Attn Newcomers - Abbreviations List

Hi there new person. Welcome aBoard!

This is the wonderful land of the Straight Dope Message Board ( SDMB ) Here are some of the abbreviations that we use here. Just for fun I organized them according to the forum where you might expect to find each one. Of course, some of these are so common that they are in all of the fora.
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The Fora ( Forums ):

ATMB - About This Message Board (where you are right now)
CCC - Comments on Cecil’s Columns
CMA - Comments on Mailbag Answers
GQ - General Questions
GD - Great Debates
IMHO - In My Humble Opinion
MPSIMS - Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share
BBQ or the Pit - The BBQ Pit (flamers welcome!)

ATMB:
FAQ -Frequently Asked Questions
OP - Original Post ( The post that starts a thread )
OT - Off Topic ( a hijack )
Sig. - Signature (the little quote people stick at the bottom of their posts)
Reg. - Regular visitor
Newbie - That’s you
TM - Teeming Millions
UBB - Ultimate Bulletin Board ( old board software )
vB - vBulletin ( new board software )
Attn - Attention

CCC:
ROFL - Rolling On Floor Laughing
ROFLMAO - Rolling On Floor Laughing My Ass Off
LOL - Laughing Out Loud
LSHIPIMP - Laughing So Hard I Peed In My Pants
LSHIGRBUMN - Laughing So Hard I Got Root Beer Up My Nose (It happens)
ROTFLMAOSTSOOTC - ROFLMAO + Scaring The Shit Out Of The Cat.

CMA:
IIRC - If I Recall Correctly or If I Remember Correctly
AFAIK - As Far As I Know
FWIW - For What It’s Worth
IOW - In Other Words
IDL - International Date Line

GQ:
WAG - Wild Ass Guess
SWAG - Scientific Wild Ass Guess
BP - Before Present
CE - Common Era
BCE - Before Common Era
IKOWBIDWTLSSIDA - I Kind Of Wondered But I Didn’t Want To Look Stupid So I Didn’t Ask.
GIGO - Garbage In, Garbage Out
HTML - Hypertext Markup Language
FTP - File Transfer Protocol or Fuck That Pal
ISP - Internet Service Provider
AOL - Almost OnLine
ASOL - America Sometimes OnLine ( IOW- just plain asshole )
SIEUI : Search Is Easy, Use It

GD:
PC - Politically Correct / Personal Computer
YMMV - Your Mileage May Vary (meaning that things may be different in different circumstances)
NIMBY - Not In My Back Yard
GGD - Great God Debate (it’ll last longer than cockroaches)
TANSTAAFL - There Aint No Such Thing As A Free Lunch ( courtesy Robert Heilein )
DOMA - Defense of Marriage Act
TWIAVBP - The World Is A Very Big Place
DYPMTTUAYGA - Do You People Make These Things Up As You Go Along?
NATO - Not Able To Organize

IMHO:
IMO - In My Opinion
IMHO - In My Humble Opinion
IM®HO - In My (Rarely) Humble Opinion
POV - Point Of View
IDIC - Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations (live long and prosper, eh?)
BILC - Because It Looks Cool.
FMAIHP - Feel My Ass, It Has Powers

MPSIMS:
3124 - This was WallyM7’s final post count.
IRL - In Real Life
BTW - By The Way
D&R - Ducking and Running ( usually after a smartass comment )
GD&R - Grinning, Ducking and Running
MOLOSTER - MOst Last pOSTER ( a thread killer )
SSM - Same-Sex Marriage
DP - Domestic Partnership
FOAF - Friend Of A Friend
WYSIWYG - What You See Is What You Get
SWMBO - She Who Must Be Obeyed ( the wife )
TYP - Thank You Partner
TYA - Thank You All
TTYA - Thanks To You All
NORWICH - Nickers Off, Ready When I Come Home ( WW2 soldiers acronym )
MST3K - Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (sorry, had to include it)
SW-TPM - Star Wars - The Phantom Menace ( yes, below MST3K )

