I went through the first 10 hits for use of “TPM” in P&E, and and only 2 or arguably 3 out of those 10 hits support your contention that it’s well known.
The first one is a coincidental hit on that combination of letters in an unrelated hyperlink.
In the second one TPM is the (entire) text associated with a hyperlink, i.e. you can click directly on the blue-highlighted initialism to see what it means.
The 3rd one uses the initialism without explanation.
The 4th one is the post we’re discussing here by Shoeless Joe.
The 5th one uses the initialism without explanation, but it is also by Shoeless Joe, so it doesn’t tell us anything more about who knows what it means.
The 6th one uses the initialism and then explains what it means.
The 7th one uses the initialism and then explains what it means.
The 8th one is Shoeless Joe again.
The 9th one uses the initialism and then explains what it means.
The 10th one is a hit only because it contains a hyperlink to TPM, it does not use the initialism in the body of the post.
For me, it’s the unnecessarily threatening and hostile tone of the mod’s response that’s the nub of the problem, and quite possibly for @MrDibble too. I think a simpler “Do you really need this many acronyms?” would have done the trick, putting us all on notice to explain the more obscure ones in all our future posts, and eliciting from the OP “Yeah, I went a bit over the top there” (that he got anyway).
FTR (For The Record), the acronyms didn’t bother me–I got through the OP just fine without a translator, but then I used to write for a website whose owner explicitly hated acronyms (except when he was using them himself, in which case they were peachy-keen and crystal-clear).
Now if the OP came back with an aggressive response like “I’ll use as many acronyms as I goddamned please” then, sure, threatening to close the thread might have been appropriate. But coming on gangbusters as @What_Exit did right out of the box seems excessive to me.
Unfortunately “arbitrary and capricious restrictions on easily-identifiable acronyms” ranks just higher, so I think your whinging rings hollow in this case.
I’d say the same thing but maybe a tad softer than you have. I thought the mod note a bit snarky, but the OP took it in the spirit, if not the tone, it was offered. Which is good.
The upside to enumerating all the acronyms is to point out quite how any there were. The downside is it ends up looking like a real beatdown: “And another thing … !!”
Modding is hard and I’ll cut 'em a break most of the time. But it did raise my eyebrow a bit as it did several people’s.
That’s a relief, because it would be silly to do so, and really lean into the whole “we think we’re smarter than the average netizen but also much crankier” vibe we should try to avoid.
“Here’s an acronym I use. Don’t be afraid of it - learning what it means won’t hurt you. In fact, it’s currently being used without any negative side effects millions of times all over the world as we speak. As this board’s mission is ‘fighting ignorance’, rejoice, for you have unburdened yourself of one such morsel of it. Go, and sin no more.”
If the issue is my snarky tone, I can see that and will apologize for it.
@Shoeless, I apologize, my tone was harsher than intended. I meant for it to be a joking chiding, please note the opening line, but my final line was indeed harsh.
To all, I stand by that 6 acronyms was far too many for the OP though. No apology or backing down from that.
“Here’s an acronym I’m going to use from here on, this is what it means, I’m aware that you, and others who may read this thread may not know what it is so I’ll just quickly clarify that for you.”
That seems like a better way to proceed.
One of the very first things I do when working with a large group, even in situations where it is reasonable to imagine that everyone is on the same page, is to create a good-old analogue flip-chart glossary.
When anyone uses an acronym I stop them and get them to define it. No-one has ever complained but dozens of people have personally thanked me for doing so.
Certainly. And it’s the way I try to use acronyms that I think may be even slightly uncommon. But when I encounter one I’m unfamiliar with that isn’t spelled out, I don’t freak out and think someone’s made an attack on my intelligence. I try to contextualize it, look it up if that doesn’t work, or just ask for clarification if I can’t suss it out.
Assigning such ulterior motivations to people who simply leave their TLA unexplained may belie a shortcoming you may want to reflect on.
Perhaps you’re right. Rather than “I’ll be here pointing out how ignorant you are.” a better way to say it for most posters is more like "“I’ll be here demonstrating how much I didn’t take you and folks like you into consideration when I wrote my post. Brevity over courtesy FTW.”
To be clear, I use a lot of acronyms on SDMB. But I try, and even usually succeed, at noticing that I’m using them and providing a decode or cite or something. And especially for the less than utterly obvious ones.
YMMV of course.
We’ve had threads and threads on how much acronymic explanation is appropriate where. With zealots on both sides.
We all might enjoy these two, one in ATMB last year and one in the Pit from the year before that add up to 325 mostly serious posts on this matter. IMO those of us who refuse to read the past are doomed to repost it:
I think there are two takeaways from this ongoing discussion:
Our goal here is not only to fight ignorance, but to have an enjoyable time doing so. It’s annoying to have to go back and explain to the unwashed masses what your acronym means, and you run the risk of dropping a too-obscuring dangling acronym and your post gets ignore because people don’t want to bother with asking for clarification.
We all have the ability to control our reaction to encountering something that challenges our personal ignorances. If you think someone is maliciously acronyming with the intent to embarrass, stop feeding that troll.
How hard would it be to implement of database of acronyms that could be revealed with a mouse-over? Then we could got batshit crazy and post stuff like TOOTBLAN, NOBLETIGER, ALOTBSOL and FMDIDGAD.
Everyone agrees there will always be gray areas regarding the use of acronyms. I’m not at all cutting edge, and sometimes BFF will bring me to a stop (“uhh, that’s a friend, but is it Best Female Friend or Best Friend Forever or Best Fuckin’ Friend or …).
That said, I thought the acronym usage by Shoeless was almost perfect. Not too breezy and not too long winded. TPM: I know TPM and Josh Marshall, but for those who don’t the very next sentence is a link spelling out talkingpointsmemo, SHS: The full name was spelled out early in the post, and the woman was clearly a main character in the story. FOIA: This might trip me up out of the blue, but in the context of a reporter requesting info it gave me no trouble. BFF: No trouble here.
Et cetera and YMMV.
In this particular gray area my sympathy is with Shoeless and MrDibble (this thread’s OP).
