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.

Dreamwidth-Specific Jargon

Dreamwidth-Originated

This is largely unofficial slang/jargon, and is intended as a helpful reference for understanding actual conversation, rather than a prescriptive definition. For the official word on phrasing, capitalization, and so forth, in Support answers and the like, see the Manual of Style.

bi-journaltastic: using two platforms, such as both Dreamwidth and LiveJournal (seen in the wild at http://elke-tanzer.dreamwidth.org/1040811.html)

circle, encircle: v. To add someone to your circle (subscription, access, or both).

circle: n. The whole collection of subscription, access, and sometimes readers and those who have granted one access.

colorway: In fiber arts, a specific dye color or combination of colors as applied to a type of yarn, for example, Noro's 'Silk Garden' yarn in blue and green might be the 'Royal' colorway. The combination of the colors and the type of yarn (the combination of fibers, the type of spin, and the number of strands) forms the colorway. The same colors may be available on other types of yarn, and the same types of yarn may be available in other colors.; In journal styling, a theme could be analogous to a yarn colorway -- applying a specific color variation on an existing style.

DevCom: Developer Communicator. The staff liaison with volunteer contributors, aka karzilla. Derived from CapCom: "capsule communicator; a NASA position, the liaison between an in-space crew and mission control."

dlist, dreamlist: Reading page. Sometimes also used to address various circle members.

dlog: Journal, contraction of the portmanteau dream + log, related to blog = web + log.

dreamsheep: The unofficial mascot of Dreamwidth, a small sleeping cartoon sheep with a thought bubble. There are icons. Also see dreamsheep

Dreamwidth: Coined by denise and mark, a portmanteau of "dream" + "bandwidth". Note that it is a single word, with an initial capital and no internal capital. (The font in the logo is fanciful and switches mid-word, but the canonical capitalization is one single capital to start with and lower-case the rest of the way.) Mark shares the history of the naming process.

droll: Reading page. A contraction of the portmanteau "Dreamroll", formed from "blogroll". Compare LiveJournal's "flist". Sometimes also used to address various circle members.

dual siteizenship: Maintaining active accounts (for reasonable definitions of "active", like updating, reading people/comms/feeds, commenting) on (at least) two different journaling sites, such as both Dreamwidth and LiveJournal. (A slightly twee Azz-ism melding "dual citizenship" with "website".)

DW, Deewee, Dth, DWJ, ДримВис: Abbreviations for Dreamwidth.; DW (disambiguation): Also used as an abbreviation for the BBC television show Doctor Who or the Debian Women group, and sometimes even the game Dragon Warrior. Active Doctor Who-Inclusive Communities on Dreamwidth Dreamwidth interests: "doctor who" Dreamwidth interests: "debian"; DWJ = Dreamwidth Journal; has also been used to mean Diana Wynne Jones. Dreamwidth interests: "diana wynne jones"

dweebs, dweeps: Dreamwidth people: members of your circle on Dreamwidth: or Dreamwidth peeps. As you can see, they were words that started with "dw".

dwenizens: A portmanteau of "dw" + "denizens". Used more inclusively than just one person's circle; may mean all of Dreamwidth, or all of the #dreamwidth channel.

dwirkle: smashing "DW" and "circle" together.

dwitch, dwitchers: Glitch players from Dreamwidth.

dwscoalition: Stands for Dreamwidth Studios Coalition. Originally the dwscoalition.org domain was registered as part of the company naming process, with the idea that the service name and the business name did not need to be the same. It ultimately wound up holding the wiki, bugzilla, and a few staff email accounts for a few years before being retired (a date would be nice for this).; References to dwscoalition.org should be replaced with the modern equivalent unless it's clearly in a historical context. Staff email accounts are @dreamwidth.org. Wiki links are wiki.dreamwidth.net. Bugzilla has been succeeded by GitHub; inquire in the usual dev places if you need history on any specific bug (partial caches exist but not the whole thing).

flircle: smashing "flist" (friends list) and "circle" together; seen in the wild used to address readers on some crossposted DW/LJ entries.

Horrible hack: a (obsolete as of 2013 Nov 24) workaround which routed own-journal notifications through the old notification system, rather than through ESN (and therefore the inbox).; The problem with an option that would allow notifications to skip the inbox is that email notifications can be delayed or go missing, both from problems on Dreamwidth's end, problems with third-party services Dreamwidth uses (Amazon S3), or email providers deciding that Dreamwidth is a spammer (because someone clicked the spam button on a notification). Some proposed solutions include a "trash" area and sending opted-out notifications straight to the trash, where they could still be viewed for a number of days in case of email failure.

oopsed, oops'd: Accidentally deleted, especially in the absence of a viable backup.; "I oopsed the FAQ; does anyone still have that page open or am I making a field trip to archive.org?"

Quick*Reply: There are two types of reply (comment) forms, standard (separate page) and Quick* (inline, does not lose your place when reading). The standard reply form is accessed via the ?mode=reply link from any entry or comment, and does not require scripts. The Quick*Reply forms appear inline and require scripts. All the Quick* family are actually the same thing under the hood, but for Historical Reasons "QuickReply" typically refers to inline commenting on journal entry pages and QuickerReply refers to inline commenting on the reading page. It is hoped that the meanings will collapse into one another. The clever suffix conventions of Quick{,er,est,ish,ly,ening,sand,...}Reply originate with #1622.; Standard reply form: The standard reply form includes the entry and its various metadata, a count of comments, and the full comment form. Opening the comment link in a new tab or copying and pasting the link will result in the standard form. The standard reply form is also the fallback if there is any problem with the Quick*Reply scripts (such as Quick*Reply not being available in the style, a browser extension preventing the scripts from loading, brief internet malfunction due to sharks eating packets, or other issues). In Support issues where standard reply happens where Quick*Reply was expected, an investigation to make sure that the scripts can load properly can sometimes prove fruitful.; History: In the beginning, there were no comments. Legend has it that comments were hacked together quickly one evening when someone was Wrong On LiveJournal and Brad didn't feel like hunting down the email address of that friend to admonish them. Instead, he hacked together a method to reply to any given journal entry. Thus ?mode=reply was born. At some point after that, a less-option-filled inline version was written, called QuickReply and using a separate code path. QuickReply allowed leaving comments without leaving the comment thread. After Dreamwidth forked from LiveJournal, Dreamwidth implemented an inline reply from the reading page.

rlist, reading list: Reading page. Sometimes also used to address various circle members.

stickyticky: A tickybox that remembers your preferences without being part of a dedicated settings page, a la the time preference and disable auto-formatting tickyboxes on the Update Entries page. (Note: neither of these remembers the state they were put into as a result of doing something on the Edit page.)

unlock: Common: "unlock [an entry]": to change the security of an entry from a more restrictive to less restrictive security setting, most often from Access to Public. Rare: "unlock to [a person]": To grant access to a person.

Old Terms from LiveJournal

This is not intended to collect all of the terms in current common use at LJ, but to collect the terms still in use on DW and their application on DW, particularly for those who are unfamiliar with the original LJ terms and environment. (Some of the items listed here originated on LJ, but not with the LJ Support/volunteer crowd.) For a more complete list of terms likely to be in use at LJ, try the LJ Support wiki list archive (often LJ volunteer specific).

For a developer-centric view of some of these (and more), see Explanations.

"bankrupt my pants": Short for "been away, not catching up on the flist, point me at it if there's anything you need me to see" -- and yes, in the original discussion, these are UK pants. Variations include "my pants are bankrupt" or declarations of friends-list bankruptcy.

blinkie, Blinkie the Ponie: Creative, colorful, and not infrequently eye-searing adventures in journal styling, and related topics. Used mostly by people who were there on LJ.

collapsing: When 50 or more comments are made to one entry, comment threads "collapse", showing only the comment's metadata, to fit a large number of comments on the page more neatly, to reduce server strain, and to reduce load time.

ctsc (commenting to see comments): see "empty comment (phenomenon)".

deleted: When used by a member of the general public, this tends to mean "went away" or "isn't there anymore".; It's also a term of art for the user-initiated and user-recoverable process of deleting a journal, in the timespan before it is purged (permanently deleted, called expunged in the code). The non-user-initiated and non-user-recoverable one (done on LiveJournal by the Abuse Prevention Team, on Dreamwidth by the Terms of Service team) is called 'suspended'.

empty comment (phenomenon): Less a term and more a cultural use of comments, sometimes a comment is left that has no text (a non-breaking space or other non-displaying character) or null-content text (an X, or similar). There are several possible meanings.

Presence-marker: A signal that the commenter was present and read what you wrote, even if they have nothing to say.
Icon says it all: A comment must have text in order to post, but their icon is sufficient to convey their feelings. This is when they have selected a non-default icon.
Comment emoticon says it all: One can select from a small range of comment emoticons when creating a comment. Again, a comment must have text in order to post.
+1/-1, plus or minus a larger number: This is not meant as null text, but as a signifier of agreement or disagreement. Threading matters. When the comment is directly in reply to the original entry, it indicates agreement with the entry. If it is in reply to a comment, it indicates agreement with the comment. This has a long history in FLOSS consensus culture.
On LiveJournal, often seen as "." or "ctsc" ("commenting to see comments") -- during periods of high site load or DDoS mitigation, the caching system will delay updates by up to 5-10 minutes for logged-out users, and comments may appear and disappear depending on which webserver answers your request. Commenting will update the URL to a new URL (with the just-posted comment's number as an argument) and force an update of the cache.
On Tumblr, an x may not be null; it may be the text of a discreet link to a source.

expunge, expunged: Back-end terminology for deleted-and-purged journals.; On LiveJournal, accounts which have been suspended by their Abuse Prevention Team will also be expunged after a few years of continuous suspension. Unfortunately this process has re-exposed spam comments from spammers who were previously suspended. Unfortunately, those spam comments can then be imported to Dreamwidth.

filter: 1) the use of custom security groups to further restrict access to certain entries. When such entries are created, the author often indicates in the entry that access has been restricted using a custom group.; 2) the use of a custom reading group to filter one's reading page

flist: Friends list. (Used, variously, of one's reading page, the members of one's access list, everyone who has you on their reading pages, and the intersection between one's access list and everyone who has you on their reading pages.)

flock: Friends-lock. To lock to one's access list.

friend: (verb) To add to one's circle. (Unknown whether this is used more for adding to read, granting access, or both at once.); (noun) 1) Someone who one maintains a friendship with. 2) A member of various unspecified parts of one's circle. (Unknown what exact circle relationship this is used most often with.)

