User:NotAracham/Miraheze:Acronyms and Abbreviations

Miraheze has a lot of acronyms and abbreviations that might confuse users who are new to the platform; this is an attempt to document the slew of abbreviations that you might encounter both on Meta and other social channels. Please feel free to add your own abbreviations to this list, none of us has as complete knowledge as all of us!

0-9

 * 2FA (sometimes MFA)—Two-factor Authentication (or multi-factor authentication), a method of securing accounts by providing two proofs of identity (e.g. entering one's password and a code texted to a cellphone).

A

 * Alt—An alternate account employed by a user that has an existing account on Miraheze. Depending on the circumstances, this may violate Miraheze policies. (Same as "sock" definition below).
 * AoA—Articles of Association, the founding document behind Miraheze Limited which governs Miraheze in a legal sense. The AOA.

C

 * CA—CentralAuth/Central Authentication, used to view a user's global presence across all Miraheze wikis.
 * CA—CosmicAlpha (also known as Universal Omega), a former SRE volunteer who created several extensions used by Miraheze and the Cosmos skin.
 * CES—Community Engagement Specialist, a role tasked with translating SRE communications for distribution to Miraheze volunteers and end users, as well as driving improvements/soliciting feedback in development processes, creating community-facing technical documentation, and building community engagement in those efforts.
 * CD—Community Director, an elected position for the Miraheze Board of Directors. To date, none of the three positions have been filled.
 * CIR—"Competence is Required", a catch-all abbrevation applied to those who are (usually) well-intentioned but unable to understand/adhere to Miraheze policies despite repeated attempts at remediation.
 * CP—Content Policy, which details types of wiki content and topics that are not allowed on the Miraheze platform.
 * CVT—Counter-Vandalism Team, which assists with rolling back malicious changes made by others or dealing with concerted attacks against individual wikis.
 * Crat (sometimes crate)—Bureaucrats are users who can manage permissions on wikis and access the ManageWiki interface. Generally speaking, they are the highest authority on local wikis. Their role on Meta is limited to the assigning of certain rights. They also resolve disputes and determine consensus in RfCs.
 * CSS—Shorthand for Cascading Style Sheets, a formatting language used to style contents of pages. Frequently stored in MediaWiki:Common.css or styles.css subpages.  Volunteers with specialized knowledge in this domain will often help troubleshoot user CSS/JS issues on Miraheze platforms like our Discord server.
 * CU—Shorthand for CheckUser, a tool used by Stewards in fighting vandalism. It can be used to identify IPs belonging to a User account and vice versa, along with several other functions.
 * CW—CreateWiki, the tool used by wiki creators to automatically provision new wikis on the Miraheze platform.

D

 * DB—A database, one of several locations where wikis are stored within Miraheze.
 * DB141—Database 141, one of Miraheze's databases, which failed because of hardware issues in November 2022, leading to about 1,500 wikis (about 26% of the over 5,500 wikis hosted on Miraheze at the time) becoming unavailable.

E

 * EM—Engineering Manager, a role that is responsible for defining and assigning work to SRE team members appropriate to their skillsets, growing their team's skillsets, and generally keeping the technical infrastructure of Miraheze running smoothly.
 * Enwiki—Shorthand for English Wikipedia.

G

 * GCP—Global Conduct Policy, an official Miraheze policy that dictates what behaviors are and aren't permitted across the Miraheze farm. The policy applies to all wikis, no opt-outs are allowed.
 * GS (occasionally GSysOps/GSOPS)—Global System Operators, a group of volunteers with global administrative powers, able to change settings on both Meta and individual wikis.
 * GR—Global Rollbacker, a user with the ability to rollback edits on all Miraheze wikis.

I

 * IA— Interface administrator, a role for specifically editing a wiki's interface messages.
 * IW—Interwiki, used to simplify links between different wikis. Often used in the context of Interwiki Prefix.
 * IWA (Also GIWA for those with global IW access)—Interwiki Administrator, a user who can add new interwiki prefixes to wikis. This can either be a permission local to that wiki or global to all wikis.

J

 * JS—Shorthand for JavaScript, a programming language that adds new functionality to Miraheze wiki pages. Volunteers with specialized knowledge in this domain will often help troubleshoot user CSS/JS issues on Miraheze platforms like our Discord server.

L

 * LTA—Long-Term Abuse, describing a user who frequently violates Miraheze policies.

M

 * MAA—Multiple account abuse also referred as "abusing multiple accounts", a common global lock reason. Usually issued for violations of the User accounts policy that do not fall under long term abuse.
 * MH—Miraheze, the wiki hosting service that you are currently browsing.
 * MM—Miraheze Meetings, held irregularly (but ideally at least) once a month to give the community an opportunity to receive status updates from and ask questions of the volunteer team.
 * MSCoC—Miraheze Spaces Code of Conduct, a list of behavioral expectations of users on social spaces operated by Miraheze.
 * MW—ManageWiki, the foundational settings interface for a wiki, allowing administrators and above to change key wiki settings and enable new extensions.
 * MW—MediaWiki, a wiki software developed by the Wikimedia foundation and used by Wikipedia and several major wiki providers, including Miraheze and FANDOM.
 * MWE—MediaWiki Engineers, individuals employed by the Wikimedia foundation to develop the MediaWiki software and related tools.

