Stack Exchange Glossary - Dictionary of Commonly-Used Terms

Question

What are the common phrases, words, abbreviations that are used on Stack Overflow, Server Fault, Super User, Meta Stack Overflow, and the other Stack Exchange sites?

This is meant to be a very quick overview, not an in-depth tutorial. When considering whether a term ought to be included, please use this test:

New user comes in and posts on day 1. What terminology or jargon are they likely to run into (comments, support, system messages, etc.) that cannot be understood from the context without prior experience with the site (that is, clear only if known). For example: "This is a dupe. Flag a diamond mod to close or migrate to SU." Huh? Can these instruction be made clear from the glossary? Is it clear for those for whom English is a second language?

Please:

Edit the existing answer
Insert relevant links to more detailed information on the term/phrase/abbreviation
Add only factual information
Keep it very, very brief, terse, and to the point
Delete your own comments once they become irrelevant (integrated into the glossary)
Use the Edit Summary box to note reasons for your edit, not comments

Please avoid:

Opinion
Using abbreviations, terms, and phrases inside a description
Unverified information
Uncommon terms, abbreviations, phrases
Long descriptions
Unnecessary detail - link to the relevant FAQ instead
Citations or examples of usage
Inside jokes that are not common on all of the trilogy (see meme thread for those)
Common Internet jargon (that is, IMHO, TLDR, RTFM, etc.) unless usage here differs significantly

Recurring discussion:

While the experiment to keep meta-discussion in the comments is going well (that is, deleting them once consensus is reached) it is clear that some discussions will be recurring, and we'll have to keep a record around so people new to the glossary can understand the consensus already reached.

Add a new answer if you believe a new issue is likely to come up repeatedly. For instance, discussion about what terms to include, whether the glossary should be broken up to make linking easier, or formatting issues might be best discussed in new answer/comment posts.

0-9, A-M
N-Z

Return to FAQ index

i propose this glossary needs a big boost, and one answer per letter ↔ one letter per answer (0~9 as single answer seems fine). users deserve to be able to give links to a term without fumbling in the diverse faqs to provided. likewise users deserve to have a minimum action lookup when directed here. this page will need some protection too. — ocæon, Commented Apr 3, 2019 at 16:05
Why isn't CoC (code of conduct) included? Is it "common Internet jargon"? — This_is_NOT_a_forum, Commented Oct 6, 2019 at 2:22
I have just seen this for the first time. It is fantastic. Is this information readily available to users (e g. from the sidebar)? (As I say, I haven't seen it.) If not, why on earth not? — MandyShaw, Commented Oct 6, 2019 at 12:49
@MandyShaw I totally agree, this should be much more prominent, for example available on the help center. — GhostCat, Commented Jan 2, 2020 at 11:27

204 revs, 83 users 30% unknown · Accepted Answer · 2024-04-01 08:57:52Z

0-9, A-M (N-Z)

2k User

See: Editor

3k User

See: Closer

10ker, 10k User

Refers to users who have surpassed 10,000 reputation which gives them access to moderation tools. While 10k users have access to moderator reports and notifications, generally only ♦ diamond moderators can perform many moderator-level functions. These 10k users are still sometimes called "moderators". Often used next to a link to a deleted post, as 10k users can see deleted content.

10k Tools

Refers to the moderation tools that 10k Users have

See: 10ker, 10k User

20k User

Refers to users who have surpassed 20,000 reputation, which gives them enhanced delete vote privileges. Often used with a request to delete a post to indicate only 20k users can do so.

Accept Rate

The percentage of a user's questions which the user has marked an answer as accepted. Some exclusions apply. The accept rate will no longer be displayed. (Though it can be found using this query.)

Accepted Answer

The answer selected by a question's author as "most helpful". Accepted answers are marked with a green check mark next to the answer. On a number of sites accepted answers appear at the top of the answer list, unless they are self-answers. On the other sites accepted answers are sorted in the same way as other answers (this is called unpinning the accepted answer), however the checkmark is still shown.