Paid Account Fairy, PAF: On LiveJournal, the practice of giving volunteers putting in a notable amount and quality of labor a complementary paid account. The "paid account fairy" delivered the upgrade. On Dreamwidth, the account paidaccountfairy connects people who can't afford (or can't justify) the cost of a paid account, with people who are willing to support Dreamwidth by buying paid accounts for relative strangers. On both services, paid accounts can be sent as an anonymous gift. Dreamwidth has a feature which suggests a random free user who might appreciate the gift of a paid account (active and not opted out), making the matchmaking offered up at paidaccountfairy less relevant. This can be found under the "Shop" menu, as "Gift a Random User".

rename plague: has renamed their journal. From LJ volunteers, when a bunch of people renamed their journal in a contagious-looking cluster.

S1: the (possibly original) style language, which is/was used to build journal views and friends page views. S1 has been officially retired, but long-time LJ users may still make use of it. S1 is not supported on Dreamwidth.

S2: the successor to S1. Dreamwidth uses S2, or at least a version thereof. There are many popular styles on LJ written in S2 which cannot be directly ported over to Dreamwidth to be used officially for the simple reason that LiveJournal owns them (or the artwork around which they are based) and DW can't go grabbyhands it as an official action without getting in trouble.

S3: this has nothing to do with style languages, and is a recent change on Dreamwidth.

spr0t: Support. Usually, things pertaining to technical support, and/or the greater community of technical support volunteers and staff, and assorted ancillary folks.; In Dreamwidth, this is usually #dreamwidth-support in IRC (also called #dw-support or # -support) and the Dreamwidth Support board. Also spelled "sprot", but less often.; On LiveJournal, this was #lj_support in IRC (also called #lj_s) and the LiveJournal support board. PauAmma recalls that this abbreviation may have originated from kamara.

tag, tagging: In the context of roleplaying, to "tag" is to leave a (generally quick) comment. This may derive from the turn-based game. If a roleplayer mentions technical problems with "tagging" in a way that does not sound related to entry tags, it may involve commenting to a roleplaying game. Feel free to ask clarifying questions.; Short fics set immediately after canon events (for example, after a particular episode of television) can be called an "episode tag". (Episode Tag on fanlore.); More typically in the technical context of LJ and Dreamwidth, labels called tags can be applied to entries, both in personal journals and in communities.

unimportant fires: Generally this references a particularly unimportant shrubbery fire which made it to metaquotes.

zhzh, zhe zhe, ЖЖ: From the Russian translation of LiveJournal: Живой журнал (Zhivoĭ zhurnal). LJ is ЖЖ in Russian, and this is transliterated as zhzh or zhe zhe. English-speaking LJ volunteers were using this as an affectionate nickname for LiveJournal well before the SUP purchase. This always refers to LiveJournal, and in English-language Dreamwidth volunteer culture is mostly used by current and former LJ volunteers and staff.

zhezhenophobia: Xenophobia/Russophobia as appearing in, or specific to, discussions of LiveJournal.

Words and Phrases

20/10s: A work (often cleaning or other housework) strategy of 20 minutes of focused work, and 10 minutes of break. Can also be used with other time frames, according to the needs of the person doing the work. Similar to "the Pomodoro technique" which originated with a tomato-shaped kitchen timer.

accessible, accessibility, a11y: Making things (websites, buildings, et cetera) able to be not only accessed but usefully and fully used by anyone, including but not limited to people in wheelchairs, people with other mobility impairments, people with visual impairments, people with hearing impairments, people with cognitive impairments, text-only browser users, screenreader-only users, keyboard-only users, custom keyboard users, pointing-device-only users, and more. The goal here is to make Dreamwidth as accessible as possible. Developers are encouraged to check out dw_accessibility and the Accessibility Wishlist. accessibility_fail is when people do accessibility wrong (or don't do it at all).; a11y is a Twitter-friendly abbreviation for 'accessibility': a + 11 letters (ccessibilit) + y. History of this mode of abbreviation: http://www.i18nguy.com/origini18n.html

anon-fail: Someone who intended to comment anonymously accidentally leaving the comment while fully identified, in a way that revealed their identity to anyone who happened to be watching (or subscribed to email notifications) before the comment was deleted. Usually said in relation to an ongoing anonymous discussion, especially in anonymemes.

anonmeme, anonymeme, anonymous meme: a discussion or game where all participants are meant to be anonymous. These are often associated with an uncensored, anything-goes attitude, and can be very high-volume.

backscroll, scrollback, scrool: Things that happened in IRC while someone was connected but not actively watching, often in the context of "What are you guys on about? BRB, reading backscroll." (Common to many IRC/chat forums, not just DW's.)

"bake you cookies and write you porn": The helpful response of a tight-knit (usually fannish) internet community when one of their number is going through a rough patch.

baleet, bahleet: emphatic/silly form of 'delete'.; delete + ban

bandom: fandom (usually fic-writing/reading fandom) of various bands. http://zen.transformativeworks.org/wiki/Bandom_%28Music_Source_Text%29

banninate: verb. Emphatic/silly form of 'ban'.

bingo: the game.; A way of organizing the perennial invalid arguments/distraction tactics that come up against a divisive topic (particularly an anti-oppression topic), by collecting all the usual arguments and tactics and arranging them on a bingo card. See: porny presentation bingo, racism bingo, anti-feminist bingo.; "We have bingo": said when any given anti-oppression discussion or commenter to a particular anti-oppression discussion has trotted out a sufficient number of the listed problematic statements.

BPAL, BPAL circle, decant circle: Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab produces interesting and collectible perfume oils in small batches. The perfumes are sold in dram (5ml) bottles and Imp's Ears (1/32oz) test vials, except some perfumes are not available in imp size. This has given rise to "decant circles", where one person buys a bunch of whole bottles, splits them into vials, then sends the vials to a group of appreciative friends who all chip in their share of the cost.; synecdochic_decants runs a circle that a number of dwenizens participate in.; For in-person meetups, it's appreciated to give warning before pulling out the perfume collection, lest someone's migraine switch get flipped.

brainweasels: Nefarious little critters made of fear, doubt, and self-hatred that dwell in your head. The anthropomorphised (mustelidamorphised?) representation of inwardly-directed negative thoughts. Not to be confused with the common domestic ferret, who are cute little house-weasels and a comfort rather than a source of dread.

B.S. Johnson: The Discworld Character, infamous inventor. Known to include steam power in some of his "works".

cake: Gratuitous references to cake are often references to the "cake" motif in Portal, including the Jonathan Coulton song, "Still Alive" (video), that plays during the credits, although they may also refer to the meme "It is delicious cake. You must eat it." (from /b/), or even "MacArthur Park". However, gratuitous references to cake are sometimes merely referring to actual cake; one must not discount cake's innate tastiness.

cat macros: Images of cats with funny captions. Sometimes used as a form of protest and/or mockery. Also referred to as LOLcats. (From the internet.) See I Can Has Cheezburger.

"clean all the things"/"clean ALL the things?": Most often a reference to Hyperbole and a Half: This is Why I'll Never be an Adult. Snowcloned as "X 'all' the Y?"; Things using the "X 'all' the Y?" snowclone could also be a reference to the older "I have ALL teh peas!!!" (has audio)

Danga Interactive: The original company founded by bradfitz to manage LiveJournal.

darkroom: a game where people "enter the darkroom" and allow others to interact with them. Often sexually explicit and/or kinky. Anonymity is often allowed or encouraged. Not to be confused with a kinkmeme.

derailing: The conscious or unconscious process of destroying and confusing a conversation about productive but uncomfortable topics. Derailing for Dummies

duck, ducking: Sometimes an indication that one's autocorrect is not well-versed in one of the most versatile English words.

duck/swan principle/effect: calm on the surface but paddling like hell underneath.; A gentle reminder that an external appearance of calm, smooth competence may not reflect the amount of effort and/or uncertainty that goes into achieving the effect. This is used to:

Remind people that their internal struggles are not necessarily visible to others (even though you're struggling, you may still successfully be looking smooth to observers)
Remind people that others' internal struggles are not necessarily visible to observers (what the other person makes look easy may actually involve a lot of effort)
Horrify people about the amount of ad-hoc-ery that goes into the business processes of operations which someone might expect would be smooth and professional, as the details of the "paddling like hell" are enumerated.

Dunning-Kruger effect: People who are sufficiently unskilled in a particular area lack knowledge of the benchmarks of that skill area, and perhaps the cognitive tools, to tell how bad they are, and will falsely estimate themselves at a far higher level of skill than they actually possess. (People at a high level of skill who assess their skills too low will often recalibrate their self-assessment upon seeing the actual performance of others.) Dunning-Kruger Effect on Wikipedia, Rough Theory: "Wearing the Juice: a case study in research implosion" (#surveyfail)

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

Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, EDS: A group of inherited connective tissue disorders. Also, why people in IRC tend not to freak out too badly when Rahaeli announces she's got another dislocated joint again. Mayo Clinic. Wikipedia.

ENOPARSE: Modeled after the standard C error library but not actually present in it, this error code expands to "Error: Not Parsed" (or "Sorry, I didn't understand that.")

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.

fandom_wank, f_w: fandom_wank is an internet community, currently hosted on JournalFen.net, that collects and discusses reports of "wank" in the greater fandom community. "Wank" includes social trainwrecks and more, and the discussion allows anonymous commenting. Caveat lector: this community discusses social catastrophes anonymously, with a viewpoint valuing maximum humor/popcorn factor. Fandom_Wank on Fanlore

ffa, f_fa, fail_fandomanon: a fandom-centric anonymeme which moved to Dreamwidth in July 2014. FFA on Fanlore

fisting: A sexual practice that used to get mentioned a lot in IRC. Probably more information on it than you wanted. (Inherited habit from LJ Support IRC. burr86 may be to blame.)

frog: the "rip-it, rip-it" fashion of un-knitting, or un-crocheting too for that matter.

game, the: The only winning move is not to play. If you click the link, you may start playing. But not to worry!

gender binary: the concept that all humans neatly fit into biological male or female, or into social masculine and feminine. This is untrue first because of genetic or developmental conditions that do not fit neatly into male or female, second because not everyone identifies with social masculine or feminine (or the standard that a person picks one and only one), and third because some people's sex as assigned at birth does not match the societal gender presentation they identify most with. (From LGBTQ~ activism. See Gender on Wikipedia.)

gibberishit: Fu types in Dvorak. Mark borrowed Fu's computer to join the conference-specific chat at Open Source Bridge 2015. Fu accidentally lost a space while explaining:; afuna: "If it's gibberishit's Mark."; Hilarity ensued.

