The terms defined here often have ambiguity or sound like synonyms to users who are new to MediaWiki. This list of terms is by no means an exhaustive vocabulary list for working with MediaWiki, but it’s a good start so you can ask for help with the right things.

• Gadgets - Not to be confused with widgets. Gadgets is a MediaWiki extension that allows you to add CSS and/or JS scripts to your wiki, with more fine-grained control over where they’re loaded than simply an edit to MediaWiki:Common.css would let you have.
• Module - A module is a page containing Lua source code which will get processed by Extension:Scribunto.
• Preload - a preload is a page with text that can be inserted onto a new page at creation time. The preloaded text can then be modified and the new page saved. This type of thing is often called “templates” in other software (for example, Microsoft Office), but “template” has a totally different meaning in MediaWiki.
• Script - the word “script” can refer to JS code that runs on the wiki or code in any language that runs off the wiki and modifies or queries the wiki. However, this word is generally not used to refer to template code, module/Lua code, or CSS code (a piece of CSS code is often called a “snippet”).
• Table - can refer to either (1) an HTML table or (2) a database table, often specifically a Cargo table. Occasionally there may be some ambiguity between the two, so it can be helpful to write “html table” and “db table” (db stands for database), respectively.
• Template - Not to be confused with preload. A template is a page on the wiki that can be transcluded (aka embedded, included, expanded) in other pages on the wiki.
• Widgets - Not to be confused with gadgets. Widgets is a MediaWiki extension that allows you to insert raw, unescaped HTML to wiki pages, which can include scripts. This extension is not safe and should never be used.