Purpose

The Internal Technical Glossary defines the vocabulary used to plan, build, review, and publish Zwikipedia. Unlike Off-Track Terminology, its entries are intended to help readers and collaborators understand operational distinctions. They describe the project’s documented design and working principles; a definition here is not, by itself, evidence that a capability is currently deployed.

Terms

ADR — Architecture Decision Record

A durable record of a significant technical decision: the context that led to it, the chosen approach, its consequences, and alternatives when relevant. An ADR explains why a design exists; it is not a substitute for verifying the current code.

Article

A stable editorial identity that can contain a sequence of revisions. An article title or slug may identify the public subject, while the visible prose comes from the revision currently selected for publication.

Canon

A fact, event, or description accepted within a specified fictional continuity. Canon is scoped to that continuity and source context. A claim can be canonical in Crossroads without being canonical in the originating author’s universe.

Canonical environment

The authoritative production/publication environment. Its public content must not be changed as a side effect of exploratory staging work; publication requires the appropriate owner-controlled approval path.

Category

A reader-facing organizational grouping of articles by subject or purpose. Categories need not be identical to universes or to content types. Published articles should have the category assignments required by the site's editorial rules, with anomalies reported rather than silently discarded.

Content type

A description of an article’s editorial role, such as reference article, project overview, creation account, technical case study, or glossary entry. A content type answers what kind of page is this? rather than which continuity does it describe?

Crossroads

Clint’s connected fictional continuity. It is a subject and context within Zwikipedia, not a global parent of every article and not a substitute for site-wide Zwikipedia navigation.

Editorial draft

A version in preparation or review that is not yet authorized as the selected public revision. A draft can be complete as a manuscript while remaining unpublished on the site.

Editorial gate

A review or authorization checkpoint. Gate labels, their meaning, and required evidence are defined in the project's current approved process records; they should not be inferred from alphabetical order alone.

Immutable revision

A stored article version whose historical contents are preserved. Later edits create a new revision rather than silently rewriting the earlier published record.

MFA — Multi-Factor Authentication

An additional authentication factor protecting sensitive editorial or publication actions. Its requirement is a security boundary, not an invitation to expose credentials in an article.

Perspective

The interpretive context from which an article speaks: for example, an in-universe account, a Real World process record, or a source/creation account. Perspective is recorded in metadata; it does not require an unsolicited label or warning in the prose. In-universe articles and their previews preserve immersion, with out-of-universe explanations available only through deliberately opened details or links, apart from the specifically permitted footer treatment.

Provenance

Information identifying where a claim, image, or editorial decision came from. Credit the source author and original canon separately from Clint’s interpretations and Zwikipedia’s editorial contributions. Sources can include independent works and canons from multiple authors. A source supports or explains a statement without automatically making it canonical in every continuity.

Related-article relationship

An intentional, typed connection between articles: such as artist of, creation account of, located in, or source for. A related link should express a meaningful connection, not merely co-occurrence of keywords.

Selected public revision

The approved revision that the public article page actually renders. A new manuscript, imported draft, or code deployment does not automatically replace this selection.

Staging environment

An isolated space for previewing and checking changes before production publication. Staging content and database access should remain separate from the canonical environment where required by the architecture.

ZDP — Zwikipedia Development Protocol

The authoritative repository process for planning, implementing, verifying, releasing, documenting, and closing Zwikipedia work, for human and AI contributors. It keeps requirements, implementation, verification, and approval traceable with safeguards proportional to risk. It does not select the application architecture, confer canon authority, or substitute a draft, passing test, or Git push for authorized publication or deployment. The exact name is Zwikipedia Development Protocol; its scope comes from the repository’s docs/ZDP.md.

ZWI

The short project identifier used for Zwikipedia development work and issue numbering.

ZWI-8

The tracked workstream associated with authoring, editorial review, and launch. A ticket identifier is a coordination reference; actual completion must be supported by reviewable evidence.

A note on verification

The distinctions above matter because the existence of a manuscript, a passing test, a merged pull request, a working preview, and a publicly rendered article are different outcomes. A status report should identify which of these it actually demonstrates.

Related reading