Glitch: This game existed until 2012. From the website: "Glitch is a massively multi-player game built in the spirit of the web." http://www.glitch.com/ Has a lot of Kingdom of Loathing references. People talking cooking with ... really unusual recipes ... in IRC are sometimes playing Glitch.

headologist: Discworld slang for their equivalent of a mental health professional.

hit points: A means of measuring someone's ability to withstand damage/attack or perform tasks. Notional "hit points" can be regained readily/predictably by a generally-able-bodied/mentally healthy person. Contrast 'spoons'. (By analogy from hit points in gaming.)

hivemind: Sharing the same brain or thoughts, usually expressed by saying the same thing at the same time. Commonly caused by spending too much time in IRC. (General term, popularized in IRC. See also: bees.)

"I love everyone in this bar", references to "this bar" & everybody in it: TVtropes seems to indicate that this originated from How I Met Your Mother, in 2005's "The Pineapple Incident. It has since come unmoored from its origins and spread all across tumblr and half the internet, and is used to declare (often platonic, sometimes not) adoration for everyone in the general vicinity, regardless of whether it's a bar, a comment thread, or the entire IRC channel.; MissKat may have been responsible for bringing the phrase off Tumblr and into IRC via YAPC:NA '13.

Ia! Ia!: The thing you say when summoning one of the Great Old Ones. (In his house at Rl'yeh Great Cthulhu lies dreaming, unless it's been summoned on irc again.) May occasionally summon the wrong being. Also sometimes seen as "Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fth'agn!"

Impostor Syndrome: A spurious sense of incompetence in one's chosen field. Or even at adulthood, perhaps. Impostor Syndrome on Wikipedia, mostly useful for the references. (Based on the Dunning-Kruger effect, looking at the actual performance of others may be helpful, though the publicly available information about others in that field may not include all of their missteps and self-doubt.)

intersectionality: The concept that a person in a disadvantaged situation is likely to have more than one factor contributing, and the factors involved are likely to compound the bad situation. For example, a person who cannot afford the power chair that would allow them to take a job outside of the home; a woman of color who is hesitant to report a sexist co-worker to a racist boss; a jobless gay man with no savings who cannot get assistance from government, family, or church. Intersectionality on Wikipedia

Jossed: Made irrelevant by future development. (From fanfiction's interactions with Joss Whedon.)

Kaycee-Nicole: a notable internet hoax involving illness and death.

(the) keys are right next to each other, keys are right etc.: A joke made about typos, generally under one of the following conditions:; 1) The keys are, in fact, literally right next to each other on that keyboard layout. (Uncommon.); 2) Browser/phone/other interface autocomplete/autocorrect, or finger/other input autocomplete; so used to typing something that it comes out in situations where it's not entirely appropriate.; 3) Something completely weird and out of context with absolutely no reason for it to happen, such as bubba typing "emily" instead of "wireless" (and knowing no-one named Emily at the time): "My emily isn't working."; (Inherited from LJ Support IRC; may originate from bash.org.)

kinkmeme: an often-anonymous, often sexually explicit, fanfiction prompting game. Usually the game defines the fandom that the game is set in and ground rules. People leave prompts naming character(s) and themes or plot points (originally, specific kinks), and other people post "fills", usually in the form of short fiction that contains the specified character(s) and prompt(s). Not to be confused with a darkroom.

lumberjack; gone off to be a lumberjack: quit working or disappeared, often in a flagrantly notable way. Errant servers are often said to have gone off to become a lumberjack. References the Monty Python Lumberjack song. (An ordinary man with a boring job declares his ambition to be a lumberjack in the middle of a broadcast, with backup singers; the sketch ends with confusion from the singers when the would-be lumberjack's number makes reference to his ambition to cross-dress.)

meme: (formal definition) Any self-replicating unit of information.; Image meme: originally images meeting certain understood formats, such as de/motivational posters (inspirational image in simple colored frame with an inspirational keyword and comment on the bottom of the colored frame); this has evolved into a wide variety of images with captions placed within the image.; Comment meme: a game or discussion that is passed around, but the action takes place in the comments. Particularly, (fan) fiction prompts such as kinkmemes, and anonymous discussion/gossip memes.; "Yes, you can meme on my server." --Denise, permitting lol_meme to come aboard

memetic prophylactic recommended, mpr: A warning that the content at the other end of the link, while entirely possibly free from any of the sexual, strong language, scatological, and/or violent properties that might warrant a standard NSFW warning, may in fact contain the sort of "PEOPLE ARE WRONG ON THE INTERNET" reaction that may cause various rage, disgust, and the need to place one's brain in a wrongheadedness-proof condom to keep all the ew out. Coined by collaboration between james_nicoll and his commenters: James Needs a New Tag, 'the new warning label will be "memetic condom recommended"', metahacker suggests the final form. First use.

Minecraft: "Minecraft is a game about placing blocks to build anything you can imagine. At night monsters come out, make sure to build a shelter before that happens." Description from Minecraft's official website. (Sort of like multiplayer Lego with optional exploding zombies.) If people in IRC are talking about grand construction and/or landscaping projects, it might be this.; The community for the DW IRC Minecraft server (moderated) is minecraft_irc.

mouse, mice: An anonymous user or users. (A-nonny-mouse.)

nice things (this is why we can't have): Because of some specific bad behavior, something nice that we used to have has been removed, and unless there's a way to guarantee that it will never happen again, we will never be able to have that thing again.; See Decisions and tradeoffs.

nipplegate: A controversial LiveJournal event involving exposed nipples in default userpics. (From LiveJournal.) This is not the Open Source Boob Project.

Open Source Boob Project: Charitably put, a convention social experiment that rather notably did not scale well when proposed to be taken outside of the environment at that particular convention with those particular people. This is not nipplegate. On the Geek Feminism wiki

pantsless website: when a website appears without its stylesheets, due to high load or other technical errors. This often appears as a white page showing only the main content text and images, missing all of the expected backgrounds and navigation links. Originated from nanowrimo.org load problems.

pastede on yey: very obviously an image manipulation, or some feature that has been very obviously added after the fact and in a particularly horrible way. (From a fandom_wank disaster wherein someone tried to claim an actor was her boyfriend with a "my hed iz pastede on yey" photo.)

ping: To briefly contact someone, generally on their preferred form of short-form contact. This is usually to get their attention prior to longer discussion, or to bring a matter that needs their attention to their attention. In general use in technical circles; this is definition 3 from the Jargon File.; mark used to have a highlight set up for 'xb95' in IRC, and may have one for 'zorkian' now. denise prefers AIM, and tends to run silent (invisible status). Department head contact information viewable to other department heads.; It can be helpful to quickly describe the reason for contact, for example, "Hi, one of your developers might be on fire; is this a good time to converse about fire safety measures and flame-retardant jackets?" has more detail than "Hi, can I ask you something?" The answers to "Do you have time for a social chat right now?" and "Do you have time for a technical chat on this subject?" may also be different, especially depending on whether someone is off-duty or on-duty at that time.

privilege: 1) An advantage or suite of structural advantages that most members of a non-minority class have as compared to most members of a minority class, often taken for granted by people who have this advantage. Sometimes the advantage takes the simple form of "lack of $DISADVANTAGE". "Axis of privilege" refers to the specific type of advantage. For example, a particular man might be considered "privileged" on a gender axis (as compared to women and people with non-binary genders), but might still be in any number of bad situations (due to structural disadvantages such as poverty, homophobia, or racism, or just plain bad luck). (A term of art from minority rights activism. More); 2) Special access to administrative functions of the Dreamwidth site. See Technical. (Inherited from LiveJournal's terminology for the same special access.); 3) A clear and obvious advantage or suite of advantages possessed by only a small and highly empowered social and financial class. The commonly understood definition.

pumpkin time: The time after which one will turn into a pumpkin. Generally a departure time or a bedtime. (Used in IRC, a reference to the Cinderella story.)

rabbit hole: a reference to Alice in Wonderland. Often used to describe discussions that may very quickly result in headaches for all involved. (could probably use some more expansion.)

Razz: A variant of poker. According to Rah, "Razz is the reason why poker players drink." ~~Rah plays Razz too often.~~ rah no longer plays Razz too often because the DOJ shut down her online poker site :(

red cape: 1) Cory Doctorow is said to wear a red cape and goggles and blog from a high-altitude balloon. Really.; 2) The Dreamwidth official staff account user-head icon is a version of the regular user-head icon, with a red swirl, as of the swirl in the Dreamwidth stylized 'd', wrapped around it. This swirl has been referred to as the "red cape".; Freenode's "cloak" feature is not the same, though a cloak of @dreamwidth/staff/* would be the equivalent of a red cape.

September, Eternal September: The (constant) influx of people unfamiliar with Usenet/internet basic netiquette, or unfamiliar with the local community's standards for conduct that differ from the internet at large. (The Jargon File, Wikipedia)

scary devil monastery: alt.sysadmin.recovery, the Usenet group

slash: Fanfiction involving same-sex attraction, sex, or romance. The most restrictive definition would apply this only to sex/romance between two men who are straight or unspecificed in the source text. N00bs sometimes use it to refer to any sexually explicit fanfiction. (From the fanfictiony parts of fandom.) Slash on Fanlore

shark(s): Problems encountered whilst attempting an upgrade or other simple Linux system change. From XKCD.

snowflake, special snowflake: Someone who demands special treatment based on their unique circumstances, particularly when their circumstances are not unique, or when they believe themselves to be in an extreme circumstance and are unaware that others have surpassed their record. Urban Dictionary definition

Spectacular Love (in pill form): from some spam in Peterstein (the private support category). Kat was tired.

spice: "I think so, Brain, but if the plural of mouse is mice, wouldn't the plural of spouse be spice?" From a Pinky and the Brain segment. (In common use in the polyamory community.)

spoons: Finite physical/mental/emotional resources, at a level significantly below average ability levels, to handle daily tasks. More: WTF Spoons. (From disability advocacy; term originated from an article on But You Don't Look Sick?.) Compare 'hit points'.

strikethrough: A controversial LiveJournal event, involving the mass-suspension of a number of accounts, and the later unsuspension of most of them. Derives from the display of (deleted and) suspended accounts with a line through them. A subsequent round of suspensions was accompanied by a change of the display from a link with a line through it, to unlinked and bold. This was also not received well. The struck-through display for suspended accounts was later restored. (From LiveJournal.)