BBQ:
DNFTT = Do Not Feed The Troll(s) ( don’t let this be you )
WTF - What The Fuck?
LDS - Latter Day Saints ( Hell yes, pepper. I put the Mormons in the Pit;) )
WOMBAT - Waste Of Money, Brains And Talent
YOYO - You’re On Your Own
PITA - Pain In The Ass.
POS - Piece Of Shit
TDA - Terminal Dumb Ass
HUA - Head Up Ass
PHD - Pop Has Dough
TANJ - There Ain’t No Justice ( SciFi author, Larry Niven )
CYTWAB - Cute Young Thing With A Brain.
SNAFU - Situation Normal, All Fucked Up
TARFU - Things Are Really Fucked Up
FUBAR - Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition or Fucked Up Beyond All Repair
DFY- Dumb Fucking User
BOHICA - Bend Over, Here It Comes Again.
OTL - Out To Lunch
LOTH - Leaning Over Toilet, Hurling
BMDB - Bite Me Dough Boy (Drew Carey)
USSC - US Supreme Court ( the Supremes )

Here are some of the other sites in the community:
3FMB - Fabulous Forums of Fathom Message Board ( OpalCat’s Board )
TMHP - Teeming Millions HomePage ( also courtesy of OpalCat )
SDPP - Straight Dope People Pages ( courtesy of Shayna )
LBMB - The Left Behind Message Board ( leftbehind.com - if you don’t know, don’t ask)
UL - Urban Legends ( see snopes.com )

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I hope you find this useful. If you find more acromyms and abbreviations please post them here so we can share in your wisdom.
Anyways - Happy Posting

A must read for newbies. Myself included. I wish I’d seen that when I came on board.

“FMAIHP - Feel My Ass, It Has Powers”

Gotta love it. I can’t wait to use it.

(There may be some duplicates with the above, but I’m tired of collecting them, just to have someone start a new thread, so I’ll just quote myself.)

Sorry Fanny May,

I forgot to give credit to those posters that came up with these; including you.
Thank you all.

:: wonders if he should include sig… grins ruefully ::

2sense - Journeyman of the obvious

See, 2sense? I’m reading it this time.

I made this up on the spur of the moment to be funny–are you telling me it’s actually gone into general usage? (And the one time I used it was in a Pit thread, not GQ.)

I also used IWFAIDWP in that thread, which Commander Fortune correctly interpreted as I Will Feed Anybody I Damn Well Please. I bring this up mainly because I didn’t get back to that thread before it was locked, so I couldn’t post that he was right. If anybody sees the Commander, tell him I said so.

Just a typo, but he’s one of my favorite writers, so I’m gonna correct it–the late, great Robert A. Heinlein.

I would just like to modestly (yeah, right) point out that I coined this term, which has actually gained a certain amount of usage on this board. Indeed, the Molosters thread was something of an attempt to jump on the bandwagon–“moloster” originally came from the Threadkillers thread.

To be accurate, a moloster is notsimply a thread killer (the last poster to a thread before it falls into complete oblivion). A moloster is one who does this intentionallyto manythreads (hence the “MOst” in its derivation), to gain the glory (such as it is) of being listed as the “Last pOSTER” on a whole bunch of dead threads. Not as effective as painting your name on the side of an Interstate bridge, maybe, but a lot easier.

(Why do I think anyone should care about all this? Hey, you gotta take your 15 minutes of fame wherever you can get it.)

From Fanny May (or at least from her post):

Let me second this one. In fact, let me third and fourth it, too. Entire posts that come out as quotes in underlined bold italics are distracting as hell, and it’s easy enough to do. If you take a couple of seconds to hit preview, you can catch these things.

Here’s one I don’t see, so I’ll make it up–SQTHFP = Stop Quoting The Whole Fucking Post. It’s fine to quote the whole thing if you are actually replying to the whole thing, but a lot of people here take it too far.

Example: Say DumbAsARock wants to dispute a point I made in this post–he wants to claim that he coined the term “moloster.” The best way to present this would be to quote the appropriate section and make his point, like so:

[example post]
MysterEcks said:

I made this term up over a year ago on the Ignorant Wankers Message Board FakeWebsiteDon’tBother. MysterEcks is a plagerizing peabrained putz!
[/example post]

But some people here think they gotta quote the whole frigging post to make one or two points. This is distracting, detracts from the point you’re trying to make, and (especially in GD and the Pit) makes for unnecessarily long posts.

