Team Fortress Wiki:Glossary

This article is about a collection of wiki-related terms. For terms used by players, see Glossary of player terms.

On the Wiki, people often use terminology that's exclusive to wiki-oriented spaces. This glossary is intended to be a collection of their meanings. If you are confused by any term, feel free to ask on the talk page for an explanation and it will be added to the glossary afterwards. If you have any terms you were confused by when starting to edit, but have since learned what they mean, feel free to add them yourself. Remember to add your new term in alphabetical order.

Wiki terminology

Cap

Shortening of Wiki Cap, for non-Wiki uses see the player glossary.

del

Shortening of "deletion", often accompanied in phrases like "marked for del". Used when marking a file or page for deletion with the {{delete}} template.

diff

In wiki context, a diff (short for "difference") is a number that can be used to look up edits, for example, diff 3556346. To find a diff, navigate to a page's history tab, select two edits, and look for "diff=" in the URL.

In non-wiki context, a diff compares two sets of data and displays the difference between them. On the Team Fortress Wiki, diffs are most often used on patch note pages.

Dictionary

The dictionary is a collection of commonly-used names, terms, etc. and their translations. Used in several templates such as {{item link}} or {{common string}}.

HLMV / TFMV

Short for Half-Life Model Viewer and Team Fortress Model Viewer, the program used for a large number of images found on the Wiki. Team Fortress Model Viewer is a community-made modification and not associated with Valve or the Wiki.

Internal link / wikilink

A link that leads to another page on the Team Fortress Wiki, such as Minigun.

Interwiki link

A link that leads to another wiki, such as Team Fortress 2. For a list of all options, see this table.

IRC

Short for Internet Relay Chat, an online messaging platform; specifically the #tfwiki IRC channel used by Team Fortress Wiki users.

-staff refers to the Staff discussion subchannel (#tfwiki-staff).

-cap refers to the Wiki Cap discussion subchannel (#tfwiki-cap).

-rc refers to the channel that logs everything from the Recent Changes (#tfwiki-rc).

Intro paragraph(s)

Refers to the first (few) paragraphs on a page, the intro paragraphs can be identified by their lack of header.

Lang

Short for language, also used in templates for translation switching.

Lang code

The ISO code for a language (e.g. nl for Dutch, de for German, ko for Korean). See here for a full list.

Lead

Synonym of Intro.

Localisation / localising

Synonym for translation and translating, respectively.

Loc mod

Short for "Localisation moderator", also referred to as a "language moderator". A moderator that also serves as the head of a certain language.

Logs

Refers to the chat logs from any of the IRC channels, #tfwiki logs, #tfwiki-staff logs, #tfwiki-rc logs, and #tfwiki-cap logs (requires password).

Can also refer to the logs on the Wiki, such as the uploads log or the deletion log.

Main namespace / main space / mainspace

Is the namespace of the TF Wiki where all articles reside.

Main paragraph(s)

Synonym of Intro

mc

Short for "minor correction", indicating a small adjustment to the text.

Namespace / name space

A set of pages whose names begin with a particular reserved word recognized by the MediaWiki software.

For further information, please read this.

NPP

Refers to anything related to the Notable Persons Project, including the Policy or a notable person page.

Param / parameter

A number, bit of text, or anything else given to a template (e.g. in {{item link|Bat}}, "Bat" is the parameter).

re

Short for "reply", usually used on talk pages.

Redirect / redir

A page that automatically loads up another page. If a Wiki page is accessed through a redirect, a notice at the top will appear; clicking on the link in the notice will go back to the redirecting page. The main purpose of redirects is to have commonly-misspelled words, variants of the name, similar terms, combined topics, or shortcuts open a single intended page. Example: Scatter Gun.

See also Wikipedia:Redirect.

Sandbox

An experimental article/page in a user namespace, usually served as a draft for Wiki Staff members to review before moving it into the main namespace, as well as a place where users can test Wiki templates and strings.

Shortcut

A specific type of redirect which abbreviates a certain page's name, mostly in the meta categories. Examples are XofY for Trivia or Quote for the style guide for quotes.

sp

Short for "show preview", also a template.

subpage

A page which is a page which is under the domain of under page's URL, subpages are always separated using a slash "/". For example, the Help:Style guide page has several subpages including Help:Style guide/Trivia and Help:Style guide/Weapons.

sysop

Another term for administrator.

Talk / User talk

Short for "talk page", a page where users discuss the article and its quality.

Short for "User talk page", a page where Users notify/contact other Users.

Tr / trans

Short for translation.

Translator(s)

A user or group of users who are responsible for translating the Wiki into their native language.

Template

A pre-formatted piece of text that can be included in other pages, generally used for big tables, repeating sections of text, automatically translating names, and more. Templates are translated differently using translation switching. Generally, templates are contained in curly brackets ({{ }}) and may contains parameters after a vertical bar symbol (|).

Userboxes

Userboxes are small tags that can be placed on your user page to denote affiliations, hobbies, achievements, etc.

User namespace / user space / userspace

Pages whose title in the URL begin with the prefix User:. Usually in user spaces, users have drafts/sandboxes, discussions, and personal contents.

Wikiproject

A particular collaborative effort managed through a page and subpages in the Wiki's Project namespace, that is, Team Fortress Wiki:.

See List of Team Fortress Wikiprojects.

Commonly-found templates and template-related terms

{{Anchor}}

A template used to create custom section links (called anchors). For example, the Achievements page has no section called "Halloween", but has an anchor {{anchor|Halloween}} set near the "Halloween achievements" heading so that the link Achievements#Halloween goes to the "Halloween achievements" section.

{{botignore}}

A template used to tell WindBOT to ignore it when applying its filters.

{{common string}}

A template used to automatically translate common words/phrases, such as section names (gallery, trivia, update history), map names (Upward, 2Fort, Junction), weapon slot names (primary, secondary, melee), and many more. Uses the dictionary; for a full list see this page.

{{item link}} & {{item name}}

Two templates used for automatic translations of the names of items. Item link also automatically adds a link.

subst

Short for substitute, used in front of templates. Pastes the text of the template, rather than keeping it linked to the template. Any changes made to the template will not affect substituted versions of the template. See here for more information.

Transclusion

The inclusion (rendering) of the content of another page in the place where double curly braces {{ }} enclose the name of a valid link (typically a page in Template: space). Particularly when a template is used on another page, it is described as being "transcluded". Transclusions occuring on a page are commonly found in the "What links here" section. See also Wikipedia:Help:Transclusion.

Translation switching / trans switch

A term used to refer to templates that employ translation switching (see the help page here). Templates that have this feature are commonly called "translation switching templates". These templates use {{lang}} and {{if lang}} to automatically display different translated text based on the language of the page. To see if a template supports translation switching, look for the {{Translation switching}} template banner.