See: How does accepting an answer work? and Overview of pinning settings per site.

Account, User account

The behind-the-scenes network account that links all the per-site user profiles together. This can be seen here (if you're logged in) and can't be deleted. Once all per-site profiles of a user are deleted, the network account will be automatically deleted within 24 hours.

Answer Ban

See: Post Ban

API

The public API present on all Stack Exchange sites that provides access to question, answer, comment, and user data. You can find more information about the API on StackApps.

Atwood

See: Jeff Atwood

Badges

Part of the Stack Exchange reward system. While reputation is generally awarded through the voting system, badges reward other types of participation, achievements, and behaviors. The list of Stack Exchange badges with descriptions and How do Badges work?.

See: Reputation

Ban, Chat Ban

Refers to the automatic question bans and answer bans and both automated and manual editing and reviewing bans, which prevent you from doing those activities only (on a specific site) and chat bans (which affect all chat rooms under the same domain). Do not confuse with suspension, which is a different thing.

See: Penalty box, Post Ban

Bookmarks

Formerly favorites; a list of questions that you have bookmarked by clicking the bookmark icon underneath the voting controls for each question. Your bookmarks are listed on your profile page on the site and on your network profile.

Bounty

An amount of reputation which can be added to a question as a bonus and is awarded manually by the bounty starter. If the bounty is not awarded within 7 days + 24 hours, half the bounty amount will be awarded to the highest voted answer that has 2+ votes. It pushes the post to the featured tab sitename.stackexchange.com/?tab=featured for 7 days and visually distinguish it from other posts. Possible bounty amounts are 50, 100, 150, 200, 250, 300, 350, 400, 450 and 500.

Burninate

Used as a synonym for deleting a tag. A burninated tag may not necessarily be blacklisted. See The true meaning of Burninate and The many memes of Meta: Burninate.

Cache, Server Cache, Caching

Storing dynamic data in static form to reduce load on server and get faster load time of pages. More technical details here.

Canonical

One question with one or more high quality (often authorative) answers which serves to answer the most common (sub)questions about a certain topic. Other questions about the same topic can then be closed as a duplicate of this question, increasing the maintainability. Example: What is a NullPointerException, and how do I fix it?

CAPTCHA

A mechanism that prevents bots from participating. Some human behavior can look robotic to the system (extremely fast edits / posts, for example), and will occasionally trigger the CAPTCHA. This is the checkbox / kittens CAPTCHA now. Example: https://stackoverflow.com/nocaptcha

Child-Meta

A child-meta is the meta site attached to a specific Q&A site.

For example: meta.stackoverflow.com is the child-meta of stackoverflow.com.

See Also: Meta

Close, Closed, CV, CVer

A question where no new answers are accepted. Community members with more than 3,000 reputation can vote to close a question if, for a variety or reasons, it doesn't fit the site's requirements. Five close votes closes a question. Users may only vote once to close each question. CV = Close Vote. CVer = Close Voter. See: Reopen

Closer

Community member with 3,000 or more reputation. Has the ability to vote to close questions based on criteria set forth in the FAQ.

Comments

Comments can be added to a question or answer to communicate information that is not necessarily appropriate for the question or answer itself (asking for clarification, for example).

Community

Or site. One distinct part of the SE network of sites, dedicated to one topic. Every site stands on its own and determines their on-topic and off-topic subjects. List of all sites/communities.

Community Manager, CM, Community Team

They watch the various and sundry meta sites, answer questions, address or escalate requests and provide guidance in the use of the site's tools.

See: Who is on the Community Management Team, and what does it do?

Community User

An automated script who helps keep the site clean. See also The Community user's profile page and Who is the Community user?

Community Wiki, Wiki, CW

A question or answer that can be edited by any community members having 100 reputation or more. Questions and answers marked CW prevent users from receiving any reputation from upvotes or losing reputation from downvotes. The community user "owns" this rep.

