I disagree. I looked it up. It’s actually an abbreviation of Nolle prosequi wiki. As far as I can tell, it’s not super common. Even if it was, I think people can be bothered to take a couple seconds to explain it.
While I agree there’s discussion to be had about how much to explain, I think that people shouldn’t expect to have only experts reading their post.
I don’t think most people disagree that explaining a possible unknown word or acronym is generally a good thing and that position really doesn’t need a lot of justification.
The issue is how much of an ass do you have to be when someone doesn’t, especially since there are not bright lines of acronyms, technical jargon, legalese, medical terms that everyone does/doesn’t know. How bent out of shape do you really have to be, because I feel contusion or PCR or PET Scan is common enough to not explain but someone else doesn’t?
WTF. How is using jargon anything to do with “grabass”?
And it would be entirely appropriate to have a GQ thread using jargon, in some circumstances. As I said, terms of art or industry specific jargon are typically the exact right word for a specific concept. Anything else is an approximation. High level accurate answers based on actual expertise are a huge benefit of this place, and sometimes require jargon or terms of art.
If I’m answering a question from a lay person, I try to simplify or explain rather than using legal terms of art. But, if someone asks a high level question, reflecting a high level of comprehension, which requires a technical answer, I’m not going to write pages of explanation for the necessary terms. I’m going to have that conversation with that person at their level.
Also, there’s people like you on one side, and then on the other are people who will pounce on a tiny technical “error.” The other day, I tried to simplify an explanation and then got called on not specifying that there was a narrow exception to what I said, which clearly didn’t apply to the situation at hand. So, I guess I could just shut up and not contribute at all, because no level of discourse is going to satisfy everyone.
I remember that. The strict liability exception to criminal intent? And I seem to recall you were “corrected” rather obnoxiously. As you say, you can’t win.
Separately, you did educate me on some misconceptions I had in that thread, which I appreciate.
For the record, I could guess what it meant, but it’s not a term that’s used in my jurisdiction, nor in law school. The other lawyer in that conversation didn’t know it either. It would have benefitted everyone had someone politely asked Ultra Vires (eek legal term of art) to explain the term.
Legal Latin is on its way out in many places, but that doesn’t eliminate the many specialized terms of art. (Even “term of art” is a legal term of art, the meaning of which I think is clear from context.)
But it’s too hard to type the whole phrase, and some people won’t know what you mean if you just say “GFAC”.
This.
I too was swayed towards “He’s getting it; by George he’s getting it” and at the same time, so are most of the rest of us acronym slingers getting it that a bit more editorial care would be a reasonable public service.
Then he threw it all away. C’est la Guerre.
Suggestion: name the puppy Grudge, and you can do both!
(Now excuse me, I have to play with my pet, Peeve…)
Even though she’s shit in my house far more often than even my worst enemy, I’m not gonna put her down here in the pit.
I just want to strongly second this statement. Writing in threads intended for widespread, lay participation should, to the extent that the writer remembers, define acronyms, etc. so that everyone can participate.
But if I’m a medical specialist and I post a question in GQ like “Hyponatremia as PT response to OD of emetics?” [that’s totally made up bullshit by the way, but you get the idea], why would I care if not everyone knows the meaning of hyponatremia, PT, PD and emetic? If they don’t know, they can’t help me, and the purpose of GQ is not for someone unversed in medical terminology to say, mid-thread, “What’s PT stand for?”
This pitting is a SPOHS
That was a General Questions thread. GQ being a forum where at least a couple of you folks (and I believe the Board rules) would probably agree that ambiguousness is especially unwelcome.
She’s gorgeous! Everybody, go look.
Is Cricket as soft as she looks? She sure has beseeching eyes and I think perhaps she knows it.
Jargon is not ambiguous. It’s actually typically extremely precise.
I was one of the targets of ILMVI’s War On Acronyms (WOA) and… well I actually appreciated his remarks. I try to communicate but writing is hard and it’s too easy to take shortcuts.
Props for self-awareness and partially agreeing with the OP, even though you are its target.
I would suggest that folks on this board bookmark The Acronym Finder (as originally posted by @cairocarol). It’s a superior Acronym solution, relative to google.
If the acronym isn’t widely known, I sometimes followup with a post like, “Hey, in case anybody else is as clueless as I am, WOA stands for World Olympians Association.” Other times I’m forced to write something like
World Ocean Atlas?
Web-Oriented Architecture?
Weak Organic Acid?
Warriors of Apocalypse?
A post like that can usefully save some time and googling for other readers. Writing that you don’t like acronyms and you don’t want to google them can be taken poorly by parts of our membership.
“Klootzak” (“klootzakken” is better here) has a very specific definition and yet most posters would likely complain about it being used without being defined.
Latin is a foreign language but we generally give its usage a pass when it’s a commonly used word or phrase. Some of those phrases are commonly known via their usage in law. E.g. “habeas corpus” but most Latin legal terms are not commonly known. To those not practicing law, these terms are jargon.
Legal jargon (like any jargon but probably moreso because so much of it is in a foreign language), is as unwelcome as most foreign words or other generally unknown word/term/initialism would be in an answer to a General Questions OP.
And here, I think, we’ve descended into a bit of a Bizzarro World because normally, I don’t think many here would disagree with the above statement. However
The ghost of Milgram has chosen this thread for haunting; it is scary and I am Shocked.
Indeed, the shocking continues as the study participant’s amygdalae light up again and again.
You basically said you take pride in your self-absorbed junior modding, and when people find that jerkish you liken their reaction to torturing you? This is bizarre beyond words. A substantial part of this thread was a conciliatory discussion of how we could all do better; you’re the one who turned it away from that productive conversation into a self-pitting.
There are only a very few hours in the day when I am pain-free enough to write. Most of the time I can’t but that doesn’t slow down my brain which pores over all these many responses. So by the time I’m actually able to write, a lot comes out.
Lots of thinking, always trying to imagine what to say to convince people of things that many of them seem to already agree with me about but won’t speak up for. I get that because I’m not always very brave myself.
I think above all people want to feel loved and are troubled by the thought of being socially rejected. I think that yen is so powerful that it often overcomes logic. It’s happened to me before.
Yes. There is a discussion to be had but few are brave enough to admit that. Because people long for acceptance by their peers more than almost anything short of food and water—certainly more than their own sense of best practices for the SDMB.
Consider Facebook. My complaints would have been lost there but they’re entire raison d’etre (don’t even fucking try it, putz) is pablum-spewage to the knuckle-draggers for dollars and any argument to quality or intellect is DOA. It would be an utter waste of time and really, not fair, to complain about non-productive writing.
I didn’t expect that here, though. I always wanted to start a nice little ATMB thread about it but I could see that the less imaginative Dopers would make that a Sisyphean task so wisely, I never did.
But then I got pitted so it all came up. I could have just said “Sure whatever, you’re right. I’m an idiot shouting at clouds and there is no issue.”
But that’s not true so… here I am… stuck in the middle with… I don’t know who but I know who’s on my right and who’s on my left.
I agree. You should definitely constantly be checking GQ threads and reminding everyone how unhelpful and unwelcome they are being for using acronyms. That would make everyone’s experience much more pleasant.