???
Seconded. What’s even more annoying is that I sat here trying to figure out what a TLA was for more than a minute. Still don’t know.
See, the thing is, I see “TLA” and even though I don’t know what it means, I quickly realize, from contextual cues, that’s its precise definition isn’t really super important. So while it might be “nice” to know, as a matter of curiosity, what it means, I would say it’s hardly worth derailing a (normal) thread over. But here, of course, it’s a FFA.
ETA: And you see, just as an exercise in satisfying my curiosity, I just Google TLA acronym and came up with Three Letter Acronyms.
Future Farmers of America?
Didn’t play Starcraft/Brood Wars much in the golden days of battle net, I take it?
Yeah, i frequently struggle with acronyms. So anyone pitting someone who shares my pain is going to get poked by me.
I’d never actually noticed that I_Love_Me_Vol.I had a habit of asking about them. Maybe he’s annoying when he asks. As i said, I’ve never noticed one way or the other. But odds are, I’ll still be grateful that someone else already asked before i got to the thread.
There’s a couple ways to solve this. Either people don’t do the acronyms in the first place, which is why the Pittee is reminding people not to do it. Or the more time consuming thing is to start an acronym thread and link to it. If people are interested, they can click on the link. If they’re not, they don’t have to comment on it. But someone would have to do a lot of work for that.
[j/k] Or Discourse could disallow any short non-words. [/j/k]
j/k = just kidding
lol, that’s what I got from Google too, after way too much effort than it was worth.
Yeah, I googled TLA. It wasn’t even on the first page of hits. I found it, but it was stupid for BigT to have used it in the first place.
I thought TLA was fairly common parlance. Then again, apparently FFA is supposed to be, but I haven’t the faintest clue what that means. When FTW started showing up in threads, I was completely perplexed as all I could see was that it was WTF backwards. I generally don’t mind the acronyms, but there are times I get frustrated by why posters can’t just spell the damned thing out if there’s a reasonable chance of a non-trivial amount of posters not being familiar with it. NW (Northwestern, listed in one of the threads) I sussed out because I went there and live in the area, but nobody here refers to it as NW. We call it NU, which can be confusing, as that often refers to Nebraska (or many other universities.) When I was at school, our domain was NWU.edu, so it’s not really a common abbreviation – at least in my experience – for it.
That’s why you’ve got to google TLA acronym
Because we’re talking about acronyms, and it was in that context @BigT used it. Similarly, ILMVI might have googled BVR dogfight or BVR AMRAAM to the extent BVR might otherwise have been an ambiguous acronym. Or, as I did in my initial reading, just glossed right over it because it wasn’t really integral to what was being discussed. Not unlike when the Marklars replace marklars with marklar.
Or people could write for comprehension instead of self-indulgence.
Sure. And to be clear, I wouldn’t be pitting ILMVI if all they did was ask “What does marklar mean?”
Yeah, but this is such an old complaint that I’m surprised people still don’t know that obscure terms need defining in the first usage. A little snark doesn’t bother me.
This, so much this.
A reader shouldn’t have to ask what an acronym means, that forces them to surrender agency, giving the acronym flaunter ‘power over’, which usually feels like the point. Don’t be a jerk applies here.
But, and to the point I am making (or seeking to make), it seems the same should apply to the acronymterrogator. Recall exhibit A (the legalese):
Because, again, asking “What does nolle pros mean?” is one thing. Even if it can be readily googled, it’s at least in line with the discussion. But… FFS. That diatribe? And people say I’m the one falling below the “standard for intelligent discourse” here?
In this case, it maybe did make more sense for readers to just google the legal terminology rather than the poster define it in-thread. But 99 times out of 100, that’s not the case here.
But—and here a look at ILMVI’s posting history re: acronyms may be helpful—every time that “1 out of 100” comes up, it seems ILMVI is that 1.
ILMVI: 1% of the time, it’s them EVERY time.
^That could be their sig line (if we had sig lines).
^^ And? He’s saying what many others are thinking.
Wait, I can think of many times other people have had to ask what certain acronyms mean.
And WTF is ASL_v2.0 supposed to mean? American sign language? Above sea level? Age/sex/location?
It’s an interesting observation that people sometimes use jargon as a power play, to signal their elite expert status.
But I’m also astonished at how oblivious so many people are to the fact that the whole world does not have the same context and priorities as they do. You see this in mysterious abbreviations that are not power plays but just oblivious to the need to communicate clearly; you see it in how useless so many people are at writing a thread title that clearly and succinctly states what their thread is about. Ironically, you also see it in overly longwinded OPs that woefully misjudge how much time the average person is likely to want to devote to reading about something.