Creative Commons Data Dump

A database export containing the CC-licensed data from each of the sites. The database contains the posts, comments, votes, badges, and user data (“sanitized” to protect privacy by removing all personally identifiable information). Blog: Stack Overflow Creative Commons Data Dump

Creative Commons License, CC license

The license under which all contributed content is placed. More details on the SO blog.

CV, CVer

Close Vote, Close Voter. See: Close

CW

See: Community Wiki

Data Dump

See: Creative Commons Data Dump

Delete, Deleted

A question or answer that has been marked as deleted by a moderator, or voted to be deleted by users with at least 10,000 reputation points. Deleted posts remain visible to moderators and 10k users.

Diamond Mod[erator], Diamond User, Diamond

The name often used for moderators in the Stack Exchange network because of the small ♦ symbol next to their name on all posts / comments / chat messages.

See Also: Moderator

Draft

Automatically saved copy of a post that wasn't yet submitted. Full details here.

Dupe, Duplicate

A question which has been asked before and already has an answer. Duplicates are discouraged - ideally all the best answers for a given issue or problem can be found in one question. Community members with more than 3,000 reputation can vote to close duplicate questions.

Dupehammer

A privilege of users with a gold badge for specific tags. They can mark questions currently tagged with one of their gold badge tags as duplicate (see Dupe, Duplicate) with a single vote, unless they first participated in editing the tags.

DV

Delete vote. See: Delete

Editor

Community member with 2,000 or more reputation. Has the ability to edit any unlocked post on the site, even if they are not community wiki.

Edit War, Rollback War

This is where two or more users continually edit, or rollback a post to undo each other's actions. This is one of the reasons for a moderator to lock a post.

Fastest Gun in the West

The tendency to reply to a question as quickly as possible, often motivated by hunger for reputation points.

FAQ, Frequently Asked Questions

While the "faq" generally refers to the specific "faq document" linked at the top of each site, "faq" can also refer to any meta post linked with the moderator tag faq. The Official FAQ is a community-moderated post which attempts to annotate the features and behaviors of all Stack Exchange sites in one central location.

Favorite Tags

Setting a tag as favorite causes all questions with these tags to be highlighted a different color in your questions lists.

Formerly called 'Interesting tag'

Favorites

See Bookmarks

Feature Flag

A developer-accessible flag that enables specific features on a particular site.

"Generic term for "some bit, somewhere, that controls whether some code is actually on". Teams specific things (like Articles), Site specific things (like MathJax), or alpha-y things (like the new editor) are being feature flags. – Kevin Montrose ♦ 5 mins ago".

Feature request

A request for a new feature for one or more Stack Exchange sites. On meta sites, the corresponding tag is feature-request.

Featured

See Bounty

FGITW

See Fastest Gun in the West

FHRC

Free-Hand Red Circle

Flags

Posts with serious problems can be flagged for moderator attention, being offensive, or containing spam. Any post receiving six offensive or spam flags within a four-day period is automatically deleted.

You generally only flag for moderator attention to ask moderators to do something that you don't have the ability to do (e.g. Making the post Community Wiki).

Flair

Refers to a small banner associated with a user's account, displaying their user name, reputation, badge count, and gravatar. Generally seen next to the authorship of a post but can also be embedded in an external website as a token of your membership and participation on any of the Stack Exchange sites. The term flair is from the 1999 film Office Space, and used in the Stack Overflow podcast, episode 54, at 5 min 48 secs.

Example: https://stackoverflow.com/users/flair/1

See: Now Earn Valuable Flair!.

FR

See: Feature request

Gimmeh Teh Codez

What Help Vampires are thought to say.

Graduated Site

A Stack Exchange site available to the whole internet. Rarely, requires registration to post questions. Privileges are the highest reputation levels. Sometimes will have a top level domain (see Stack Overflow, Super User, Server Fault, Ask Ubuntu).

See: Public Beta, Graduated Site

Gravatar

Gravatar (an abbreviation of globally recognized avatar) is a service for providing globally-unique avatars based on the md5 hash. You can change your image to a custom profile at the above address. By default Stack Exchange uses the identicon: a geometric pattern based on an email hash, or (if you are signed up to gravatar) your chosen image. All deleted user accounts use the mystery-man, which is a simple, cartoon-style silhouetted outline of a person.

