Don’t even get me started on Multiple Sclerosis Windows
I guess what I don’t understand is getting upset for someone asking about it, and in particular telling them that they should get the heck out of the thread.
Maybe its just the aging Eagle Scout in me, but I would rather help someone out than shut someone out. I guess if it was becoming a problem such that having to help newbies get up to speed was totally disrupting the thread I could get it, or if this particular poster was making a habit of it. But one post on one thread, which incidentally had already been answered by the time DG registered his complaint, doesn’t seem a problem that is worth attacking somone for.
Although its not perfectly on point, I can’t help but think of this XKCD comic.
OK, I give up. As previous Dopers have suggested, I Googled ACRONYM and Social Service Agency; yet I still have no clue what ACRONYM stands for in this context…
LOL I was at work and my keypad capitals must have stuck on acronym …mea culpa. I didn’t notice until too late to correct.
Did not mean to add additional chaos.
But you did give me a great idea to actually make that into an actual acronym…I’ll work on it.
Abbreviated Coded Rendition Of Name Yielding Meaning
I like this!
But this depends on your audience.
Yes, and I would have thought this audience knew it, given how often it comes up in AI discussions.
Let’s make that more related to what actually happened: Stick person 1 asks a room full of people what type of lava flow would be likely from the Yellowstone volcano if it erupted and provides a link to a documentary about volcanos. Stick person 2 yells out “I don’t know what a volcano is and I’m not going to waste my time looking at the documentary to learn.” Do you think that was in any way a helpful answer to stick person 1’s question? Do you think stick person 2 would have had a useful answer if stick person 1 explained what a volcano was before asking the question?
I think one problem is that despite putting it in Great Debates it seems pretty clear to me that the OP was asking a General Question. If they had put it in GQ surely the “I don’t know the answer and can’t be bothered to learn about it” reply would have been shut down by a mod.
(This thread was never meant to be an attack on any one person but I realize it can’t help but looking that way.)
I will suggest that the reason Google returns the relevant result here is because the term is so common in AI, and the only time acronyms should be used without further explanation is when they’re very well known in a particular subject matter context. You can further help Google return relevant results by including appropriate context in the query, as in the examples I already gave – “artificial intelligence AGI” or “climate change ECS”.
I strongly suspect that this approach of using a query with context will resolve all commonly known acronyms, and if it doesn’t, then it’s pretty much self-evident that the acronym was sufficiently obscure that it should have been spelled out.
Bear in mind that everybody gets different results from Google searches, based on their own profile and search history. Saying “it was my first result!” only means that it was your first result, not that it would have been mine.
Fair point, but nevertheless, regardless of anyone’s Google history, I’m pretty sure that submitting a query for an acronym that is very common in a certain field, along with context to identify the field that it pertains to (as in my prior examples) will result in successfully retrieving the relevant information pretty much every time.
No one has suggested that acronyms shouldn’t be expanded if there’s any doubt about what they mean in a particular context – explaining an acronym is generally always good practice. It just shouldn’t be necessary when they’re very well known in that context.
Or just more common than other uses of “AGI” in general.
i don’t think posters should have to Google acronyms to check how easy they are to Google before using them. That’s ridiculous. (And more work than spelling out the words.) In practice, every poster will guess what acronyms are okay. Some will routinely guess well. Others don’t. And a lot will end up using acronyms that are… Locally common, maybe?, that will be fine for most readers, but will trip up a few that are familiar with the field, like AGI.
I’m gonna say it again. I’m pretty familiar with that field. I’ve talked about it in the context of large language models and autonomous vehicles. I literally have chatted about those problems with people working in both those fields. I just didn’t recognize “AGI” (and had to think to get the right letters to type it here.)
So i saw two problems with the thread:
- someone who didn’t know the acronym got pissy, instead of asking politely (or googling)
- someone felt the need to slam that person for his question
Those are both problems, and not really acronym problems, just “message behavior” problems.
I’m pretty sure adjusted gross income is the most common meaning of that acronym. Not that that’s relevant, really.
Was just reading Lois McMaster Bujold’s “Sidelines: Talks and Essays”, and found this delicious bit from her GoH [Guest of Honor] speech at Denvention 3 in 2008:
“Folks have been arguing about the definition of Our Stuff since decades before I came in, and shall doubtless still be happily doing so for decades after I’ve died - whether science fiction, fantasy, horror, speculative fiction, our portion of Young Adult, paranormal or nomenclature yet to be devised. I will use the traditional shorthand of “SF” for Our Stuff here, rather than “OS”, because we don’t need another acronym, with its attendant acrimony, which I have decided should be called acronymie.”
Obviously, given that I used my mobile device to perform the equivalent action to check the link without actually opening the link.
Bujold is a national treasure.
I think part of the issue is that people are often wrong about what is well-known. I remember once coming across an acronym that I didn’t understand so I googled it . And got three or four results , none of which made sense in context. So I asked - turned out it was the initials of an author who I was somewhat familiar with. It was not a conversation about one of their books - it wasn’t a conversation about Carrie and someone used “SK” , it was more like the conversation was about loneliness and someone referred to RP. Some people might understand but a lot won’t. I’m probably only going to do that ( Google and have to ask anyway) so many times before I skip Google.
I agree, but you’re not talking about acronyms here. The use of initials either for a poster’s name or the name of an author or some other person was mentioned before. I don’t consider that a “well-known acronym” and frankly in general I consider it an annoying practice unless it’s spelled out first or otherwise very obvious, because it really can be unclear what it’s supposed to refer to, and Google is unlikely to help because it isn’t an acronym at all, let alone a well-known one.