Tango Maureen and RENT, references to: The musical RENT contains a character named Mark. The song RENT has the lines "The digital delay --- Didn't blow up (exactly); There may have been one teeny tiny spark-- YOU'RE NOT CALLING MARK!" and Tango Maureen is the saga of Mark patching Maureen's broken equipment with Joanne.; Because mark is the person who usually gets paged when Dreamwidth blows up, this can sometimes result in IRC musical adventures.; Note: Twitter user @maureenjohnson exists, but belongs to the YA author Maureen Johnson, not any incarnation of the RENT character Maureen Johnson (nor the Heinlein character Maureen Johnson).

to-do/ta-da: Ta-da (the exclamatory fanfare) is totally the past-tense of to-do, right? As a task management strategy, a ta-da list is kept in parallel with a to-do list, with items moved off the to-do list onto the ta-da list once completed. Items which needed doing, got completed, but were not actually on the to-do list to start with are also eligible to join the ta-da list.; This can help keep track of actual accomplishments/productivity/task & time management, as well as provide a source of encouragement for days which felt unproductive but actually did contain a lot of work.; Brought into #dreamwidth probably by kaberett.

trigger, trigger warning, tw, content warning, cw, content description, content note: A trauma trigger is an environmental stimulus that awakens the involuntary playback of memories of a traumatic event. This process is highly unpleasant.; A seizure trigger can cause seizures; of particular concern on the internet is photosensitive epilepsy.; A migraine trigger.; Some subcultures, particularly ones with a high percentage of people who have experienced trauma, have seizure disorders or migraines, habitually label content that contains common trauma, seizure, or migraine triggers, as well as common phobias. These labels are known as "trigger warnings"; this is sometimes abbreviated "tw". Sometimes this sort of content, and other content (that may include individual triggers or phobias possessed by members of the expected audience), is descriptively labeled with the intent to aid people who appreciate trigger warnings, although the phrasing "trigger warning" is not present.; Some common triggers include: graphic description of abuse, violence, or rape; detailed descriptions of medical or dental procedures; detailed descriptions of self-harm behaviors, depressive thinking patterns, or disordered eating; sudden loud noises; and rapid blinking (including rapid changing in light levels or rapid changing of colors).; Some of these common triggers are also unpleasant even for people who do not have brain injuries that might result in migraines or seizures, or traumatic memories that might result in flashbacks, so "content warning", "content note", or "content description" are alternatives.; Content descriptions are appreciated for things linked in #dreamwidth channels if the link is not its own description, even when the content is not expected to be unpleasant.; other uses, including mechanical and database; Unrelated, "Trigger" is the name of Mark and Janine's dachshund. What a good boy!

wank: Aside from the obvious slang term, this also means any number of social upsets, generally of the sort that generate gossip and upsetness perhaps out of proportion with the actual problem. ("Did you hear about what Bit did to Figment?" "Yeah, talk about wank!")

wheelchair user: This is one of the preferred (by people who use wheelchairs) ways for their use to be described. "Confined to a wheelchair" is vastly inappropriate in many if not most cases. Many wheelchair users can stand briefly or walk short distances. Even when the person in question cannot walk or stand unassisted, the phrasing "confined" would only be appropriate if the person in question felt their use of the wheelchair to be confining. See among other things a general rant from ysobel. Many wheelchair users have come to use of their chairs after a major (sometimes sudden, sometimes gradual) loss of mobility and/or increase in pain (rather than having been a wheelchair user from early childhood), and can often find the increased mobility and/or decreased pain made possible by the use of the chair to be liberating, rather than confining. In general when a long-term wheelchair user is confronted with stairs and other inaccessible architecture, the architect/designer gets the blame for not making the location adequately accessible, rather than the wheelchair taking the blame for not being able to traverse the stairs.; It is not a moral failing to decide to use a wheelchair or other assistive device, particularly when using the device provides increased mobility and/or decreased pain. Lecturing a wheelchair user (or would-be wheelchair user) that using a wheelchair is "lazy" or "giving up on getting better" is at best unhelpful, and may be an abusive tactic to increase isolation or dependence, and decrease quality of life.

"wrong on the internet": A reference to XKCD: Duty Calls.

zilch: An addictive dice-rolling game, with a computer that cheats. Can be found in IRC, in #dreamwidth-games. (If you want to start a game, try recruiting players in #dreamwidth.) For all mentions of Zilch, developers take 6d6 hit to productivity.

zork: The game from whence zorkian derives his name. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

Abbreviations

Common Abbreviations

Abbreviations, acronyms, initialisms, and other fun shorthand. Some is internet-wide, some is specific to certain communities, and some is Danga-descended and Dreamwidth-specific.

afaik: As Far As I Know

afk: Away From Keyboard

AO3, AOOO: Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works, the other known majority-female Free Open Source Software project besides Dreamwidth.

BBB: Support shorthand for the Big Blue Box, also known as the Known Issues box. It can be found on the left-hand side of the main DW Support page. Inherited from LiveJournal Support. Anyone calling it the BYB (Big Yellow Box) is stuck in the early 2000s.

bk: back. Returned from whatever AFK state.

BML: See #Technical.

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.) More on BNF on Fanlore.

BPA: Blinkie Ponie Armie, a gaming guild composed mostly of former and current LiveJournal volunteers. (Crosses over with some current Dreamwidth volunteers.)

DMCA: Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which is less fun than YMCA, which at least has a fun song. (It's harder to make a D with your arms and then get them back over your head for the M.)

ETA: Here & LJ: Edited to Add.; Elsewhere: Estimated Time of Arrival.

FFF: In the context of IRC, usually Fey (foxfirefey), rather than the similar emphatic minced oath, which can repeat the letter any number of times, usually from three on up.

ffs: For Fuck's Sake

GSoC: Google Summer of Code. Official GSoC site; Dreamwidth wiki orientation page: Summer of Code; Dreamwidth participated in 2010.

iawtc: I Agree With This Comment

idk: I Don't Know. Sometimes followed by "my bff jill?" in reference to a TV commercial that aired in the US at one point.

iirc: If I Recall Correctly

ikr, inorite: I know, right? Often said by members of the Support Triumvirate when expressing agreement.

imo, imho, imao: In My Opinion, In My Humble Opinion, In My Arrogant (or other suitable A-word) Opinion

iydmma: If You Don't Mind My Asking

k8s: Kubernetes, technical.

LYS: Local Yarn Store/Shop. Fiber arts geekery. Usually not a national/international chain, and with more Very Nice Yarn than mega-chains are apt to have. That place where you go and come out reeling with a surprisingly large set of bags and a corresponding chunk taken out of the entertainment budget. (Or, come out with nothing at all, lest the budget be blown entirely.)

NFT: Non-Fungible Token. A particular form of cryptocurrency-traded tulip bulbery wherein the URI pointing to an often egregious piece of art (created, algorithmically generated, or blatantly stolen) is stored on a blockchain and traded for wildly inflated amounts of money, also using grotesque amounts of compute in each transaction. Dreamwidth is Not Fucking Touching those. Ever.

NSFW/NWS: Not Safe For Work / Not Work-Safe. Content that the average boss/mother-in-law might not appreciate. NSFW is a moving target that varies by the person and/or organization defining it, but some common likely categories are:

Sex/smut/porn
Nudity
Strong language/profanity
Scatological/gross humor
Violence
Drug use

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 (From the internet.)

ofc: of course

OP: Original Poster. Usually the author of the entry or the originator of a comment thread; used in long comment threads. From message board slang.

OTP: One True Pairing. Usually for fanfiction preferences, but it could be technical, such as "My OTP is the LAMP stack."

OTW: Rather than Off The Wall or On The Way, this is likely to mean the Organization for Transformative Works when used in the context of Dreamwidth. They make the Archive of Our Own.; While the OTW's logo, a red arrow bent into a capital O, pointing counter-clockwise, enclosed in a red circle, can at a casual glance and small resolutions be confused with the simplified version of Dreamwidth's logo (a red line spiraling counterclockwise inward), the organizations are separate, with separate operations and leadership. There is some incidental overlap between OTW and Dreamwidth developers and technical support.

PC: In the context of comment threads, this is usually Parent Commenter rather than Personal Computer or Politically Correct. From message board slang.

pfp: profile pic. From off-Dreamwidth. Icon or default icon.

ph: Phone. Away from keyboard on account of phone call.

PWD: Rather than an abbreviation for "password", People with Disabilities. From disability advocacy.

PWP: A type of fanfiction. Originally, this stood for "Plot? What Plot?", used of short mood pieces, smut without any attempt at a framing plot, or short action sequences without lead-in or resolution. As it is largely used for context-free smut, some readers have back-formed the initialism to stand for "Porn Without Plot".

RFC: Request For Comment. See Technical for more information.

RTE: Rich Text Editor. See Technical for more information.

SPN: the TV show Supernatural.

TAB: Temporarily Able-Bodied: someone who is currently without physical disablity. From disability advocacy.

til: Today I Learned

tl;dr, tl,dr: Too Long, Didn't Read. Usually said as either a joke or an insult. Sometimes "written out" or pronounced as Teal Deer.

TT: Template Toolkit. See Technical for more information.

ttants: Things That Are Not The Same, or These Things Are Not The Same. Two or more things that were generally recently mistaken for each other by the person who just said that, usually of similar spelling but wildly dissimilar meaning, often hilarious and/or wrong if one is substituted for the other.

UGT: Universal Greeting Time. http://www.total-knowledge.com/~ilya/mips/ugt.html Why "Good morning!" upon entering an IRC channel, regardless of anyone's local time, is a thing.; Some parts of the internet have, in the not-so-recent past, been utterly rude to people connecting from different timezones, to the point of telling them things like "It can't be morning where you are, because it's not morning here!" Those parts of the internet need to leave the flat model of the Earth behind in the century to which it belongs and join the present day.

UTC: Co-ordinated Universal Time. The world standard baseline time, and generally server time as well. http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com/info/utc.htm

WIP: Work-In-Progress. Often said of a piece of fanfiction that is still being written (especially a piece of fanfiction that is being posted serially as it is being written), but also applies to other projects.

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

WYSIWYG: What You See Is What You Get.

