1. chainik
[Russian, literally “teapot”] Almost synonymous with
muggle. Implies both ignorance and a certain amount
of willingness to learn, but does not necessarily imply as little
experience or short exposure time as newbie and is
not as derogatory as luser. Both a novice user and
someone using a system for a long time without any understanding of the
internals can be referred to as chainiks. Very widespread term in Russian
hackish, often used in an English context by Russian-speaking hackers
esp. in Israel (e.g. “Our new colleague is a complete
chainik”). FidoNet discussion groups often had a
“chainik” subsection for newbies and, well, old chainiks (eg.
su.asm.chainik, ru.linux.chainik, ru.html.chainik). Public projects often
have a chainik mailing list to keep the chainiks off the developers' and
experienced users' discussions. Today, the word is slowly slipping into
mainstream Russian due to the Russian translation of the popular
yellow-black covered “foobar for dummies” series, which
(correctly) uses “chainik” for “dummy”, but its
frequent (though not excessive) use is still characteristic
hacker-speak.
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Definitions of chainik
