A guide to WI terminology.

WI: What If? (and not Women's Institute as some new British members have thought)

DBWI: Double Blind What If. Correctly, this means writing from the perspective of another timeline and asking 'what if' the POD that produced that timeline had gone the other way - in other words, asking about OTL. For example, “DBWI: What if John Wilkes Booth had succeeded in his attempt to assassinate Lincoln?” However, many people misuse the DBWI terminology, which makes Baby VoCSe cry, so don't. 'DB RP' has recently been suggested as a title for pure in-timeline roleplaying threads.

TBWI: Triple Blind What If. By analogy, but no-one can agree on what it means.

FBWI: Future Blind What If - technically a totally meaningless term, as we cannot double-blind what hasn't happened yet, but this is employed by the same role-playing types who misuse 'DBWI'.

ASBWI: Used as a thread title in the ASB forum by people unintelligent enough to realise that, given that it is being posted in the ASB forum, it is fairly obvious to everyone that it is an ASB what if.

N00BWI: A form of roleplaying, in which everyone pretends to be n00bs ignorant of history and discuss a much-rehashed WI, such as the South winning the Civil War, for humour value. Now defunct as Ian disapproves of them.