WYSINWYG, WYSI...: What You See Is Not What You Get, and other joke initialisms at the expense of the Rich Text Editor. What You See Has No Relation To What You Get. What You See Is Only Sometimes What You Get. What You See Just Ate What You Got. And so forth.

ymmv: Your Mileage May Vary; this is my experience or general experience, but yours may be different. ("your mileage may vary" is a disclaimer from auto commercials)

Other Resources

very large Webopedia list of abbreviations

also very large Netlingo list of abbreviations

Abbreviations.com list of abbreviations

gaarde.org list of internet acronyms and initialisms

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.) (OMG, Gmail is out of beta now!! WHAT IS THE WORLD COMING TO!?) ....Annnd Dreamwidth is out of beta as of 2011 April 30!

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. (From the Open Source technical community.)

bless, blessed, unblessed: Perl jargon involving objects.

Blocking Launch: An obsolete priority classification status for Dreamwidth bugs. Items that must be fixed before Dreamwidth can be launched/considered out of beta. Features that are listed as blocking launch will not be artificially delayed until the time of launch, but launch cannot happen until all of these are fixed/in place.

BML: A kind of scary language that Brad created to write parts of the site in. Stands for (Brad/Better/Block) Markup Language. See the BML article on this very wiki. Brad's History of BML Dreamwidth is being migrated from BML to Template Toolkit, as BML makes it harder than it might be to separate code from design.

bug, b00g: Something that is broken (not working as intended), or broken-as-designed (working as intended, but "as intended" is not workable).; Any ticket filed in Issues, whether it is an actual bug, an enhancement, a new feature, a documentation request, or some other request-for-work.

bus factor: What is the count of the smallest group of people without whom the project would (have to) fold? This is the "bus factor". Hope that they all don't simultaneously get hit by a bus. Or win the lottery and simultaneously all move to a small tropical island with limited internet access. See also: non-essential busses.

Cacti: A network graphing tool that Mark uses a lot.

Canary: the bleeding-edge beta group, who can test stuff not ready for widespread beta (or assumed safe but needs actual use). Set via cookie on the /admin page.; Named in honor of the practice of taking canaries into mines as early warnings for bad air quality.

CARL: Cross-site Authenticated Reading List, the planned mechanism by which one will eventually be able to read locked entries from friends on other sites. It was originally intended for reading LiveJournal entries, but that had to be abandoned, and when implemented, it will likely be limited to sites running the Dreamwidth code.

Carp: Carp.pm, a standard Perl module that affects how code warnings work. This makes things more developer-friendly. http://perldoc.perl.org/Carp.html#SYNOPSIS; Cross-site Authenticated Reading Page, a previous term for CARL. Discussion.

Chef: An open-source tool to automatically set up servers just right according to a pre-set recipe.; On LiveJournal, Chef was a cluster named during the South Park character cluster naming era. It was infamous for dodgy performance.

Clone: An exact copy, or a copy that is identical in most major respects. In the context of the Dreamwidth project, this is generally used to refer to other journaling sites based on the LiveJournal code that have not made significant functional alterations to the code. Dreamwidth is not, strictly speaking, a clone of LiveJournal. See: Fork, LJ-based_Services. Dreamwidth itself now has a few daughter sites that could be termed clones.

Cod: Code. This sometimes a typo and sometimes an intentional joke. It's usually the start of a series of increasingly fishy puns.

Code dive: Going and reading the code, to see what it does, or going to see where the code that does the thing is actually located and what-all it connects to. Typically used by people who don't commonly see the code, such as technical support, or for extensive trips into the deep places where eldritch creatures swim *cough* translation system *cough*. See also "perl dive", in semi-common use elsewhere (punfully derived from pearl diving).

Code machete, 🔪🗡️: the notional tool used to hack away wholesale bits of useless code, particularly inherited code that has no earthly use to Dreamwidth's business model *cough*ads*cough* Generally used when removing large chunks rather than fiddly little removals. Compare to clearing or re-clearing a trail by whacking through underbrush. Miscellaneous knife emoji in response to code removal is probably intended as enthusiasm for the clearing away, rather than hostility about removal.

Code snorkel: One of the pieces of notional equipment necessary for a code dive.

Code tour: a list and layperson-friendly explanation of all recent code changes checked in to the repository. Recent Dreamwidth code tours. The tradition started when denise made a roundup of the week's development progress as that was most of the work which had been completed that week. It proved popular, so the tradition continued.

crypto: cryptocurrency, usually. Originally a niche digital form of currency, currently an ecological disaster where each Bitcoin transaction used 1,173 kilowatt hours of electricity as of 2021, adding up to the electricity consumption of a small country over the course of a year, and requiring increasing amounts of computer hardware to calculate. (This is a major reason why high-end graphics cards are so expensive.) Dreamwidth does not and will not accept payment in cryptocurrency.; crypto attack, also. A form of digital extortion where someone gets into your network and encrypts the contents of every machine. Also known as ransomware. Off-network backups are important.

Usage note: using "crypto" to mean either of the above in the presence of cryptographers, cryptanalysts, or sometimes civil libertarians and human rights activists may in short order result in being in the presence of the above audience, but very irate. Use with caution.

Debian: Debian is a free operating system that uses the Linux kernel and some GNU operating system tools.; While Debian's logo, a spattered red line spiraling clockwise inward, reminiscent of the Fibonacci spiral, can at a casual glance and small resolutions be confused with the simplified version of Dreamwidth's logo (a smooth red line spiraling counterclockwise inward in a roughly circular shape, derived from Dreamwidth's stylized lower-case D), the organizations are separate. It is unknown how many Dreamwidth-affiliated developers and users prefer or use Debian.

dhtml, durl: Functions that decode previously encoded HTML and URLs, respectively.

Dragon: Dragon Naturally Speaking is dictation and accessibility software that can be used to give voice control of the computer. It can cause results similar to DamnYouAutoCorrect (gallery of images of hilariously awful autocorrections, mostly iPhone, mostly not adequately alt-texted).

dw-free: the github repository with stuff that both Dreamwidth and clone sites use. If you're developing on Dreamwidth, you should definitely use this repository. If you're working on a clone site, this is the one you should fork.

dw-nonfree: the github repository with stuff for Dreamwidth (and not clone sites). If you're developing on Dreamwidth, you should definitely use this repository also. If you're working on a clone site, you can browse this repository for inspiration (do you want staff biographies? would you care to implement some fun custom 404 pages? ever been curious how our spellchecker works?) but you are not licensed to duplicate these on your production site.; Things in this repository include:; Stuff specific to running dreamwidth.org (which isn't relevant to clone sites) like staff bios; Dreamwidth.org branding stuff (clone sites have their own branding); Stuff that hasn't been licensed to be released in dw-free (Dreamwidth can use it, but Dreamwidth isn't allowed to turn around and say "oh hey, everybody else can use this too" without some further discussion)

Edges: Data that makes foxfirefey very happy. See Data_Sources.

ehtml, eurl: Functions that encode HTML and URLs, respectively.

Enhancement: A change that improves or enhances an existing feature. Not quite a true bug, because the feature would have been working OK before that, and not a whole new feature, just something that makes an existing feature better.

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

FCKEditor, FCKEd, CKEditor: FCKEditor is the open-source WYSIWYG editor used by Dreamwidth and LiveJournal, more familiarly known as the Rich Text Editor, or RTE. The FCKEditor is named for its creator, Frederico Caldeira Knabben. With version 3.0, it was renamed the CKEditor. FCKeditor was first released in March 2003, and LiveJournal's original RTE became available December 2003.

Fork, code fork: Like a fork in a road, code that has been taken in a different developmental direction from the main project. In the context of Dreamwidth development, this generally is used to refer to Dreamwidth's relationship to LiveJournal, as Dreamwidth has active development in other directions.

Gearman: An asynchronous job scheduling engine, of the type "do this somewhere else". Benefits: somewhere else, fast. Flaws: currently if it dies jobs are lost (apparently the team that manages it is working on that). Name is an anagram of "manager"; from LiveJournal days. IRC log with history/discussion

Git: the new-to-us code version control system, to help make tracking/sorting out the contributions of infinitely many developers sweating over infinitely many keyboards be less like attempting to keep a torrential rainstorm away from the delicate electronics with a rake, and more like a well-ordered hackspace. Git Getting Started

github: the site that generously hosts Dreamwidth's git repositories, along with those of many, many other projects.

Guru meditation: an error code thrown by the Varnish cache server (and others, elsewhere, but DW uses Varnish). This is generally a temporary error, indicating that the server wants to be a lumberjack and has to take a moment to adjust its suspenders and/or bra.

i18n: abbreviation for "internationalization", the ability of a software program to work with different languages, alphabets, cultural conventions, and so forth.

iff: If and only if.

JAWS: a screenreader (assistive software for the visually impaired). JAWS homepage

Kubernetes, k8s: an open-source container-related automation system. Introduced in late 2019.

lastn: the most recent entries page: on a reading page, on a personal journal, on a community, on anything with entries. From the code; "Last N", where N is the number of entries (up to 50, by the preference of iirc the person who controls the style in which the thing is displaying) which are displayed on that page.

Leaning Toothpick Syndrome: the \/ and \\\\ stuff that tends to happen a lot in regexes

LJ::Protocol: Once upon a time, LiveJournal had a veritable explosion of different clients which could be used to variously access and interact with the site. The clients were expected to use the client protocol. A more modern codebase might stuff all that under API.

MogileFS: Mogile FileSystem, the system that runs behind the userpics, is an anagram of OMG FILES. From LiveJournal development.

Nagios: A monitoring system used to advise Mark (and IRC) about whether Dreamwidth is functioning properly. See the Volunteer/IRC section for further info.

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!)

Peterstein, Disco King: The private support category that receives mail sent to the support@ email address. Blame Mark. ;)

pearl diving: trying to locate/interpret various bits of Perl to figure out What Even Is Going On (often in pursuit of a vaguely unrelated change). A me_and-erism.

Priv, privilege: Access to various special administrative site functions, such as viewing sensitive support requests, viewing screened proposed answers to support requests that other users have left, viewing spam reports, and taking various administrative actions. Privs are granted in a chain of trust that culminates with the site owners; one may be granted the priv to hand out more privs to others. Privs may be restricted by arguments or granted globally (unarged). "What privs do I have?" "Not enough to do your job. I'm granting you some more privs." (Inherited from LiveJournal.) See Privileges.

PubSubHubbub, PuSH: A way to make syndicated stuff update like greased lightning. From Google (and Brad!); the implementation is courtesy of our good friends in the LJ dev department. Sometimes also called Fred for short.

