I'm going to join the flame list and say that I agree with Bob. I receive over
200 messages a day from several mailing lists, family, friends. I don't have
any idea what most of these acronyms are and when I find them in a message I am
curious as to what they mean, but as before mentioned, I still have 200 or more
messages to read. This leaves me little time to reply to people, let alone go
to a web site with an EverQuest dictionary. Nor do I contain any desire to go
there and look up a word each time.
Here's a good one for you, everyone pretty much knows what a zipper is, or
has one on a least one article of clothing, but when i told my 10 year old
nephew to XYZ-PDQ he had no clue what I was talking about. In other words,
just because I play the game doesn't mean I know every piece of language and
lore about it, nor do I care to.
But it would be nice if people would just spell out what it is they are
talking about, it would make me more interested in the messages that contain
these acronyms.
Tadian the flame receiver of Veeshan
p.s. I DO know what FBR is...Full Black Robe. But I guess that is just because
for the last 5 days some idiot has been screaming it across east karana, and
each time he does some person new to the area, generally barbarians, will shout
back..."What is a FBR?"
Bob Stewart wrote:
> From: Bob Stewart <dreambard@...>
>
> At 09:30 AM 7/23/99 -0400, chlebek@... wrote:
> >Ah! You just need the secret decoder ring. Here ya go:
>
> Sorry, wrong answer. Doesn't scale. Barely works at all. Using acronyms
> that aren't widely known is inconsiderate of those with whom you are
> supposedly trying to communicate. Pointing people to an immense list of
> definitions is simply a way of saying you can't be bothered to type out
> words that would be relatively sufficient.
>
> Overuse of acronyms was one of the problems that made IBM systems difficult
> and limited their use to the priesthood. More considerate computer
> companies moved away from secret code.
>
> Acronyms are the rudest form of slang and jargon. They are even worse than
> obscure words like "proc" because they aren't even pronouncable words.
> Acronyms are effectively a way to invent new words on the fly, then use
> them and berate the reader for not knowing what they mean.
>
> I'll warn you now that I've been fighting this battle in the computer
> industry for 30 years, with some success. People either get the point and
> behave less rudely or miss the point and continue to speak in secret code,
> either not understanding or simply not caring whether they're communicating
> with the majority of their audience. If you don't mind if the majority of
> the readers simply don't know what you meant and probably won't bother to
> find out, use them, but don't kid yourself.
>
> Bob
>
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