Note that this is not aimed at newbies, except in the sense that I hope they don’t adopt the style. There are folks of every registration era and post count who do this.

(Also note that I am by no means the first one to bring this point up–I’m just the first one in this thread. Like I said before, you gotta take your 15 minutes of fame wherever you can get it.)

[hijack] = [sub]commenting on off-topic or tangential point[/sub]
…
…
[/hijack] = [sub]returning to main topic now

Sorry to disapoint you MR X, but many of these are just made up or obscure so you shouldn’t expect to see them ofter or ever.
But I thank you for “MOLOSTER”.
It is an elegant term.
If anyone else is responsible for some of these they can post here and I will personally thank them.

tshirts,

Good explanation of a “hijack”.

Damn…I thought I was on my way to being famous or something.

These are enlightened times; I was under the impression that the good Commander is a woman.

I found this on 1 of the boards that spun off from the LDMB due to their current troubles:

WWJP - What Would Jesus Post?

Lux Fiat said:

<MysterEcks hangs head in shame>

My deepest apologies, Commander, wherever you are.

NFBSK- Not For British School Kids.
( A warning that content may not be appropriate for everyone. )

Since there doesn’t seem to be a consensus, I’m going to start suggesting possibilities
**
Pitsters
Pitiful
Pitiable
Pitiless
Pitizens
BBQ-ers
Skewer Crew
Coal Rakers
Pit Meisters
The Piteous
Pitted Prunes
**And going a little farther down the dictionary page,
**Pituitous (Containing, discharging, or resembling mucus)
Pit Vipers
Pityriasis **(flaky scales)

Thanks…i’m new and that info will be helpful

Esstriol

ABS: Already Been Said (to be used when someone jumps in at the end of a thread and acts rudely.)

Sunch: Sucker Punch. Used in a friends’ RPG campaign. Describes an argument/flame tactic that’s meant to distract everyone else from the real issue (like if I were to make fun of someone else’s poetry when people call me on some obnoxious behavior).

(sp?): Technically short for “spelling?”, it means “I don’t know if I spelled that right, but I think you should be able to figure it out.” Put it in right after the mystery word.

ITAF: “Is That A Fact?” Used to refer to material of questionable inegrity. In other words, “Provide a cite”. Speaking of which…

PAC: Provide A Cite.

Dogmament: I forget exactly where I found this, but it’s used to refer to arguments about faith/religion, especially silly ones like “Which is better, Judaism or Buddhism?”

That’s all I can think of for the time being.

Oh, and to clarify Hi Yo Ag’s question… I believe that most of the Pit’s regulars prefer to be called “Pitizens” (at least, that’s what Lynn and Alphagene call us from time to time). Things like “Pit Weasel” are usually used as derogatory terms (but now always).

And I want to add one more to my list…

Middies: Not newbies, not regs… people who know the mechanics of the board, but have yet to get to know a lot of people (made this one up myself).

IANAL = I am not a lawyer
Used when someone other than a lawyer is offering some kind of legal WAG.

If the Pit has Pitsters and the
Great Debates has Great Debaters, and the
Comments on Cecil’s Columns has Teeming Millions

Then what are the people right here at ATMB?

Should we just re-structure the acronym as Atom Bees?
ATM Boardsters?
Test Junkies?

In My Humble Opinion could have The Opinionati.

Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share could have MP Stuffers.

Comments on Mailbag Answers could have Bagmen (bagpeople) or Teeming Hundreds of Thousands.

**General Questions
** could have G Questors.

Not there yet. Any suggestions?

My thanks to all!

Even though I’m a newbie SDMBer, I’ve been around the block a time or two. Most of the generic TLA’s I know, but FWIW, I learned a few more. IIRC had me stumped the other day and now I find out what it means. Also the definition of [hijack][/hijack] helped.

I should link to this thread to refrain from getting the SIEUS post.

ATFATI

Cheers!