Hat, Hats

See: Winter Bash

Help Vampire [Do not use]

A user who shows little or no effort to solve their immediate problem, instead posting a question hoping that someone will quickly jump in and post a working solution to their problem.

HNQ

Hot Network Questions; automatically selected recent questions from the Stack Exchange network. They are shown in the right-hand panel in the desktop version of the site.

Ignored Tags

Tags that you specify as ignored tags cause all questions with these tags to be filtered out of your questions list, either by deemphasizing them or (at your option) removing them.

Jeff Atwood

Jeff Atwood is a co-founder of Stack Exchange Inc. (previously known as Stack Overflow Internet Services, inc.), which is the company that runs Stack Overflow, Server Fault, Super User and other Q&A sites in the Stack Exchange network. As of the 1st of March 2012, Jeff has left the day-to-day operations of Stack Exchange. For a long time until October 2017, he was still present on many sites and acted in a moderator role from time to time. In October 2017, he retired his moderator privileges and is no longer active on Stack Exchange.

Joel Spolsky

Joel Spolsky is a co-founder and former CEO of Stack Exchange Inc. (previously known as Stack Overflow Internet Services, inc.), which is the company that runs Stack Overflow, Server Fault, Super User and other Q&A sites in the Stack Exchange network.

Jon Skeet

Jon Skeet is the user who currently has the highest reputation overall on Stack Overflow. See also Jon Skeet facts.

Link Only, LO

A low quality answer consisting of link that points to the answer. See Your answer is in another castle: when is an answer not an answer?

Locked

A moderator can "lock" a post where it can no longer be edited, voted or commented upon, closed or re-opened. If a question is locked (except for historical significance), no new answers can be submitted, and any of the (unlocked) answers can still be edited (but no suggested edits can be submitted) and voted upon. See What is a "locked" post?. Questions locked for historical significance have all of their answers locked, the vote arrows removed altogether, and the option to flag removed, and (on main sites) do not ordinarily show up in search results.

LQP

Low-Quality Posts; one of the review queues.

See What are the criteria for low quality posts?

Markdown

Markdown is the text format used to style posts. Wikipedia entry, full reference.

MCVE

MCVE refers to a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable Example.

Merge

Although duplicate questions are generally merely closed, sometimes a moderator will merge the answers from the duplicate question into the original question, and lock the duplicate, if the answers on the duplicate make perfect sense on the original. The original question will now contain both the original answers and the new answers from the duplicate.

Minimal, Reproducible Example

See: MCVE.

Min-reprex

See: MCVE

Meta SE

See: Meta Stack Exchange

Meta Stack Exchange

The Meta Stack Exchange website (this site). A place to discuss matters concerning the whole Stack Exchange network. Especially for reporting network wide bugs and request features. Originally, the site used to be called Meta Stack Overflow and accepted questions specific to Stack Overflow in addition to network-related questions, but Meta Stack Overflow was later established as a separate per-site meta.

See Also: Meta

Meta Stack Overflow

The Meta Stack Overflow website. A place to discuss issues common to Stack Overflow. This per-site meta was recently established (under the current state); prior to that, this referred to Meta Stack Exchange, which was at the time called Meta Stack Overflow.

Migration

Occurs when a question is deemed more appropriate for one of the other sites in the Stack Exchange network, and five users vote to close the question as "off-topic because..." and then selected "This question belongs on another site in the Stack Exchange network." The question (and all of its answers) are copied to the new site, and the original question is closed. There is a limited list for each site - and some sites only have their meta as a migration option.

Moderator, Mod, Diamond User

A Stack Exchange user that has been elected and has additional powers to oversee a site. They can merge questions, do mass-re-tagging, and have other fun powers. They are distinguishable by the ♦ after their names on all posts / comments / chat messages and on their profile. SE employees also have the ♦ and moderator powers across all sites. This is also sometimes used to refer to 10k+ users, who have certain moderation privileges.

