chainik

chainik
 /chi:'nik/

   [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.