This is probably not the right place for this question. You better ask in some HTML or PHP forum (this is not the Codeigniter forum and your question is rather about web development basics than CI).
Anyway: a link written like this
<a href="http://contact.php?p=1&wm=list">Link</a>
would direct you to contact.php and set 2 URL parameters.
Parameter p would have the value 1, and parameter wm would have the value list.
A programming language like PHP would then be able to access these so called URL or GET parameters via something like
$p = $_GET['p'];
$wm = $_GET['wm'];
and do something with them.
If the code you posted is from Codeigniter then well, Codeigniter most probably uses them to pass information from one page to another. Variable p most probably is the number of the current page, and wm... well… something else.