Welcome to the staging ground for new communities! Each proposal has a description in the "Descriptions" category and a body of questions and answers in "Incubator Q&A". You can ask questions (and get answers, we hope!) right away, and start new proposals.
Are you here to participate in a specific proposal? Click on the proposal tag (with the dark outline) to see only posts about that proposal and not all of the others that are in progress. Tags are at the bottom of each post.
Comments on Home Improvement: Is it necessary to expand acronyms like OSB?
Post
Home Improvement: Is it necessary to expand acronyms like OSB?
There are some acronyms related to home improvement that are very well known: OSB, MDF, PVC. Most people who know the material they refer to, know the acronym. In fact, I would guess that a lot of people know the acronym but not what it stands for.
On a board about home improvement, it would be tedious to spell out oriented strand board every time. It would be like spelling out personal identification number on a security site, or automated teller machine on a banking site. Moreover, I would expect that people who don't know the acronym would simply use a search engine, which returns the correct result for these (and it didn't, adding "home improvement" certainly would). But this is all just my opinion.
For people interested in participating in the Home Improvement proposal, what do you think is the best option and why?
- Change nothing, let people use well-known acronyms without spelling them out.
- Require people to spell out all acronyms, no exceptions. Downvote and comment on questions that don't.
- Create tags for each acronym, like
oriented-strand-board. Ensure the tag mentions both the full name, the acronym (I'm assuming typingosbcan be made to still suggestoriented-strand-board) and an appropriate reference site like the wikipedia page. - Something else (please explain in your answer).
2 comment threads