JargonWiki:About
From JargonWiki
JargonWiki is a free online repository of jargon that anyone can edit.
Contents |
Credits
JargonWiki was founded in 2006 by Charles File to address a personal need for another doomed pet project to sink massive amounts of otherwise perfectly useful time into.
JargonWiki is powered by the MediaWiki platform, running on a LAMP-based machine.
JargonWiki also makes use of several extensions to the MediaWiki software platform:
- UserName BlackList v1.6, by Rob Church.
- Dynamic Category Map, by Zeng Ji.
- Special User Score v1.1, by Mathias Feindt.
- Dynamic Page List v1.6.0, by IlyaHaykinson, Unendlich, Dangerville, and Algorithmix.
- Google Analytics Integration v1.2, by Tim Laqua.
- String Functions v 2.0, by Ross McClure and Juraj Simlovic.
- Linked Image v0.3, by Alexander Kraus and Alan Trick.
- Cite, by Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason.
- Include v4, by Noah Spurrier.
- Include Article v0.1, by Markus Rückerl.
JargonWiki also utilizes several additional pieces of software:
- BulkPageCreator v1.1, by Jonathan Cutrer, with some minor modifications by Charlie File.
- BulkPageCreator uses the Snoopy Class Library, by Andrei Zmievski, Gene Wood, and Monte Ohrt. Snoopy is a PHP class that simulates a web browser. It automates the task of retrieving web page content and posting forms, for example.
- Jargon2Wiki v0.2, by Charles File, an embarassingly piss poor parser that was used to convert the 2,300+ articles in the text version of the Jargon File to a format readable by BulkPageCreator and MediaWiki.
Much of the hacker jargon that appears on this site is shamelessly lifted verbatim from The Jargon File, a public domain document of hacker jargon, which is currently stewarded by Eric S. Raymond. Content taken from The Jargon File is attributed to its source in each case. Pages containing content taken from The Jargon File are also licensed as being in the public domain, including any contributions JargonWiki users make to them. Users who edit pages that contain content taken from The Jargon File agree to dedicate their work on such pages to the public domain.
About
JargonWiki is the actualization of a perceived need for an online compendium of jargon. Increasingly jargon has come to fill and even dominate the national discourse, and as such it was deemed useful to create a place where the ever more numerous and obscure pieces of linguistic conceit could be translated into plain English.
Originally, the idea was to create a dictionary of postmodern jargon in order to help those students suffering through modern education in the humanities, but it has been helpfully pointed out that this has already been done. Upon entree into the business world, it became clear to this site's original author that there was a vast sea of jargon out there, far more than enough to put the paltry amount bandied about with self-satisfied flair in the academy to bed for the night. Thus: JargonWiki.
Founder's Comment: Ideals
What I'd like for this site to be is an actually useful modern dictionary. Modern language has become so full of catch-phrases, buzzwords, and jargon, that deciphering it with a dictionary is often impossible. You need the right tool for any job, and increasingly dictionaries and encyclopedias are the wrong ones.
- When your boss discusses "business process sourcing," what does he mean?
- When your art professor starts talking about "space" versus "place," what is that about?
These are the kind of questions the JargonWiki seeks to answer, and they are simply not answers you can find in a dictionary, nor an encyclopedia. The reason: the true meaning of these terms is made primarily available to those that use and hear them. Jargon is more than anything else an intersubjective experience, a mode of communication developed by members of an in-group who discuss with routine indifference topics that to the outsider would seem obscure or esoteric. In other words, one defining characteristic of jargon is the large amount of connotative information it carries: "I am expert enough to know about this," "I am a member of the group that uses this term," "I don't want people who aren't in our group to understand what I'm saying right now," for just a few examples. Jargon is, therefore and by necessity, perhaps the second most personal and intimate form of verbal communication there is. (The first - pillow talk - might even be termed, and I think accurately, "lover's jargon." In other words, jargon for whom the in-group with knowledge of its referents is a single couple.)
The highly subjective and connotative nature of the information conveyed by jargon has no place in an encyclopedia or dictionary, and therefore is precisely the kind of information that JargonWiki was built to contain.
Humor and Tone
Let's be honest: Alot of jargon is bullshit made up by people to make themselves sound smarter than they are. Mocking such hubristic vanity has always been an exceedingly noble pursuit, and was in no small measure a part of the inspiration for this site. Furthermore, much slang-y jargon - especially the medical and military kind, for instance - tends to be both quite humorous and quite dark.
All types of levity and drollery are therefore well encouraged.
JargonWiki Copyright Policy
Unless otherwise indicated, all content on this site is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike License and is the property of its original author, under the stipulations of that license. User contributions to this site, therefore, remain the property of the users that submit it.
There are some exceptions to this general policy. See the Project copyright information page for details.
Site Use Policy
Repeated, purely destructive, or offensive vandalism will result in your username and IP being permanently banned from this site. See the project use policy page for more details.
