Shipping Wiki:Editing Glossary

This page provides a convenient reference of common words, terms, and acronyms that are used by editors on the Shipping Wiki. These words are related to the act of editing and contributing to the wiki. For words relating to the act of Shipping, see Shipping Glossary.

A

 * Admin : These contributors are responsible for cleanup and other "housekeeping" chores on the wiki. Also known as a sysop. See Shipping Wiki:Administrators for a list of admins on the Shipping Wiki.


 * 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.


 * Article : An encyclopedia entry. All articles are pages, but not all pages are articles. See on.

B

 * Blanking : Removing all of the content of an article. This differs from deletion, as the article link remains valid.


 * Block : Action by an admin, removing from a certain IP-number or username the ability to edit a wiki. Usually done against addresses that have done vandalism or against users who have been banned.


 * Bot : Short for robot; a program that applies changes on its own. See Shipping Wiki:Bots.


 * Broken link : A wiki link (created like this ) for which the article has not yet been created. These links appear in red text.


 * Broken redirect : A page that redirects to another page that does not yet exist or has been deleted.


 * Bureaucrat : An administrator who has the ability to make other users into administrators.

D

 * Dead-end page : A page that contains no links to other pages.


 * Diff : Short for difference. Used on Recent Changes and page histories to show the difference between two versions of an article.


 * Disambiguation : Resolving the conflict between two or more subjects with identical or similar titles.


 * Disambiguation page : A page solely intended to link to different pages with similar titles.


 * Double redirect : A redirect that leads to another redirect. These should be eliminated by linking directly to the target redirect.

E

 * Edit: A change made to a page on the wiki.


 * Edit conflict : Two or more contributors attempting to save edits to the same page at the same time.


 * Edit summary : The contents of the "Summary:" field below the edit box on the "Edit this page" page. See Help: Edit summary.


 * Edit war : Two or more parties continually making their preferred changes to a page, and undoing the changes they don't agree with. See also on.


 * External link : A link to a web page outside of the Shipping Wiki.

H

 * History : All previous versions of an article, from its creation to its current state. Also called the page history.

I

 * Internal link : A link to a page inside the Shipping Wiki created by using the wiki markup double square brackets ( "" and "" ). Also known as a wikilink.


 * Interwiki : A link from Shipping Wiki to another wiki, such as or to one of our wiki affiliates. Also see Help: Interwiki link.

M

 * MediaWiki : The wiki software that runs Shipping Wiki.


 * Merge : Taking the text of two pages, and turning it into a single page.

N

 * Namespace : A method of classifying pages. Articles reside in the Main namespace; other namespaces include Talk:, User:, Shipping Wiki:, Help:, Forum:, File:, Category:, Template: and MediaWiki:. See Help: Namespace.


 * NPOV : Neutral point of view, or the agreement to report subjective topics objectively.

O

 * Orphan : A page that has no other pages linking to it. You can view lists of orphaned articles and images.

P

 * Page : Any individual topic at the Shipping Wiki, regardless of namespace. Page content is defined as the text contained on a page, minus the auto-generated top, bottom and side bars.


 * Piped link : A piped link uses the pipe character ("|") character to allow a link to show up differently than the page it is named after. eg. Superman shows up as Superman.


 * Point of View (POV) : The perspective from which an article is written.


 * Protected page : A page that is unable to be edited by ordinary users, either for security or in the event of conflict over article content. Admins can edit protected pages. Ocassionally, a page may also be locked from new user accounts to stop vandalism.

R

 * Redirect : A page that automatically redirects the browser to another page, for convention and naming reasons among others. See Help: Redirect.


 * Red link : See Broken link.


 * Revert : An edit that reverses changes made by someone else. See Help: Revert a page.


 * Rollback : To revert a page to a previous version. Admins have special tools to do this more easily.

S

 * Sandbox : A test page where users are encouraged to practise editing or create drafts for articles. A public sandbox is available at Shipping Wiki: Sandbox. Users are also welcome to create personal sandboxes in the User: namespace (e.g. User:Fitzaby/Sandbox).


 * Section editing : Using the "edit" links to the right of the page, one can get an edit window containing only part of the page, making it easier to find the exact spot where one wants to edit. is needed for section editing. You can turn section editing off in your preferences under the "Enable section editing via [edit] links" option.


 * Self-link : A wikilink contained in an article that points the reader to that same article, for example, linking Clark Kent in the article "Clark Kent". Such links are automatically displayed as strongly emphasized text rather than links.


 * Sock puppet : A user account created by an existing user, typically evade a block or "bump" up vote counts.


 * Split : Separating a single page into two or more pages.


 * Stub : An article that is shorter than one paragraph.


 * Subpage : A page associated with an article, usually as a subdivision of the subject in question. For instance, Snowbarry and Snowbarry/Gallery.


 * Sysop : See Admin.

T

 * Talk page : A page set aside for the discussion of an article or page. See Help:Talk pages.


 * Template : A way of automatically including the contents of one page within another page, used for boilerplate text, navigational aids, etc. See Help: Template.


 * Troll : A user who incites or engages in disruptive behavior (trolling). See also on  and What is a troll? at Meta.

U

 * User page : A personal page for users at the Shipping Wiki. Most people use their pages to introduce themselves and to keep various personal notes and lists. As this is a Shipping Wiki, some users use this page to list their ships.

V

 * Vandalism : The act of defacing or deleting content from a page.

W

 * Watchlist : A set of pages selected by the user, who can then click on My watchlist to see recent changes to those pages. See Help: Watchlist.
 * Wikia : The company that owns Wikia and provides hosting services for this wiki. See About Wikia.


 * Wikify/wikification : The process of adding wiki markup to a page. See Help: Wiki markup.


 * Wikilink : A link to another page on the same wiki, as opposed to an external link.


 * Wikimedia : Properly Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., the non-profit organization that runs and other projects. Wikimedia is not officially affiliated with Wikia. The name is often confused with MediaWiki. See also.


 * Wikipedia : A project run by Wikimedia to create a free content encyclopedia using wiki software.