Help:Glossary

The following glossary explains the definition of some words and acronyms used in wikis, as well as some words used only on Pikipedia. For more wiki terms, see.

B

 * Ban
 * A user that is banned can no longer contribute or post on the wiki. Normally, only problematic users are banned.

C

 * Category
 * A group of pages whose subjects follow a similar theme.

D

 * Diff
 * Short for "difference". This is the difference between two revisions of an article.


 * DYK
 * Short for "Did You Know?"

F

 * Featured article, feature, FA
 * An article with high quality, suitable to be shown on the main page of the wiki.


 * Forum
 * A service where users can discuss several subjects. Pikipedia's forum can be found here.

G

 * Gadget
 * Gadgets are tools that can be enabled from your Pikipedia preferences.


 * GIF
 * An image format that is popular for its ability to contain animations, though at low quality.

H

 * History
 * A list of all revisions of a page, viewable with the "View History" button at the top of the page.


 * HTML
 * Hypertext Markup Language. A set of standards used to represent web pages. On the wiki, editors are allowed to use some HTML tags to format an article, although these are normally frowned upon in favor of MediaWiki's own formatting system.

I

 * Index
 * See table of contents.


 * Infobox
 * A box at the top of an article (on the right side on desktop) with basic information about the article's subject. Short for "information box".

J

 * JPG, JPEG
 * A popular image format with a good balance between image quality and file size, making it ideal for screenshots. It does not support transparency.

M

 * Mainspace
 * Shorthand for "main namespace". Content on the main namespace pertains mainly to the information Pikipedia covers, as opposed to information regarding the wiki's functioning or forums, for example.


 * MediaWiki
 * The wiki engine Pikipedia runs on. It allows editors to write content and format it using characters like apostrophes or equals signs (e.g.  results in "bold").


 * Minor edit
 * On the Recent Changes page, (m), (lowercase, bold) &mdash; indicates that the edit was minor, and didn't change the content of the page much.


 * Move
 * The technical term for renaming a page.

N

 * Namespace
 * A namespace is a group that articles can be put in, so that they are organized by purpose. An article can serve as pure information (mainspace), as a template, as a forum page, etc. The namespace of an article appears ending in a colon, before the name of the page itself (e.g. Template:J).


 * Navbox
 * A box at the bottom of an article with links to related topics. Short for "navigation box".


 * NIWA
 * The Nintendo Independent Wiki Alliance. A network of wikis dedicated on Nintendo franchises.


 * Nowiki
 * Text inside a &lt;nowiki&gt; tag will be written exactly as it is. For instance:  will appear as " bold ".

P

 * PNG
 * An image format that usually results in large file sizes, but has no loss of quality. It also supports transparency.


 * Preview
 * On MediaWiki, it is possible to preview an article's changes before submitting. This allows editors to confirm if their edit is right before actually making the change.


 * Protected page
 * This term indicates a page that cannot be edited except by administrators, or in some cases, autoconfirmed users. This is usually done to prevent further vandalism or edit wars from happening. You can see a list of protected pages here.

R

 * Redirect
 * A page that, when entered, simply gives the user a different article. For instance, the page "Pellets" would just redirect the reader to the page Pellet, instead of presenting them with an empty page.


 * Revision
 * This is how a page is like on a certain point in time. A revision contains information about who edited what, and when, as well as information about the previous and next revision.

S

 * Signature, sig
 * Text containing a user's name, added after a user's comment on a talk page on a wiki, so that people can identify who the author of the message is.


 * Spam
 * Comments and content that do not add anything to a topic, are uncalled for, and are generally annoying. Users who spam can get banned.


 * Staff
 * Wiki editors who are trusted with additional user rights. Includes Bureaucrats, Developers, Administrators, and Patrollers.


 * Stub
 * An article that doesn't have enough important information. A list of stubs can be found here.

T

 * Table of contents
 * A list of all of the article's sections. This is automatically created by MediaWiki, and whether it is placed on the article or not depends on a few internal rules.


 * Tag
 * A tag is a feature in HTML. Text inside a tag acts different from normal text. Tags may also contain extra information that tweaks how the text is meant to look like. A common tag is "span":  results in red text.


 * Template
 * Something with pre-made content, and placeholder spots that can be filled with custom values. On wikis, these could be things like information boxes. Templates are called in pages with.


 * Thread
 * A topic on a forum.

U

 * Undo
 * Edits that undo previous edits by clicking on the  link from the "View history" page.

V

 * Vandalism
 * Any edit with the purpose of bringing harm to the wiki. These users can get banned.

W

 * Wiki
 * An electronic encyclopedia about a certain topic. Pikipedia is a wiki about the Pikmin series.