Puppet: an open source data center automation and configuration management framework. That is to say, a way for the system administrators to set up computers quickly. See Production Puppet

replicate, cannot replicate, replication: Dreamwidth has two master databases that are supposed to be identical copies of each other. Nagios freaks out when one copy is lagging behind the other. Nagios also cheerfully informs everyone when things are back to normal.

RFC: Request For Comment. An invitation for constructive and thorough criticism of the proposed concept. In general use in certain technical communities. Also, one of the founding documents describing standards that the internet attempts to abide by. Examples: RFC 3330 RFC 2324

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. It is built based on the open source FCKEditor. The LiveJournal and Dreamwidth implementations have a reputation for being (pick your favorite) delicate, buggy, or broken. (From internet in general & LiveJournal.)

S3: Amazon's S3 cloud service sends a whole whackload of Dreamwidth email notifications, as of, um, maybe 2015-2016-ish. This has nothing to do with S1 and S2 the style languages.; This is why Dreamwidth notifications were delayed in early 2017 when someone at Amazon oopsed a S3 index subsystem and placement subsystem.

screenreader: an item of assistive technology used primarily by visually impaired users. Screenreaders read text on web pages aloud, allowing users to use websites without seeing them.

Test Driven Design: Uncanny_Kate explains: "One thing that a lot of people, including me, dig is something called Test Driven Design. Which means, to fix a bug or write a new feature, first you write a test for how it should work. It'll fail, until you write the code, but then you can be super confident your test works. And if you do that long enough, you can run the test suite and be super confident you didn't break anything else."

TheSchwartz: An asynchronous job scheduling engine of the "Do this and tell me later" type. Has persistent queue support. It was named after Brad's manager, Mike Schwartz, the VP of Engineering at Six Apart, and may also have been a reference to Spaceballs (with Brad you never know). Solid, has a lot of overhead and a lot of setup. IRC log with history/discussion TheSchwartz on Dreamwidth TheSchwartz on cpan.org

Template Toolkit, TT: The templating system that's replacing BML when building site pages; all existing BML pages are planned to eventually be migrated to using TT. Free Open Source Software, 99% less Eldritch Horror. See Routing and Template Toolkit and http://template-toolkit.org/

Terrible Grinding Noise: The notional sound of the site coming to a (near) complete halt, generally as the result of a change that was thought to be insignificant, generally introduced some 6-ish months previous. Bonus points if it was a change to something that should have been unrelated.; Staff are eager to avoid the Terrible Grinding Noise, and reluctant to make "simple" changes to certain parts of core infrastructure without great demonstrated need.

Upstream (obsolete): A flag in Dreamwidth's implementation of Bugzilla that is a courtesy to LiveJournal developers, to alert them that a bug inherited from the LiveJournal codebase has been patched. LiveJournal is actively encouraged to pick up patches that have been flagged for upstreaming. Yay Open Source!

WTF/Project WTF: Rather than "What The Fuck", 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.)

WTF-8: When UTF-8 encoding, or lack thereof, causes problems.

People

Staff & family

Mark: Mark Smith is one half of the founding team of Dreamwidth. He is also known as zorkian, previously xb95.
Denise: Denise Paolucci is one half of the founding team of the site. She is known as Rahaeli or rah on IRC. She is also known as D and synecdochic.

Karzilla: Kar became DevCom on July 5, 2015. She is also kareila.

Staff Page: All staff, and most department heads.

Sarah: Married to denise, helps with technical support.
janinedog/Janine/J9: Was married to mark. A developer.
Ari: Mark's co-parent.
Oliver: Mark & Ari's child.
Fu: Afuna was the first full-time Dreamwidth employee. She answers to Afuna or Fu. She stepped down from staff, announced June 26, 2015, but will stick around as her day job allows. She is married to Mark as of (sometime).
MissKat: Kat joined the team on January 1, 2013 (dw-news announcement) and left in June 2016 (dw-volunteers announcement). She is also zarhooie.

MrsJ: Collectively, the people who can handle staff issues are sometimes known as "MrsJ", which was short for the owners and their wives at the time of site launch: Mark, Rah, Sarah, and Janine. This personnel lineup has since changed, and now includes Mark (co-owner), Rah (co-owner), Sarah (Rah's wife), and sometimes Robby (backup sysadmin).

Other People

Brad or bradfitz: 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. (However, brad is not him.) He was last sighted at Google, not being evil.

People the owners have worked with/near in the past, partial list: Brad (brad or bradfitz), Brad's Mom (sandy), Hachi (hachi), Abe (burr86), Mart (mart), MK, BB, Carrie (coffeechica), Dave "worst username evar" Recordon (daveman692), Tupshin (tupshin), Stacey (nova), Whitaker (whitaker) (but not Whitaker's Mom).

Dave "Worst Username Evar" Recordon (daveman692): a legacy LiveJournal employee, involved with the creation of OpenID.; [05:20] <V_PauAmma_V> [...] I'm not sure how the "worst username ever" joke got started, but when LJ started listing the "purged, available to rename to" usernames list, that joke was enshrined on the LJ homepage blurb for that page.; [05:23] <rahaeli> it started because NONE OF US COULD EVER TYPE HIS USERNAME; [05:23] <rahaeli> it took us like two years to learn the numbers; [05:23] <rahaeli> so brad dubbed him "worst username evar"; [05:23] <rahaeli> (plz to note that it's 'evar' and not 'ever')

MissHat: zarhooie|MissKat speaks fluent typo.

Momijizukamori: "... the kanji combo is 'guardian of the maple tree burial mound'. More or less. It's a really dorky reference to an old CLAMP [manga] series."

PauAmma: Pau's nickname is a reference to The Crab that Played with the Sea. The 'V's are pincers. Note that PauAmma is not food.

Confusingly similar nicks: Some people in IRC/mentioned in IRC look similar but aren't the same person.

~aeli: rahaeli is not niqaeli, although they are certainly friends.

Alex: there are now at least three regulars who answer to Alex. If you say "Alex" without specifying, be prepared to be asked: "Which Alex?"

Alierak/Kareila: Not actually the same person, but they have been together since the depths of the internet. According to the legend, Kareila picked her username first, and then one day alierak was in need of a quick username and picked something complementary. It stuck.

az*: There are at least four IRC-folks over time starting with 'az':; azurelunatic|Azz (two zs); azureye; azetidine|aze,; the former azalais|az (one z)

exes, kaberett's: Terrible Ex: a human being who has done some fairly irredeemable things with no apparent personal growth since; kaberett and their friends do not associate with him and recommend that nobody associate with him.; Awful Ex: same guy as Terrible Ex.; Useless Ex: different person, and while the nickname was in use it was fond.

fitz: bradfitz is not Fitzwilliam, foxfirefey's younger flame point cat.

j*c: jc|jc` and JDC|jd are not the same person, even though they've both been around since beginning days.

jl*: jlb and jld are different people, though they know each other.

pineapple: pineapple and pineapplechild are not the same person, nor is pineapple the mother of pineapplechild. Nor the other way around.

rah, RAH: rah is rahaeli, RAH (esp. when used by Pau Amma) is Robert Anson Heinlein.

RH|: Nicks starting with RH are either RebelsHeart in some afk mode, or a specific member of the Rhymers' House (not_a_sniglet). Check the whois in your IRC client if uncertain.

Ricky: both jeshyr and Amianym answer to Ricky offline.

simon: _Simon_ and _NotSimon_ are both Simon, just the latter is afk.

Nicknames from DW-Drew: dreamatdrew|DW-Drew|Algol (the Ogre star) has many nicknames for many people, many of which are not self-explanatory unless you happened to be there at the time. Sometimes other people also use these nicknames, but sometimes not.

Assface: A typo that DW-Drew assiduously attempts to avoid but sometimes runs into anyway, for Azzface (azurelunatic|Azz).

bible-stud: vlion, based on the time when his attempted nick-change to vlion|biblestudy got truncated by one letter.

Dracca: DW-Drew's mother.

fish, fishen: ghoti, ghoti14 on IRC. While theoretically this is universal, in practice it is a mostly-from-Drew spelling.; "fish" may also refer to some of the "chatfish", members of a YA readers group of Azz's.; See also: "Fish are friends, not food." (ghoti is a friend-grade fish, not sushi-grade.)

frog: woggy, whose default userpic is a frog and whose username comes from "polliwog".

Herbie: jeshyr|rb, referencing an Asimov story in which a robot with the letters RB became Herbie.

Iggy: ivorygates, formed from the initials I.G.

Mr. Zog: Azz's Motorola SURFboard router.

Slaver: zorkian; this references the game EVE Online, where zorkian has an Amarr pilot.

throwrug: Allen. You sort of had to be there, for values of "there" that are YAPC:NA '13

Artificial, Fictional or Otherwise Questionable Reality

These individuals, while present or mentioned in IRC from time to time, are not always inhabiting the same reality as most of the rest of us. Sometimes it's not wise to follow them to their home dimension.

Alertsy: a Nagios IRC bot.

Anna: a Support-bot originally programmed by Sophie (with features from past bots), for #lj_support. Named for the Basshunter song "Boten Anna". Decommissioned with the decommissioning of LiveJournal's private server.; English language dance music fans may recognize that the tune of "Boten Anna" is the same as the tune of "Now You're Gone". As "Now You're Gone" was produced later, and the lyrics include the line "There's an empty place in my heart / Without my Anna it will break apart", one might conclude that "Boten Anna" was the "yay I have a girlfriend" song, and "Now You're Gone" is the angsty breakup sequel.

Bit: Originally a standalone bot in #lj_support. See: Fig|Bit.

Charlotte: a legacy LJ bot.

fairlight: Sometimes present in IRC. See Tiferet's profile for details.

Fig|Bit: An IRC bot, run by sophie. The bot gives different responses when addressed as "Fig" than when addressed as "Bit". Fig is a Support-bot, an infobot, and has some other features. Bit is a decision bot. Most of the time, the bot's answers are pre-programmed. Very occasionally, not. See IRC.

Frank: Frank the Goat, LiveJournal's mascot.

Goat: a legacy #lj_support Support-bot. Notably rude.

INGVA: QUEEN OF THE WILD PLACES

jdn: twopointoh & jdn. Fictional character, written by a number of people but usually Rah, sometimes shows up in IRC (as jdn). See Broken Wings and Mezzanine. (Warning: if you commence a scarily literary-crossed-with-lowbrow rant and find yourself losing your capital letters, you may have been channeling jdn. The standard cure is to finish writing the rant.) Not to be confused with jd, who is in IRC as JD or JDC.

