Revision as of 05:19, 22 April 2009

The Dreamwidth project has some jargon in common use that may not be familiar to the general public. While these are not official terms that you should know, or necessarily Dreamwidth-specific, general explanations or definitions may be helpful.

Words

• Alton Brown anal nachos: Alton Brown's perhaps unnecessarily fussy recipe for nachos. (From IRC. You really had to be there.)

• BNF: Big Name Fan. All the conflicting definitions seem to boil down to "a fan who is (very) famous within fandom". (From Western science fiction/fantasy book & media fandom.)

• butterfinger: Mark branched out into fanfiction. (From IRC.)

• cat macros: Images of cats with funny captions. Sometimes used as a form of protest and/or mockery. (From the internet.)

• coed(s), invite coed(s): A deliberate misspelling of 'code', as in 'invite code(s)'. (From LiveJournal.)

• earworm: a song that gets stuck in your head. See earworm and earwormhole.

• fandom: A general term for a community of people who are fans of things, such as "sports fandom", or "Star Trek fandom". When used without qualification, it often (but not always) refers to Western science fiction and fantasy book and media fandom, or a certain subset of same.

• nipplegate: A controversial LiveJournal event. (From LiveJournal.)

• NSFW/NWS: Not Safe For Work / Not Work-Safe. Content that the average boss/mother-in-law might not appreciate. You can mark an entry as NSFW by setting the Age Restriction to Viewer Discretion Advised, and get warned about NSFW entries by setting your Viewing Adult Content setting to Content Should Be Viewed with Discretion. (FAQ not yet available; link to it when it is.) (From the internet.)

•  !pleh: 'Help!' spelled backwards. (From LiveJournal Support.)

• slash: Purists will insist that this is fanfiction involving two male characters (who are not ordinarily involved) in a romantic or sexual situation. Not-so-purists can stretch this to mean any explicit fanfiction. One could write dissertations on the finer nuances. (From the fanfictiony parts of fandom.)

• spoons: Finite physical/mental/emotional resources to handle daily tasks. More: WTF Spoons. (From disability advocacy.)

• strikethrough: A controversial LiveJournal event. (From LiveJournal.)

• twix: Mark branched out into fanfiction. (From IRC.)

• zilch: An addictive dice-rolling game, with a computer that cheats. Can be found in IRC, in #zilch. For all mentions of Zilch, developers take 1d6 hit to productivity.

Abbreviations

• afaik: As Far As I Know

• afk: Away From Keyboard

• ffs: For F-ck's Sake

• iawtc: I Agree With This Comment

• idk: I Don't Know

• iirc: If I Recall Correctly

• wtf: Often "What the F***"; on Dreamwidth, also "Watch-Trust-Friend"; see Technical

• ymmv: Your Mileage May Vary (it may be different for you; "your mileage may vary" is from auto commercials)

Technical

• Beta: Contrary to the precedent set by things like Gmail, "beta" actually means "we expect that stuff is going to be broken, that's why it's not out of beta yet". (From geek jargon.)

• Bikeshed(ding): Descending into increasingly-fine hair-splitting and world-ending pro/con over an issue that's rather small in the grander scheme of the project, particularly in a "push" environment such as e-mail. See bikeshed.org. (From the Open Source technical community.)

• Cat: Short for Support Category. (From LiveJournal support.)

• ESN: Event-Subscription-Notification, the original development name for what eventually became the inbox/notification system. (From LiveJournal developers.)

• Green: a technical support question without an answer (or without an answer that has been reviewed and approved by senior support). (From LiveJournal support.)

• Kitten: a support category that has very few requests in it. Wordplay. Support Category = Category = Cat; cat that is very small = kitten. (From LiveJournal support.)

• OpenID: A way for a website to know that you totally are who you claim to be from that other website over there. An informal explanation. Dreamwidth OpenID FAQ (From LiveJournal; Brad developed it!)

• RTE: Rich Text Editor, something that lets you add formatting to text as well as just do plain text. Contrast with HTML editor (plain text, although you can type in HTML formatting manually). LJ's RTE gathered a lot of dislike from LJ volunteers. (From internet in general & LiveJournal.)

• WTF/Project WTF: Rather than "What The F---", this is Watch-Trust-Friend(s), the project of splitting LiveJournal's original Friends into Watch/Trust (this eventually became Read/Access). (From LiveJournal development and then Dreamwidth development.)

People

• Mark is one of the founders of Dreamwidth. He is also known as xb95.
• Denise is one of the founders of the site. She is known as Rahaeli or rah on IRC. She is also known as D and synecdochic.

• Staff Page

• Brad Brad Fitzpatrick is the original creator of LiveJournal. While he is not affiliated with the Dreamwidth project, if someone name-drops "Brad", it's probably him.

Other Resources

• Jargon File Many words from a gentler, more precise era of technology, although some are still in use today.
• Urban Dictionary Let the reader beware.