MRE

Minimal Reproducible Answer - See: MCVE

MSE

See: Meta Stack Exchange. (Might also mean Mathematics Stack Exchange)

MSO

See: Meta Stack Overflow

MVCE

Minimal Verifiable Complete Example - See: MCVE

MWE

Minimal Working Example - See: MCVE

N-Z (0-9, A-M)

Not an answer, NAA

One of the items in the flag dialog for an answer on a Stack Exchange site.

NARQ

See: Not a real Question

NATO

New Answers To Old questions more than 30 days old. 10K Reputation moderation tool primary used to find NAA

NC

See: Not Constructive

Not a real Question, NARQ

Formerly one of the items in the close dialog for a question on a Stack Exchange site. Seen in older meta posts.

See: Close

Not Constructive

Formerly one of the items in the close dialog for a question on a Stack Exchange site. Seen in older meta posts.

See: Close

NLN

See: No longer needed

No longer needed

One of the (selectable) reasons for flagging a comment on a Stack Exchange site.

See: Flags

Off-topic

Usually to describe a question that is deemed outside the scope of a particular Stack Exchange network site.

One-Boxing (or Oneboxing)

A feature of chat rooms, in which a chat message consisting of a link may be replaced by a title or synopsis taken from the linked page. Further information: here and here. Some rooms may explicitly request that you avoid using this feature.

OP

See: Original Poster

Original

When voting to close a question as a duplicate of another question, the latter (often older) question is referred to as the "original", though "target" is also used for this.

Original Poster

The person who wrote the question. Alternatively (rarely), OP can be used to refer to the Original Post (question) itself.

See also Does OP mean “original poster” or “original post”?

OT

See: Off-topic.

OpenID

The principal login mechanism chosen for Stack Exchange; a single user name and password allows you to log in to any OpenID-enabled site. Deprecated; was removed July 2018.

Penalty Box

When moderators determine that a user's actions are detrimental to the site they may suspend that user for a period of time. During this time "in the penalty box" the user will not be able to post questions or answers, and their reputation will be locked at 1 until the suspension expires. Any rep they gained over the ban time is gained when the ban ends - a reputation recount happens.

POB

Short for primarily opinion-based. It is a reason to vote to close questions on most Stack Exchange communities. It displays the following banner, if a question is thus closed:

Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise.

Post

Refers to either a question or an answer.

See: Original Poster

Post Ban

Refers to the automatic ban imposed by the system when the account accumulates too many bad posts thus can't post any more. The formula itself is kept hidden. More details and ways to lift the ban at What can I do when getting “Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account”?

Post Notice

A banner that appears at the top of a post (answer or question) that explains why a post is locked or some other communication that describes a state the post is in. Only moderators can add post notices to posts.

Preferences

A number of user-specific settings, such as Interesting Tags, Ignored Tags, Hide Questions for Ignored Tags, and Notify Me via Email of Activity on My Questions and Answers.

Profile

Refers to the per-site profile of a user, e.g. Jeff Atwood's profile here on Meta Stack Exchange. User can have as many profiles as the amount of sites in Stack Exchange network, but only one account.

See also: Account

Private Beta

A Stack Exchange site only available to those users who committed to the Area 51 proposal or have been invited by a member who did commit, and the SE staff (the only moderators). Has a plain graphical design that is shared by other sites. You can earn privileges with far less reputation than normal. Normally lasts 7 days, or until the site is "gelled" enough and has enough high quality content on the homepage to consider showing the public. Then moves into Public Beta.

See: Public Beta, Graduated Site, Moderators

Public Beta

A Stack Exchange site available to the whole internet. Has a plain graphical design that is shared by other sites. Privileges are earned at higher reputation levels than during "Private Beta", but lower than a graduated site. Lasts at least 90 days, though often a lot longer, until the Stack Exchange community team determines that it is likely to be self-sustaining in the long run. Then becomes a "Graduated Site". There is a bottleneck of sites awaiting graduation.