RWHell: an IRC bot. See IRC.

Volunteer/Chat-Specific

#dw: (Previously) The Official Dreamwidth IRC Channel. Either refers to when the channel was on Mark's server (prior to March 2010) and was named #dw, or is shorthand for the current channel name.

#dreamwidth: The Official Dreamwidth IRC Channel, on irc.freenode.net, from March 2010 until official chat shifted elsewhere, though the Freenode channels remain in place. See IRC. Sometimes referred to as #dw or #-main for short. All official Dreamwidth IRC channels on Freenode actually start with #dreamwidth- although people may say #dw- instead, as it is both the usual shorthand and was the channel name on Mark's old server. Sometimes sub-channels are abbreviated further, such as # -kvetch for #dreamwidth-kvetch, # -dev for #dreamwidth-dev, and so on. Sometimes unofficial channels are actually #dw-.

$lj::will_not_work_without_steam_radiator: A popular interest, originating at a time that involved a lot of code refactoring that converted $lj methods over to generic methods, and when Rah needed an interest that started with a non-alphanumeric character to test something. A reference to http://qdb.dreamwidth.net/dw/73, which is itself a reference to http://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/index.php/Bergholt_Stuttley_Johnson

Alton Brown anal nachos: Alton Brown's perhaps unnecessarily fussy recipe for nachos. (From IRC. You really had to be there. For those who weren't there, a log: it was a bit too saucy for the QDB. Also long.)

Anna: Usually a reference to the Basshunter song "Boten Anna" (YouTube, English lyrics), about an IRC bot named Anna. LJ Support IRC had a support-bot named Anna, from whom the #dreamwidth bot Fig is descended/cloned.

axolotl: Payments silliness.

babydev: Affectionate term for a beginning developer. Generally used of developers who are new at development in general, not just new to the project. Gender-neutral. Some neophytes may wish to not be referred to as "baby-" anything; do respect their wishes.

babydev-bait: An effort-minor bug that would be an excellent introductory bug for a beginning developer. See Newbie Guide: Getting Started on Windows.

ball pit: MissKat's office will be a ball pit. (Note: this 2013 discussion pre-dates the Ball Pit of 2014's ill-fated DashCon.)

bananas: Make like a banana in the presence of ice cream and split! (Kat got bored)

bees, full of bees: A certain kind of metaphorical stingy badness. Brought to IRC mainly by jld. References include Eddie Izzard: "Covered in beeeees", the supervillain Swarm, Conan: Oprah bee giveaway sketch, Urethra bees and "That'll get you bees." See also: hivemind.

beginningcocks: In the early days of #dw, there was call for a 101-level cooking community. One person returned having created boilingwater. Another returned having created beginningcooks. Naturally, someone -- several someones -- mis-read the latter, in the same predictable way. And thus beginningcocks was created.

Book of Wholesome Hobbies (that Denise has forbidden her volunteers from taking part in): A list of ha-ha-only-serious rules for IRC denizens and volunteers.

Borg: Any of a generous number of possible monolithic large-corporate entities that certain members of channel may or may not work for. References the Star Trek villains.

botsmack: Sometimes Bit likes a good spanking. See also: botsnack.

botsnack: a treat given to any of the channel's bots. See also: botsmack.

Brad, in his dorm room, with BML: Reminiscent of the solution to a game of Clue, this occasionally is said of inherited code that has generally not been modified since its creation on LiveJournal. An Azz-ism.

bunneh: (verb) to do something (answer a question, approve an entry in a moderation queue, etc.) faster than someone else. Common uses are "Bunnehed!" or "You bunnehed me!" Compare to "Jinx!" when someone has done something at the same time.; (noun) one who is fast and likely to bunneh others often. From "quick like bunneh", through a "Wow, that was fast!" user comment on a LiveJournal support request that got an answer very fast. (Note: the division of LiveJournal volunteers into bunnehs and sharks based on which requests they prefer to answer or act on appears far less common among Dreamwidth volunteers.) (Inherited from LiveJournal Support.)

butterfinger: A candy bar or a finger that is buttered. Mark branched out into fanfiction. (From IRC.)

bus (non-essential and/or metaphorical, often seen being sent to hEll): A reference to "hit by a bus" as "unexpected tragedy", and discussions about what would happen if both Mark and Denise were to be hit by buses at the same time. Operating_Agreement; Once upon a time in the early days of the project, a prospective user (who was known to be argumentative) wanted to know what provisions were in place in case of unexpected tragedy. The provisions of the Operating Agreement were not sufficient to reassure him, and he continued to loudly demand reassurance for Quite Some Time.

Camp Permabanned: Where particularly enthusiastic/persistent spammers are sent. (An Azz-ism, and also a joke based on Camp Permafrost from Bujold's Vorkosigan series.)

Cat: Short for Support Category. (From LiveJournal support.); Public cat: support category where the requests are publicly viewable.; Private cat: support category where only a few people (staff, and possibly senior volunteers) have the privs to view and/or answer.

catgoat: freerangefatty's cat Mau nibbles on everything. Pictures of Mau

channelstaples: notional staples that are said to keep someone who keeps disconnecting from the server stapled there. (Popular in LJ IRC, and perhaps other places.)

chemla, the: a dance. Not to be confused with Chemla, who is ChemicalLace the volunteer.

chugga chugga: The sound made by a steam train chugging along. Also, the sound made by kaberett plowing through a bunch of requests. STEAM POWERED.

clocktower: This isn't used anymore.; Back in LJ Support days, mass shootings were less common and therefore less fraught to joke about. People who were really super mad about something would sometimes append "clocktower" to their name, to signify that they were at the end of their ability to cope.

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

Commit-and-Ditch pony: When someone does something that breaks stuff, and leaves everybody else with the mess, they are awarded the Commit-and-Ditch Pony. This can take the form of an actual toy pony, a pony virtual gift, or merely informing the offender that they now hold the pony. (From OpenMoko development, via LiveJournal volunteers. The original pony. Other side.)

(gone to) Costa Rica (with the Peace Corps): The default example for someone who has gone away from the internet for an extended length of time, but has not abandoned their journal despite lack of activity. From LiveJournal volunteers: long-time LJ volunteer christine did just this.

Disco: Support's private category is powered by this. (Mark started it; Kat continued it.) See Technical, Peterstein.

Drewspeak, DW-Drew (obscure things said by): dreamatdrew has a set of jargon all his own, including some unique nicknames given to assorted channel regulars. "Drew, 'splain!" is a relatively common refrain. (Feel free to ask if you don't understand something that was said.)

ELF: Enthusiastic Little Fucker. Said of particularly prolific spammers before they are sent to Camp Permabanned.

finfers: typo for "fingers" (easy on qwerty keyboard). Subject to fish jokes.

fish and whistles: A more derisive variant of "bells and whistles", although it is probably useful to note that the power user is probably talking about "chrome". Specifically refers to features requested by users that would play out badly if implemented. (Originates from a mock flamewar in LiveJournal news, and references the classic IRC concept of trouting.)

football field: Azz is probably looking for/putting on/turning on/dropping her cellphone headset. (Azz lives in a Faraday cage. Azz talks on her cellphone to MissKat a lot.)

Frank: LiveJournal's goat mascot.

Fred: a more friendly name for PubSubHubbub (see Technical).

fruit loops: Appropriate-answer silliness.; [17:31] * ysobel dies giggling. you know, one of these days I really AM going to have to answer a request with gibberish; [17:31] <MissKat> Even if she's like "and then the pink sparkley ponies will come and delete all your entries and replace them with froot loops!" I figure it's isa and she must know what she's talking about.; [17:31] <domtheknight> OMG PINK SPARKLY PONIES; [17:31] <domtheknight> FRUIT LOOPS; (from IRC)

gecko: Since Drew can't teleport very well, he sends a gecko to take care of his people.

Glitterhoof the Magic Fix Pony: mark, by way of john.

Goat: Usually a reference to a legacy LiveJournal Support bot of that name. Goat reported on the current open support requests in a way similar to Anna, but with a different format. The command "Fig, be Goat" makes Fig give the report using Goat formatting. Goat made insulting comments to people who did not remember the syntax for his commands. Goat was probably named after LiveJournal's mascot, Frank the Goat.

going to the wiki: If you visit http://wiki.dreamwidth.net you see this message before it redirects to http://wiki.dreamwidth.net/notes/Main_Page. It has therefore become customary to announce "Going to the wiki!" in varying stages of capslock upon going to the wiki (to look up something or edit). (Popularized on IRC.)

Green: a technical support question without an answer (or without an answer that has been reviewed and approved by senior support). Green is usually referred to numerically ("How much green?" "10."), which refers to the number of green requests. It can also be referred to in relative terms ("Lots.") or figurative ("Enough to fill a swimming pool!"). The support category "General/Unknown", commonly referred to as "G/Unk", spawned the phrase "green gunk", or "lime slime". (From LiveJournal support, based on the color coding of the Support system's user interface, which shows requests that are awaiting an approved response with a green background in the list of support requests.)

hEll, RWHell, Random Word hEll: An IRC bot in #dreamwidth and #dreamwidth-kvetch.; One sends an item to hEll. hEll sneaks out a scaly hand and grabs the item. hEll's depths emit a sudden roar as it expels a previously entered item. Sometimes, hEll's depths continue to roar as it expels a second previously entered item. (Occasionally, hEll will burp and not expel any other items.); hEll is neither endothermic nor exothermic, but maintains a fairly constant balance of items entered to items ejected. The rumor that hEll is sentient is just that, a rumor. (We hope.); Read the origin story of Random Word Hell! And then one day Rah mentioned the bot in #dw, and Sophie got coding, and suddenly there was hEll. And then at the time of the server move, hEll became RWHell.

hooker: Crocheter: a person who works with a crochet hook. A Drew-ism.

HTH HAND: Hope This Helps, Have A Nice Day. Inherited from LiveJournal Support. A phrase that was used as a bad example: support answers were generally unsigned, and the specific phrase "hope this helps" implied some doubt that it might help at all. Picked up for sarcastic use to friends by some LJ volunteers.

kill you in the morning: A Princess Bride reference. What else do you expect from the Dread Pirate Rah-berts?

kiwi: Sometimes it's really hard to type 'wiki' correctly on the first try.

