Who are we?
Oh, you meant What Exit?. I get it now. Took me a few seconds. Maybe I should chastise you for those few seconds of confusion you caused me.
Or maybe I should shut up and MMOB.
ISWYDT.
I did once have to ask What Exit what “WE?” meant. When it’s part of sentence (ie “Post hidden by WE?”) it’s not immediately clear that it’s not the word we, but rather What_Exit’s initials, along with a question mark that’s no longer part of their username since the move to this board.
Interestingly, just last night I was watching a youtube video where the person used a term and then stopped and said something along the lines of “I know not everyone knows what that means and I want everyone to understand what I’m talking about and get more out of these videos” and then explained it. It reminded me of this thread. If anyone cares, here’s the (cued up) video, from The Charismatic Voice.
I’m one of the people she’s talking about/to, someone that watches the channel but has no background in music theory. Granted, ‘parallel octaves’ seems pretty self-explanatory, but I’d have no way to know if it meant something different than I assumed it did, and probably wouldn’t have looked it up on my own either. She seems, maybe because she teaches, pretty good about explaining a lot of the concepts she discusses.
FWIW that puzzled me when I saw it used too. Funny what some people think will be obvious to everyone else.
Which is the point. In all communications we hope to know our room. I am shocked that BFF, FOIA, MSM, and SHS used in a thread clearly talking about Sarah Huckabee Sanders, are not considered clear communication in a political discussions forum. But there are some for whom they are not, including … WE?
Live and learn.
BFF was an odd usage in that thread. I think most regular Message Board, Chat or Social Media users know BFF = Best Friends Forever, but you don’t think it was rather odd in context of talking about a sitting Governor?
The other 3 were indeed a bit obscure. FOIA really isn’t a common acronym.
I and others don’t know MSM without looking it up.
SHS was far less clear than just typing Sanders. The standard of first time typing Sarah Huckabee Sanders (SHS) is a good one.
None of these by themselves would have got my attention, but 6 different acronyms in the one post was a lot. Especially for an OP.
Spell things out, you’re taking the time to make an OP, make it clear.
This is somewhat similar to our closing barelink OPS outside of MPSIMS.
When the context was that sitting Governer taking her female friends on international trips on the government dime? No, it was not odd at all.
You must have to look it up an awful lot in GD, P&E and the Pit, then…
especially since you’ve already been told what it means.
Oh no, I didn’t remember.
Do you think that is a gotcha or something?
Just pointing out that maybe the person who can’t remember the meanings of common abbreviations (and MSM is a very common one, as that search shows) shouldn’t be the one making judgement calls on which ones are odd or obscure. If you consider that a gotcha, so be it.
So I just did some checking.
It does appear MSM is used fairly often in P&E. I probably should know that one, and probably will remember it now.
FOIA is pretty rare though, maybe 55 times ever in P&E. So it is not commonly used.
When was P&E split from GD? How much was it used in GD before (and since)?
I think you’re being reduced to rules lawyering about what constitutes “commonly” for FOIA, when your objection to one you actually advocated as the “odd” one, BFF, turns out not to be so odd at all.
P&E split around 2012. That is very few hits for 11 years.
Regardless of right and wrong, I reckon we’ve beaten this to death. In another 50 messages, WE may very well admit wrongdoing, but is it really worth it?
“Wrongdoing” wasn’t what I was going for. More like “mistaken”. But you’re right, and I’m done.
You’re falling into the identical fallacy that “we need a banned words list” is predicted on.
If the convention is “don’t overdo abbreviations in serious OPs because it impedes understanding,” that’s all that needs to be said.
Justifying whether any given abbreviation is or isn’t “common” is injecting way too much subjectivity into the moderation, which is a wholly subjective process to begin with.
I don’t feel strongly about it, but I think of acronyms mostly like any other bit of vocabulary: if I don’t know a word, I should put it on myself to learn or infer its meaning, rather than putting it on the writer to define unusual words for me. There are plenty of threads where folks use mathematical or scientific or military vocabulary I’m unfamiliar with. If I care enough, I look them up; if not, I try to infer the meaning and move on.
Strings of letters that refer to a concept, whether they’re acronyms or traditional words, are strings of letters that refer to a concept.
But a mod has to do that. Otherwise you have to treat “LOL” and “PMYMHMMFSWGAD” the same.
(For the record, that second one is “pardon me, you must have mistaken me for someone who gives a damn”.)
I think they’re more like names (for persons, places, or things) than common words. And, like names, some are widely recognized and some are very obscure.
It’s a point worth emphasizing. A mod often has to apply an objective “reasonableness” test using their best judgment, and this is an area where that is especially challenging. We all know from experience that we can be very surprised (especially older folks) to learn that a term that we are personally familiar with is not widely known, or vice versa.
A recent example that springs to mind is the thread about the British expression “streets ahead”, which I was surprised to learn that most Americans don’t know; and many Americans think it was invented on the show Community.
So I guess it’s wise to be low key in both moderation and criticism of moderation on this issue.
There has got to be a line somewhere on use of undefined abbreviations and jargon, so you can’t just leave it completely unmoderated. But it’s always going to be very difficult to make the call where that line is in any given context.
Yes, it’s subjective to begin with, like I said.
But engaging with posters who want to grill you for justifications on each and every abbreviation is outside the scope of what’s necessary to enforce the convention. And I do think it’s a good convention on balance.
Sorry MrDibble, but I hate playing the “guess the acronym” game. When I had English literature, the rule given to us was that, upon the first use of an acronym, the full name was given in parenthesis. After that, the acronym could be use freely throughout the rest of the composition. Example: “Today, NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) announced a new initiative aimed at getting a manned exploration mission to the outer planets.”