Can we come to any sort of consensus regarding good form in the use of acronyms in posts? Some readers seem to get terribly upset when people use acronyms without defining them. But if we have to define every acronym in a post - or eschew acronyms entirely - then it’s going to get awfully wordy around here. No more USA, NATO, Washington DC, JFK, GDP, FCC, EPA, RADAR, and so on. On the other hand (OTOH), there are some truly esoteric acronyms that the average reader will have never encountered, or that have multiple meanings (with the relevant meaning not made clear by context).
My preference would be for writers and readers to both be reasonable:
Dope writers shouldn’t feel compelled to spell out every acronym every time, since the whole point of acronyms is efficiency in communication. But they should think a bit about who the likely audience is and how likely they are to know a particular acronym.
If you’re in a discussion about plumbing, the people involved are probably mostly familiar with the terms of art, so you shouldn’t feel compelled to explain NPT. But in a discussion about a military engagement, the audience might be lot more broad, so you’d probably want to define BDA (bomb damage assessment) at least once before you use it.
Dope readers who encounter an acronym they’re not familiar with ought to start out by making a good-faith effort to search for enlightenment on the internet. Example, if a Dope writer neglects to define BDA in a thread about a military engagement, readers can google it for themselves, obtaining an answer in seconds instead of minutes/hours. Googling “BDA” by itself turns up a bunch of irrelevant results though, so one could add other key words like war, army, or artillery to help narrow the results. Any of those additional key words results in bomb damage assessment as the top result. If a brief internet search doesn’t get you an answer, it’s reasonable to ask the writer for a definition.
As noted, it takes a few seconds to Google an acronym or ask what one means. It’s a good idea to spell out obscure ones, but hardly something to get “terribly upset” about.
There are many acronyms that are popular among the texting young 'uns, and I can be pretty overly sensitive (read: anal) about confusing posts, and I’m not afraid to speak up when people are inconsiderate.
That said, BOLO = Be On the LookOut, right? I don’t think I ever came across it before, but I figured it out from context.
To state the obvious, there is a huge middle ground between all the very-commonly-used acronyms and initialisms in the OP’s first paragraph, and those used in specialized or narrow interests. Most of that middle ground seems to be occupied by those used by people who text a lot (vs. those who don’t) and so encounter them every day.
As with any writing where the intent is to communicate, the rule should be: know your audience. The second rule is to be polite, and that’s on both writers and readers.
My recommendation to those composing posts is, when in doubt, spell it out (the first time) followed by the acronym or initialism, i.e. “bomb damage assessment (BDA).” The first time in any thread should be enough, it shouldn’t be necessary to repeat it every time in that thread.
My recommendation to readers is to either ask or look it up, without complaining. It’s not that your complaints are never justified, it’s just that they are always useless and lead to arguments.
I highlighted “BOLO” and hit “Define” which runs a google search for “Define BOLO”. Top result is a Phillipine knife. Second result is “Be On the Lookout”.
If search results come back with a bunch of results explaining the actual word (e.g. a bolo is a type of knife), it can be helpful to google “what does * stand for” (where * is the acronym in question. In this example, Googling “what does BOLO stand for” gets the desired result.
Where’s the “Define” option? I’m using Chrome on a PC. Is it browser-/app-specific?
I wasn’t aware that there was a lack of consensus, bar one poster. Why be evasive about the fact that it has been ONE poster causing 100% of the problem with this issue? He was pitted, the pitting was initially poorly received and everyone agreed that we could sometimes do better with acronyms, applying common sense principles similar to what you have outlined here. The pittee then joined the thread and alienated everyone by insisting on his right to junior mod when (in his opinion) an acronym should have been defined, rejected the idea that SDMB should ever engage in more technical discussions where some prior knowledge is assumed, declared essentially that he would continue to be a disruptive jerk about it and that he was being persecuted.
It’s a class of artificially intelligent unmanned ground combat vehicles in the far future of the human race. Later instances are large enough, powerful enough, and fast enough to defend an entire planet by itself.
But I don’t know why you would use that in that context.
JFK is one of probably a handful of politicians and public figures who, in the U.S., are widely known by their initials (others would include FDR, RFK, LBJ, and MLK). I’m not sure how widely those initials are known/used for them outside of the U.S., however.
I’ll agree with you on BOLO (I thought it was a string tie), but disagree on JFK.
For us 'Mericans, JFK is about as common as you can get. John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Popular President of the United States. Beloved by Catholics. The reason even into the 90s that the prevailing sentiment was “You can’t be a Catholic and vote Republican”. There was a time where the Presidents were known by initials - FDR; HST; DDE; JFK; LBJ. For some reason, it stopped at Nixon. Don’t know anyone who would see “RMN” and think “Nixon”, or JEC and think “Carter”.
President Kennedy doesn’t show up in discussions much any more (unless you’re specifically talking about former Presidents), so any use of JFK is probably referring to the airport for New York. And that shows up enough that (again) any American is going to know what you’re referring to.
If you’re using a computer, you should see a dotted line under JFK. You can hover over it to get a pop-up saying Just For Kicks. If you’re using another sort of device, it may not work, and my example fell flat.
I might have seen the Pit thread you linked to back around the time that it was started, but it’s not one that stuck in my memory. The target of that thread wasn’t on my mind at all when I started this thread.
This.
Googling the word “ice” by itself will bury you in irrelevant information, but adding the key word “car” tells you what you need to know on the first hit. If you’re on a PC, you don’t even need to take your hands off of the keyboard:
hit CTRL+t to open a new browser tab
type “ice car” (without the quotes)
read the results
hit CTRL+w to close that new tab and get back to the Dope
Same goes for FUD.
OK, so when you said:
did you mean you just went to Google and typed “Define BOLO” in the search window?
