This page is for providing a convenient reference of common words, terms, and acronyms that are used on Memory Alpha. If you find a word that isn't on the list, which you think should be, please add it!
| Table of Contents 0-9 • A • B • C • D • E • F • G • H • I • J • K • L • M • N • O • P • Q • R • S • T • U • V • W • X • Y • Z |
A
- Admin
- One of the administrators of Memory Alpha. These contributors are responsible for cleanup and other "housekeeping" chores on the wiki.
- Article
- An encyclopedia entry. All articles are pages, but not all pages are articles. See Wikipedia: What is an article?
B
- Blanking
- Removing all of the content of an article. This differs from deletion, as the article link remains valid.
- Bot
- Short for Robot; a program that applies changes on its own. See Memory Alpha: Bot.
- 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.
C
- CCL
- Acronym for the Creative Commons License which governs submissions to Memory Alpha.
- Copyvio
- Shorthand for copyright violation. See Memory Alpha: Possible copyright infringements.
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
- Where an article redirects to another redirect. These typically are broken after the first redirect (see Broken redirect).
E
- Edit conflict
- Two users both attempting to edit the same page at the same time.
- External link
- A link to a page outside of the Memory Alpha domain.
I
- Internal link
- A link to a page inside the Memory Alpha domain. Also known as a wikilink.
- InterWiki
- A link from Memory Alpha to another wiki, such as Wikipedia. See Help: Interwiki and Memory Alpha: List of interwiki prefixes.
M
- MediaWiki
- The wiki software that runs Memory Alpha. [1]
- Meta page
- A non-article page that defines policy, or other administrative details. Meta pages reside in the Memory Alpha: namespace.
N
- Namespace
- A method of classifying pages. Articles reside in the Main namespace; other namespaces include Talk:, User:, Memory Alpha:, Help:, Forum:, Image:, Category:, Template:, Portal:, and MediaWiki:. See Help: Namespace.
- NPOV
- Neutral point of view.
O
- Orphan
- A page that has no other pages linking to it.
P
- Page
- Any individual topic at Memory Alpha, regardless of namespace. Page content is defined as the text contained on a page, minus the auto-generated top, bottom and side bars.
- Patent nonsense
- Text with no practical meaning. See Memory Alpha: Patent nonsense.
- Piped link
- A piped link uses the | character to allow a link to show up differently than the page it is named after. eg. [[James T. Kirk|Kirk]] shows up as Kirk.
- Point of View (POV)
- The perspective from which an article is written. On Memory Alpha, most articles are written from the point of view of a character inside the Star Trek universe. See Memory Alpha: Point of view.
- 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 and developers can edit protected pages. See Memory Alpha: Protection policy.
R
- Redirect
- A page that automatically redirects the browser to another page, for convention and naming reasons among others. See Help: Redirect.
- Rollback
- To revert a page to a previous version.
S
- Sandbox
- The test page where users are encouraged to try out their wiki linking. See Memory Alpha: Sandbox.
- Sock puppet
- A user account created by an existing user, typically used to 'bump up' vote counts or attack other users.
- Stub
- An article that is shorter than one paragraph. See Memory Alpha: Find or fix a stub.
- Sub-stub
- An article that is a very short stub. These generally fail to cover the necessary information on a subject.
- Subpage
- A page associated with an article, usually as a subdivision of the subject in question. Subpages are generally frowned upon, unless as part of a copyvio procedure.
- Sysop
- See Administrator.
T
- Talk page
- A page set aside for the discussion of an article or page. See Help: Talk page.
- Template
- A way of automatically including the contents of one page within another page, used for boilerplate text, navigational aids, etc. See Help: Template.
V
- Vandalism
- The act of defacing or deleting content from a page.
- VfD
- Shorthand for "votes for deletion".
W
- Wikify/wikification
- The process of adding wiki markup to a page. See Help: Wiki markup.