See: Private Beta, Graduated Site

Q&A

Questions and Answers. Stack Exchange sites are Q&A sites, which means that there are only questions and answers.

Question Ban

See: Post Ban

RA

Rude or abusive

Recalc

See: Reputation Recalculation

ReCAPTCHA

The name of the service used to implement CAPTCHA on Stack Overflow.

See: CAPTCHA.

Reopen

Closed questions can be reopened if five users with 3000 rep or more vote to reopen it. New answers can then be posted to the reopened question. Each user may cast only one reopen vote per question.

See: Close

Reprex

See: Minimal, Reproducible Example

Reputation, Rep

Reputation is a rough measurement of how much the community trusts you; it is earned by convincing your peers that you know what you’re talking about. Basic use of the site, including asking questions, answering, and suggesting edits, does not require any reputation at all. But the more reputation you earn, the more privileges you gain.

The primary way to gain reputation is by posting good questions and useful answers. Votes on these posts cause you to gain (or sometimes lose) reputation. Please note that votes for posts marked “community wiki” do not generate any reputation. How does “Reputation” work?

Reputation Cap, Rep Cap

You can earn up to 200 reputation from up-votes and suggested edits per day, but no more. Reputation earned from accepted answers and bounties is exempt from this cap.

Reputation Recalculation, Rep Recalc, Recalc

The rechecking of the correct amount of rep, automatically done daily at UTC:00:00 for all users. Most reputation change events automatically change the displayed rep count, but some don't (e.g. deleted posts).

See: Reputation

Revision History

A detailed accounting of all changes made by all users to a question or answer. The revision history can be accessed by clicking on the "Edited [Date]" link.

They take the form of sitename.stackexhange.com/posts/post-id/revisions

Rollback

Occurs when a user edits a question, and selects one of the older edits from the revision history to paste back into the question, effectively undoing any edits made subsequent to the selected revision. The complete edit history is still preserved, and this becomes a new revision. The Edit Summary will say Rollback to Revision X.

Rollback war

See: Edit war

Roomba

The Community user sometimes deletes old questions automatically. These deletions are nicknamed "roomba".

Score

When referring to a post (question or answer) it means the total amount of upvotes, minus total number of downvotes. For example answer with 8 upvotes and 3 downvotes has score of 5. (The number displayed to the left of each post is the net score)

SE, SE 1.0, SE 2.0

See: Stack Exchange

SEI

Stack Exchange Inc. The company that owns the Stack Exchange Network. SEI is often erroneously used instead of SE to refer to the network of Q&A websites.

See: Stack Exchange

Server Fault, SF

The Stack Exchange website located at http://serverfault.com. Server Fault is for system administrators and IT professionals, people who manage or maintain computers in a professional capacity.

SF

See: Server Fault

Site

See: Community. (here)

Site Specific Meta

The individual meta site that every site in the network has. 5 reputation on the main site is required to participate, and your reputation is the same as the main site. There are no review queues, so no suggested edits etc (only Editors can edit, unless the post is Community Wiki It should be about site specific issues. Meta Stack Exchange is the only meta with rep.

See: Meta, Editor, Community Wiki, Reputation

SME

Subject-Matter Expert, or someone who is an expert in a particular field. Usually used in relation to a person's score on a particular tag (e.g. a subject). Users with a gold badge in a tag may be referred to as an SME.

See: Dupehammer

SO

See: Stack Overflow

Sock Puppet [Account]

A duplicate account created by a user to perform activities they cannot perform with their main account. Examples include casting additional votes, voting on their own posts, or other activities prohibited or discouraged on the system. Some use them for testing new user restrictions.

See: Voter Fraud

SOFU, S[OFU]

Stack Overflow, Server Fault and Super User. The original collection of sites in the most common definition of the founding Stack Overflow Trilogy. The acronym also occasionally includes an M for Meta Stack Exchange.

See: Stack Overflow, Server Fault, Super User, Stack Exchange, Trilogy

SOIS

See: Stack Overflow Internet Services

Spam

A post in which the primary purpose of the post is to promote a product or service, not to participate in a meaningful way in the question/answer process.

