Help:Glossary

data dump

To import material from outside sources into Wikibooks without editing, formating and linking. This is frowned upon by most Wikibookians. See also: wikify.

edit conflict

Two or more parties both attempt to save different edits to the same page.

edit war

Two or more parties continually making their prefered changes to a page, and undoing the changes they don't agree with. Generally, an edit war is the result of an argument on a talk page that could not be resolved.

GFDL

Acronym for GNU Free Documentation License. Wikibooks modules are released under this license (see Wikibooks:copyrights for details).

Google test

Running sections or titles of modules through the Google search engine for various purposes. The two most common are to check for copyright violations or to determine which term among several is the most widely used.

GPL

Acronym for GNU General Public License. Wikibooks's software is released under this license.

linkspamming

A technique employed by unscrupulous websites, which consists of adding URLs to their website to (usually important) wiki pages, in order to increase their site ranking at search engines such as Google. This process is often scripted, and may come from several anonymous IP addresses simultaneously.

Meta

(also meta-wikimedia, metawiki): A separate wiki (meta.wikimedia.org) used to discuss general Wikibooks matters along with matters concerning other Wikimedia projects.

module

An instructional resource entry (a "page" in a book, if you will). All modules are pages, but not all pages are modules. See Wikibooks:What is a module.

namespace

A way to classify pages. Wikibooks has namespaces for instructional resource modules, pages about Wikibooks (Wikibooks:), user pages (User:), special pages (Special:) and talk pages (Talk:, Wikibooks talk:, and User talk:). See Wikibooks:Namespace.

newbie

(also newb, noob): A newcomer to Wikibooks.

newbie experiment

(also newbie test) An edit made by a newcomer to Wikibooks, just to see if 'edit this page' really does what it sounds like. Use Wikibooks:sandbox for these.

NPOV

Acronym for Neutral point of view, or the agreement to report subjective opinions objectively, so as not to cause edit wars between opposing sides.

orphan

A page with no links from other pages. You can view lists of orphaned modules and images.

page

Any individual topic within Wikibooks. Pages include modules, talk pages, documentation and special pages.

POV

Literally, a point of view, but often used negatively as an adjective to indicate bias.

redirect

A page title which, when requested, merely sends the reader to another page. This is used for synonyms and ease of linking. See Wikibooks:Redirect.

subpage

A page connected to a parent page (a / character is used here).

talk page

A page reserved for discussion. All pages within Wikibooks (except talk pages themselves!) have talk pages attached to them. See Wikibooks:talk page

user page

A personal page for Wikibookians. Most people use their pages to introduce themselves and to keep various personal notes and lists. They are also used by Wikibookians to communicate with each other via the user talk pages. A user page has a name of the form User:<username> (e.g. User:Jimbo Wales).

vandalism

Specifically, an edit deliberately intended to sabotage the site. This includes linkspamming. More generally any edit which serves to make the content of a page worse from the community's point of view. See also newbie experiment.

wiki

(also wikiwiki): A website which allows its readers to change its content. See: the article at Wikipedia.

Wikibookian

A contributor to Wikibooks. See Wikibooks:Wikibookians.

Wikibooks

This website.

wikify

To format using Wiki markup (as opposed to plain text or) and add internal links to material, incorporating it into the whole of Wikibooks.

== wiki markup == Code like HTML, but simplified and more convenient, for example not <b> and </b>, but in both cases '''. See also: Wikibooks:How to edit a page.