A few weeks ago, there was a poll published on PollDaddy.com that asked the question, What do you call these draggable, expandable boxes in WP? For example, “The Publish _________.”. The choices were postbox, metabox, module, widget, area, container, box, or other. I think the poll question was not specific enough with regards to the question or at least, I was pretty confused.
Attached to the poll is a screenshot of the publishing box within the WordPress back-end. This publishing box is called a metabox as are the other boxes in the sidebar on the publishing page. So naturally, I voted for Metabox. However, in WordPress, there are terms used to describe these boxes depending upon where you are. On the front-end of the site, they are called widgets, in the back-end, they are called metaboxes. I think what the poll question should have asked was If you could change the name of widgets or metaboxes, what would it be? Then, I would have voted for Container, Module as I feel those two best represent common sense of their functions. You have a container that holds stuff. That stuff would be modules. Modules imply they can me moved around and are versatile. This can be understood without pointing someone to a Codex page.
On the flip side, it was interesting to see that 26% of the voters just call it Box while there was a 1% difference between Metabox, Module and Widget. I highly recommend reading the comments on that poll to get a feel for why people voted the way they did.
What did you vote and why?