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.)

mango, odd references to: at one point Azz said "what the mango-shitting fuck" as a random intensifier to "what the fuck". This caught on with a few people.

Mart bug death: Someone proposes something tiny and specialized, then Mart (a notable architecture astronaut) generalized it to the abstract case and said "we should do it this way so it can be used for this other stuff", turning it from a five-minute fix to a five-month fix. Then (the death part) whoever came along who could do the five-minute fix, but not the five-month fix, would look at it and go "screw this" and never do it. There were approximately four people who could do the five-month version, so it would never get done, because they had a gazillion five-month projects. (From LiveJournal development, seen in the wild mentioned by mart in '04.)

mean hat: When a delegate ops up and tells everyone to stop talking by muting #dreamwidth. This is usually done to give people time to cool down after a particularly argumentative time. Usually, MissKat wears the mean hat on top of her tact hat.

minion: Assistant or direct report. (I think Rah started saying she had minions, asking for minions to do various tasks, calling people minions, and/or people started calling themselves Rah's minions?)

MrsJ: People who can handle staff issues (see Staff). (DW Support shorthand.) Also, the regular communication sent from Support to staff listing issues that only members of MrsJ can handle.

Muppet: If people start calling Mark "Muppet", it's MissKat's fault.

nagios: In IRC, nick nagios (now Alertsy after the Freenode server move) is the monitoring bot. Various people will change their nicks to _nagios_ or similar variations to make jokes about the bot. History of the HEY MARK HEY MARK HEY MARK jokes. See Technical for more information.

nethic: Internet hiccup. Often accompanied by a pingout. Someone who had an internet hiccup probably missed the last several lines of chat.

notwork, nyetwork: The network in geekosaur's motel-of-residence sort of doesn't. Work, that is. It is built on fail hardware that is not watertight enough to stand up to local rain, and additionally has absurdly bad topology and hilariously bad oversaturation on certain access points. Perhaps counter-intuitively, "excess flood" disconnections point to a notwork failure, not IRC client misbehavior.

octobot (image): The github account's default userpic is a shadowy/silhouetted dream octobot, with the head of a robot and the tentacles of an octopus, emblazoned with the red Dreamwidth swirl on its front. This account posts code changes to changelog. The tentacles are in honor of Github.com's Octocat (octopus+cat) mascot. The robot head is because the github is a bot.

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

pillowfort: refers to the secret hiding place of the Triumvirate + pony. As of sometime in late 2018, this may also refer to the social media site.

plumbing not compatible: a reference to a somewhat inappropriate conversation about orientation between Rah and Abe. Often accompanied by little hand gestures.

qdb: Quotes Database, a collection of particularly funny and/or memorable quotes uttered in various Dreamwidth IRC channels. This is maintained by sophie. (The Dreamwidth QDB was previously hosted on the same server as the LiveJournal volunteer IRC QDB (the original has gone down, but there is a mirror), which also contains quotes from some staff and volunteers' shared history.)

Rahversation: refers to a conversation involving Rah (denise). Coined by ysobel

re-inventing the weasel: Like re-inventing the wheel, but with more ferrets.

SKULLBUTT THE TORMENTOR: Once upon a time, an underwear designer put a flaming skull on the front and back of a pair of briefs. (Ed Hardy. 2 Sword Skull.) Assorted #dw and #dw_nsfw people in and around amusing_underwear pointed and laughed. mayerman coined the name, and remark elevated it into a catchphrase.

SNH, Still Needs Help: A support request that has already received at least one answer, but the user has "regreened" (indicated that they still need help, moving it from "answered, awaiting close", to "green"), and has replied with a follow-up question or more information.

Speaking of <x>, hello <y>: You may be greeted this way upon entering IRC. Likely as not, <x> has nothing to do with you; it was just the topic the moment before you entered. (This greeting habit was more prevalent in LJ volunteer IRC but still persists, although it seems to be dying.)

spider: Since Drew can't teleport very well, the spider is his enforcer, like when people *cough*Inoru*cough* need to go to bed but aren't.

spite-driven development: The point at which it is easier to just reprogram the goddamn thing than deal with that issue one more goddamn time.; Extends an existing feud into feature space. "They laughed at me in university, those fools: said my code would never amount to anything! Ha! I'll show them! I'll show them all!" (Bonus points are awarded if those fools from university now have to eat crow by using the feature.)

stekpanna: Swedish: skillet, frying pan. In Drewspeak, this is usually short for the Swedish "domedagengjutjärnstekpanna", which translates to "cast-iron skillet of doom". It is more of a weapon than a cooking implement. Here's an example of a frying pan actually wielded as one (not in Sweden).

teapatty, *|teapatty: Someone making reference to "teapatty" or changing their IRC nick to incorporate "teapatty" is either drunk or pretending not to be. At one point Wyn attempted to say "Not drunk, repeat, not drunk." Unfortunately for them, they were drunk enough that it came out "Not drunk, teapatty, not drunk." (From LiveJournal Support IRC.)

Tits Against the RTE: References a campaign to get the Rich Text Editor removed (or vastly improved) at LiveJournal during tupshin's time there.

Triumvirate, The: refers to the original support wranglers: Domtheknight (The Bug-Squashing Boots), zarhooie (The Tact Hat) and chemicallace (The All-Purpose Boa). The Triumvirate + Pony is the Triumvirate with the addition of the Froot Loop Pony, also known as ysobel.

twix: A candy bar, or a play on words involving "twixt". Mark branched out into fanfiction. (From IRC.)

voluntold: A portmanteau of "volunteer" and "told". The natural result of not having enough to do when around Rah, resulting in "... and when I came to, I realized that I'd just completed three bugs and was in charge of a project" type situations.

wgw, what goes where: A document detailing how (what department and process) handles a support request of any given type. (From LiveJournal support.) What Goes Where

worst username evar: David Recordon daveman692. Refers to a LiveJournal ad for rename tokens that featured his username. (From LJ.)

xb95: Once upon a time, a very young mark made "World War III" themed wargames; the XB-95 was a bomber.

🍆, eggplant, purple pickle: In the Atari 2600 game Fast Food, when you eat a purple pickle you get "a truly bizarre electronic squonk-crunch". When Nick finds the weird things in the codebase, he emits the noise and collects an eggplant.; See also aubergine on Emojipedia.

Emoticons

Dreamwidth IRC does not have very many non-standard emoticons in frequent use. There are occasional discussions where different non-standard emoticons are created, proposed, or used, but these are infrequent, and the same weird emoticon is rarely used twice. For example, [||||||| 8] \o/ might represent a bus and an alarmed pedestrian, but this is rarely seen in actual chat.

User or community: (), @, and <^> are variously used to denote a user or community in text-only environments like IRC.; ()zorkian - user ; ()omnomnom - community (regular); @mark - user (official Dreamwidth user, or Twitter-style direct address for any DW user or IRC nick - Bugsy objects to '@' starting lines, however); @dw_news - community (official); sometimes used for regular communities; <^>lj_support - (usually) LiveJournal community; sometimes used for Dreamwidth community

*: Surrounding a phrase, can indicate action or emotion, or emphasis: *grin*, *hugs*, "I *really* like it".

... or ... (something): user is (momentarily) speechless. Sometimes repeated or lengthened to indicate duration or intensity of speechlessness.

. o O (something): Thought bubble, thinking but not saying.

<_<, >_>: Eyes looking to the left or right and mouth. Sometimes used to indicate untrustworthiness of a statement ("I have no idea who ate the last piece of cake >_>").

>_<: Eyes tightly closed and frown. Disgust, self-deprecation, annoyance.

:|a: Eyes, a flat mouth, and chin-scratching. Deep thought of some description.

o/, \o: Head with single (right or left) arm raised (waving, in greeting, or farewell).; Also indicates specific stitches in lace patterns, when we go all fiber arts.

\o/: Head with two upraised arms: arms in the air cheering (genuine or sarcastic: "I just got a promotion \o/", "my toaster is on fire \o/"); enthusiastic greeting; arms in the air in confusion or panic, arms up over your head in water (drowning).

\o?: common typographical error for \o/; (rare) scratching head in confusion.

o7: a salute

/o\: Arms protecting head, hands clutching head, or bucket on head.

~~\o/~~: Waving (head with arms raised and motion squiggles) or drowning (head with arms raised and waves of water).; Strong armpit odor (rarely).

*\o/*: Head with two upraised arms and pompoms: cheering.

*****\*o/: Head with two upraised arms and a line of asterisks: running around, either with head on fire, or waving a feather boa. (Inherited from LiveJournal volunteer IRC.)

:U, 8U, :V: 3/4 profile face with mouth open

Other Emoticon Resources

Wikipedia list of emoticons

Other Resources

Cultures

Fanlore fandom wiki: Information on selected public forms of fannish expression, in convenient wiki format. From the Organization for Transformative Works folks.
Geek Feminism wiki: A resource for and about women and people who are perceived as women in geek communities.

Jargon

Jargon File: Many words from a gentler, more precise era of technology, although some are still in use today.
LiveJournal Support jargon (archive.org mirror): there is some overlap of vocabulary due to the number of volunteers and IRC inhabitants who are former or current LiveJournal volunteers.
Know Your Meme: Various bits of internet culture, sometimes the sort you'd find in a petri dish.
Urban Dictionary: Let the reader beware. (Often not safe for work -- or for other things, for that matter.)
Knitting Definitions at Sassy Does It
Glossary: Ravelry and Knit and Crochet Lingo and Acronyms (more extensive, however login is required, although accounts are free)

QDBs

QDB stands for "Quotes Database".

Dreamwidth IRC QDB: A collection of quotes from Dreamwidth's IRC channels
metaquotes: Hilarity from around Dreamwidth, after the example of metaquotes
LiveJournal Support QDB: Contains many quotes from the shared past of volunteers who originated in LiveJournal volunteer culture. (Note: This is a mirror hosted by idonotlikepeas, as the original is gone, likely forever.)
bash.org: A much larger, multi-network IRC quotes database. Contains notably uncensored language and potentially offensive content.
http://qdb.us/: Another QDB, a fork of the same source file as bash.org

Miscellaneous

IMDb: the Internet Movie Database, with more information than you knew you needed to know about movies, TV shows, actors, directors, plots, and more.
Wikipedia: A user-updated encyclopedia of everything notable in the world. Not generally accepted for academic research, nor updated frequently enough for current events, but good for background reading, general overviews, and a list of preliminary sources for proper research.
Freebase: an open database of variously useful information. Now owned by Google.

Common Jargon

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