Terminology

This is an overview of terminology used in technical documentation for Wikimedia Foundation infrastructure and software.

This list is meant to be a reference guide for finding the canonical or preferred words to convey a certain concept. Avoid creating additional entries for an already listed concept. Avoid listing abbrevations unless recommended for use in writing to the general public.

C

• cluster: a group of servers with a common purpose. For example: "text" Varnish cluster, "jobrunner" appserver cluster. Note that a cluster may span multiple DCs.
  • Avoid "server group", which was previously used interchangeably with cluster, when "cluster" still referred to a data center.)

D

• data center (or DC): a physical location in which server racks reside, like the Eqiad data center. This includes both core services and cache PoPs. (Avoid "site" or "cluster".)
• developer account (or Wikimedia developer account): an account used by community members or staff for services when developing, managing, and monitoring software and infrastructure at Wikimedia Foundation. This includes Gerrit, Phabricator and Toolforge, as well as NDA-restricted apps like Logstash, Superset, and Netbox.
  • Avoid "Gerrit/LDAP/Wikitech/Labs account".
  • Avoid "Phabricator account", as Phabricator also supports Wikimedia Unified Login.
• directory: a file system structure in which files are stored. For example: TMPDIR or $wgExtensionDirectory.
  • Avoid "path", "folder" or "address".

F

• file path: the absolute path on the file system to a particular file or directory.

G

• global account (or Wikimedia global account): an account with Wikimedia Unified Login as created from any public Wikimedia Foundation wiki.
  • Avoid "Wikipedia/Meta-Wiki/Commons/Wikidata" account.
  • Avoid "MediaWiki account" or "CentralAuth account", unless writing about how the login system itself works.
  • Avoid "SUL" as this may lack context and incurs a needless abbrevation burden, unless writing about specific technical initiatives such as the 2007 SUL transition from local to global accounts, the 2013 SUL2 project (T48901), or the 2023 SUL3 project (T348388).

M

• mediawiki.org: the official website for the MediaWiki software.
  • Avoid "MediaWiki", "MediaWiki.org" "Mediawiki.org", or "www.mediawiki.org" when referring to the website.

N

• Nova: the OpenStack software component that powers the Cloud VPS virtualisation cluster. "Nova Resource" is a general term for a bunch of things (including instances); one of those things happens to be projects.

P

• path: part of a URL starting from the slash after a host and optional port, until the end or any query string or hash fragment. For example: $wgExtensionAssetsPath. (Avoid "folder" or "directory".)
• point of presence (or PoP): a data center that caches content as close to our users as possible. See also: CDN.
• Puppet: a server configuration system used in production and in Cloud VPS. When Cloud VPS instances are created, they build themselves according to a set of rules defined by puppet (such as manifests, template, and files). Learn more on docs.puppetlabs.com
• Puppet groups: a collection of puppet variables and classes available for use with instances.

R

• region: the physical data center where a Cloud VPS instance is hosted. For example if a Cloud VPS instance is in the "eqiad" region, it is runnning on one of the OpenStack virtualization hosts in the Eqiad data center.

T

• Toolforge: the hosting environment provided by Wikimedia Cloud Services.
  • Avoid "ToolForge" or "Tool forge".
• translatewiki.net: the web-based translation platform used by MediaWiki and other Wikimedia software. Read more about translatewiki.net on Wikipedia.
  • Avoid "Translatewiki", "TranslateWiki", or "TranslateWiki.net".

W

• Wikimedia Unified Login: the login system used on Wikimedia wikis, including Wikipedia and its sister projects, meta.wikimedia.org, mediawiki.org, and other public WMF wikis. Accounts in this system are known as global accounts.
  • Avoid "CentralAuth", unless specifically describing how the MediaWiki software and the CentralAuth extension work.

See also

• SRE/Infrastructure naming conventions, for naming of production infrastructure.
• Glossary on Meta-Wiki, for terms used within the wider Wikimedia movement.
• Inclusive language on mediawiki.org, on words to avoid.
• Manual:Glossary on mediawiki.org, for terms used within the MediaWiki software.
• Documentation/Style guide on mediawiki.org, about technical documentation more broadly.