Spam Seed

A slang term that describes (usually soft-ball) questions with only usage to attract spam or to allow spam to be posted as an answer, caused by sub-waves of spam campaigns. See https://security.stackexchange.com/q/84561/55679

Spolsky

See: Joel Spolsky

SSCCE, SSCE

Short, Self Contained, Correct (Compilable), Example. It is a (desired) property of questions on code-related sites on the Stack Exchange Network, primarily Stack Overflow. If it is not code-related, SSCE (Short, Self Contained, Correct, Example) may be used instead.

Stacker

Employee of Stack Overflow the company. Term was used internally only and informally until 2019, when the new CEO decided to make it public and formal. Plural form: Stackers. See also this.

Stack Overflow, SO

Stack Overflow refers to the programming Q&A site at http://stackoverflow.com. In functional discussions, Stack Overflow is sometimes used to refer to the engine powering any of the Stack Exchange sites, especially Stack Overflow, Server Fault, Super User (the original trilogy) or Meta Stack Overflow.

See: Trilogy, Stack Exchange

Stack Overflow Internet Services Inc.

The former name of Stack Exchange Inc.

See: SEI

Stack Exchange, SE, SE 1.0, SE 2.0, SEI

The Q&A site network that Stack Overflow belongs to. The current version, Stack Exchange 2.0, consists of many (130+) community-driven sites operated by Stack Exchange (previously Stack Overflow Internet Services) that cover a variety of topics. A previous, now-defunct version, Stack Exchange 1.0, was a commercial, hosted platform built on the Stack Overflow engine which allowed individuals to operate independent Stack Overflow-like sites. See the Stack Exchange Tour for more information.

See: Stack Overflow Internet Services

Status Tags

Certain tags on Meta, denoted by their red color, can only be added to a question by a moderator. These tags are reserved for the purpose of giving a feature request or bug an official status from the development team. You may find that some of these tags have multiple meanings.

Questions marked with status tags.

Full list of tags: status-completed, status-bydesign, status-declined, status-deferred, status-planned, status-review, status-norepro and status-reproduced

See: Tags, Meta

SU

See: Super User

Super User, SU

The Stack Exchange site located at https://superuser.com. Super User is for computer enthusiasts and power users.

Suspension

See: Penalty Box

Synonym

In the concept of Tags, a tag can be designated as a synonym of another tag. For example, my-sql is a synonym of, and thus redirects to, mysql on Stack Overflow.

See also https://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/suggest-tag-synonyms

The Team

The Stack Exchange team, who can be reached at [email protected].

TL

Formerly referred to "too localized", now refers to Teachers' Lounge (the global, private moderator-only chat room)

Too Localized, TL (or also spelled Localised)

A former close reason on all Stack Exchange sites. This close reason has been superseded since 2013, but questions closed for this reason still exist.

Trilogy

Stack Overflow, Server Fault, Super User. The initial collection of sites forming "The Stack Overflow Trilogy."

See: Stack Overflow, Server Fault, Super User, Stack Exchange, SOFU

User Card

The name of the block after a post or comment that contains the username, gravatar, reputation, and badges. The Original Poster will have a differently coloured user card background.

User profile

See: Profile

Views

The number of unique visitors to a question or user profile.

VLQ

Very Low Quality. See LQP above.

Vote Fraud

Suspicious voting patterns often related to multiple accounts owned by a single user. Can also refer to casting down votes as revenge (serial downvoting). Vote Fraud.

See: Sock Puppet

Voting

Clicking the up arrow next to a question or answer registers an upvote, and awards 10 rep to the author. Clicking the down arrow registers a downvote. For non-wiki answers, downvoting subtracts 2 rep from the author and 1 rep from the downvoter. For questions there is no penalty for the downvoter.

VTC

Vote to Close. See: Close

VTD

Vote to Delete. See: Delete

VTR

Vote to Reopen. See: Reopen

Wiki