFSTEW.
A secretive organization which some Wikipedians claim is ultimately responsible for the development of Wikipedia. Supposedly the Cabal acts to stifle dissent and impose their private points of view while hypocritically extolling NPOV. Admins who take action against users for seemingly illogical or immature reasons are often claimed to be acting on behalf of the Cabal. The term is comparable to the use of the term SMOF in science fiction fandom.
A term used for articles which seem to attempt a conversation with the reader. Chatty articles may need cleanup.
Contribs
Short for contributions. These are the edits that a user has made.
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.
CSB
WikiProject Countering systemic bias or, more rarely, an adjective for an topic of concern to the WikiProject, e.g. "This doesn't seem to be a CSB article."
Dead-end page (mae rhain yn cael eu rhestru fel 'tudalennau heb gysylltiad ynddynt')
Page that has no links to existing other pages, except perhaps interlanguage links. Special:Deadendpages lists them, but this function is disabled in some Wikimedia projects.
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).
Deletionist
Someone who is in favor of deleting some pages that others prefer to keep. Often used as a derogatory term. The term 'inclusionist' for the opposite party is less used.
Techie-speak for "tolerated or supported but not recommended (i.e. beware: may well be on the way out)". The term is also used to refer to pages, templates or categories that have been orphaned or are no longer used. In real English, the word means "deplored or strongly disapproved of".
De-sysop
Also used: De-admin.
Take away someone's sysop status. Used very rarely, in cases where someone has misused their sysop powers.
To remove (de-link) a wikification of an article. This can be done to remove selflinks or excessive common-noun Wikification.
Dicdef
Also used: Dictdef.
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.
A neologism most often seen on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion, meaning a trivia article of interest only to hardcore fans of a specific film, television series, book, game, etc. Where the line is drawn is highly subjective and can be controversial. Often seen as an insult to those who've contributed that information, and to others interested in the subject.
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.
An edit war over which of several possible names should be used for a place, after an ancient lengthy edit war over the name of Gdansk.
Geogre's Law
A law attributed to User:Geogre (although he may not have been the first person, and has certainly has 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 Wikipedia:Criteria for inclusion of biographies.
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 qualified and probably don't fully understand the law in question. May be generalized to other professions, e.g. IANAD (doctor).
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 classical criteria for inclusion in an encyclopedia, or if the articles in question have quality problems.
ITHAWO
I thought he already was one. Used about people listed in 'admin' requests.
An account that is created only for the strengthening of another user's position in votes or discussions, but which is operated by another person, unlike a sock puppet (which is operated directly by the user in question). Meat puppets are treated exactly like sock puppets in most cases, making the distinction between them largely academic.
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.
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).
n/a
An abbreviation for new article, often used in edit summaries.
Newbie test
Also used: newb test, noob 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.
A page which 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.
Nupedia
A Wikipedia predecessor project that shut down in 2003. It is currently inactive and there are no plans to resurrect it.
A rewritten and improved version of the Phase II software. It was eventually renamed to MediaWiki. Wikipedia currently uses MediaWiki version 1.6devel [1].
A dreamy proposal for the next generation of Wikipedia software made back when complete rewrites were in vogue. Development is now focused on incremental progress.
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.
A wiki editor who aggressively distorts coverage of certain topics to suit his/her biases despite community norms of neutrality. An affliction that especially infests Wikipedia.
Quarto
Wikimedia Quarto is a multilingual quarterly newsletter published by the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. It can be read online here.
Quickpoll
A poll among Wikipedia regulars on issues that need to be quickly resolved, such as the banning of problematic users. Also used as verb: to quickpoll, meaning to hold a quickpoll. Considered obsolete.
Rambot
A controversial bot written by User:Ram-Man and used to enter United States geographical data for tens of thousands of cities, notable and otherwise.
A posting either of the same text of a deleted article by a new user, or of the same text or different text of a deleted article by the original creator.
Request 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.
Remove. Used in edit summaries to indicate that a particular piece of text or formatting has been deleted.
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 particularly productive.
rv
Revert. An edit summary indicating that the page has been reverted to a previous version, often because of vandalism.
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/g means "replace all occurrences of word1 with word2" (g stands for "global").
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.
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)
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.
Sub-stub
A very short stub. For example, an article that is no more than a simple definition ("An airplane is a type of winged flying vehicle"). The practice of tagging short articles as substubs has been deprecated - tag them as stubs instead.
There are two main ways of using templates on articles: inclusion (accomplished by using {{Template Name}}), and transclusion ({{subst:Template Name}}). The former will include the content of Template Name on the fly whenever the article is loaded, while the latter will permanently insert the content of the template onto the article. Thus, using transclusion, if the template content is modified at a later date, the article's content will not change.
Transclusion is the preferred method for short-term, non-permanent notices, as it is less confusing, and even helps to lighten the load on the database.
Tyop
A cute misspelling of typo. Used as an edit summary when correcting typos.
To turn a page in the article namespace into a user page or subpage.
Umbrella nomination
A nomination (e.g. on CfD) that contains several items (e.g. categories) which are normally nominated individually.
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 vandalist edits in a short time. In the worst cases these have created or vandalized hundreds of pages in several Wikipedias in a timespan of only minutes.
It is the slang term for a wiki editor who beautifies wiki entries by organizing messy articles, and adding style, color and graphics. The efforts of a 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 and unlike WikiGremlins.
To format using Wiki markup (as opposed to plain text or HTML) and add internal links to material, incorporating it into the whole of Wikipedia. Noun: Wikification. Sometimes abbreviated wfy.
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.
Providing someone with the URL of a Wikipedia article when they express a lack of knowledge about a particular topic.
Wikispam
Articles or sections created to promote a product or other meme. Spamming can also include adding extraneous links to promote an outside site, particularly for commercial purposes.
Wikistress
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