N

 * NSFW—"Not Safe For Work", a catch-all term to describe sexual or graphic content that wouldn't be advisable to browse in a public setting, such as a workplace.
 * NOPP - "No Open Proxies Policy", which provides that editing while logged out (or creating an account) using a proxy or VPN is not allowed.
 * NDA—Non Disclosure Agreement, a form signed by Miraheze functionaries with sensitive access pledging to protect personal and sensitive information they may be exposed to.

P

 * Phab—Phabricator, the ticketing system used by Miraheze volunteers to track and complete technical tasks involving the platform.
 * PTW - Public Test Wiki, a sandbox wiki where users can test out MediaWiki functionality

Q

 * QP—Qualitipedia, a network of several reception wikis dedicated to criticizing or praising various forms of media. The network was closed by community vote on September 27, 2022, following this local RfC.

R

 * RC—Recent Changes, a special page that logs up to 50 most-recent changes that took place on a wiki within the last 7 days by default.
 * REWW—Reception Wikis Wiki, a wiki dedicated to documenting reception wikis.
 * RfA—Request for Adoption, an obsolete process superceded by Requests for Reopening Wikis (see below)
 * RfC—Request for Comment, a method of proposing changes to Miraheze community policies and operation by community consensus.
 * RfCU—Request for CheckUser, handled through the Stewards' Noticeboard, which require advanced permissions and is used in counter-vandalism efforts to identify user accounts run by the same individual.
 * RfF—Request for Feedback, a method of gathering community input on a topic that either doesn't require a full RfC or would benefit from community review to help shape ideas before drafting an official request for comment.
 * RfGR—Request for Global Rights, a method of requesting a cross-wiki roll such as Global Rollbacker, Global Sysop, or Global Interwiki Administrator
 * RfP—Request for Permissions, a method of requesting advanced roles on Miraheze, such as wiki creator or Meta administrator.
 * RfRW (also RtRW, RfA)—Requests for reopening wikis, a process by which individuals can revive wikis closed automatically per the Dormancy Policy.
 * RfS—Requests for Stewardship, the method by which one applies to become a Steward at Miraheze.
 * RW—Reception wiki, a type of wiki that explains why something is good or bad through a series of numbered pointers. The creation of new reception wikis on Miraheze has been prohibited per this RfC.

S

 * Sock—Shorthand for Sock-puppet: An alternate account employed by a user that has an existing account on Miraheze. While there are legitimate uses (e.g. feature testing with different roles, unresolvable user lockouts) for alternate accounts, using accounts for ban evasion or other nefarious purposes (see w:Wikipedia:Sockpuppetry) is a violation of Miraheze policies. (Same as "alt" definition above).
 * SN—Stewards' noticeboard, a location on Meta where requests requiring Steward assistance can be filed
 * SRE—Site Reliability Engineering, the volunteer workforce that ensures the technical stability of Miraheze.
 * Sysop—System Operators (also known as Administrators), users that can perform certain actions (such as deleting and blocking) that regular users cannot. Sometimes used interchangeably with Meta Administrator (unique to the Meta official wiki), but local Administrators on a wiki hosted by Miraheze are also known as sysops.

T

 * T&S—Trust and Safety, Miraheze volunteers dedicated to ensuring platform safety for all users.
 * ToC—Table of Contents, an auto-generated list of headers that appears on articles with 4 or more headers.
 * ToS (or ToU)—Terms of Service (aka Terms of Use), a legal document outlining the rights reserved by Miraheze and expectations implicit with the use and operations of the platform.

U

 * UP—Username Policy, which provides governance around what's allowed/disallowed for usernames. (e.g. no offensive names or names that indicate inaccurate affiliation or role w/ Miraheze)
 * UAP—User accounts policy, which provides governance around acceptable use of accounts

V

 * VCP—Volunteer Conduct Policy, which provides guidelines and behavioral expectations for Miraheze Volunteers. Volunteers meaning users that hold elevated "hats" through Miraheze infrastructure.
 * VOA—Vandalism-only account, a global lock reason. Generally a one-off instance not believed to be connected with abuse of multiple accounts, is called "MAA" or "LTA".

W

 * WC—Wiki creators, volunteers that reviews requests for new wikis and can either approve, decline, or put requests on hold.
 * Wikia—A former name for the wikihost now known as Fandom.
 * WMF—Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit parent company for several wikimedia projects including Wikipedia
 * WP—Wikipedia, a multilingual encyclopedia that can be edited by its users.