Since we've made up some of our own terminology, here's a dictionary.
- Colloquial Name: The way we display a person's name in most circumstances. It combines the preferred first name and the current last name. This colloquial name is public while the formal full name is private.
- Downward Family Links: Direct descendants. Children, grandchildren, etc.
- Family Network: This term is no longer used, except when referring technically to the network database table. It's been replaced with Trusted List.
- Lateral Family Links: Horizontal connections instead of upward or downward, e.g. siblings and spouse. Are cousins/aunts/nephews lateral?
- Nuclear Family: Parents, siblings, spouse, and children.
- Passive Person: Someone with a Person Page that was created by someone else and has never visited the site themselves. They are often long-dead ancestors and historical figures.
- Person Profile: The basic WikiTree page about a human being. It's the central location for information about the person. For an active WikiTree user this serves as their home page.
- Trusted List: WikiTree's unique system for protecting privacy and controlling permissions on individual pages.
- Upward Family Links: Direct ancestors. Parents, grandparents, etc.
- Watched List: Like a watchlist on other wikis. This is the list of people and pages you are watching through your Activity Feed. Technically it's the inverse of your Trusted List since you are only watching pages you are trusted to access.
- Wiki: The software run by WikiTree that enables users to easily create and update pages and track changes by others.
