A mere mortal is fundamentally a non-techy type person. Among developers, administrators, implementors, and architects, they look like functional illiterates.

• They are not proficient at writing, understanding, or even hacking code.
• They get very nervous when executing most unix commands, afraid that they are going to break something and become stranded.
• They are extremely dependant on clues within documentation that imply (in simple terms) what's really basically going on in the machine.
• When they see any code, they have a hard time parsing it.
• They may waste hours and days trying to do something incorrectly, simply because they don't understand what they are being told.
• However, they might just be willing to try to do some things if they can make sense of them (e.g. implementing a simple wiki engine).
• Some of them are proud to be MereMortals. Because saying so can be a great way to learn.
• They ask StupidQuestions.
• They think WikiWords are a bad hack, suitable only for techies
• They think "wiki" means "wikipedia," and won't stick around to to learn a dozen different wiki syntaxes

MatthewSimpson: I know about these people. I'm one of them.