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Comments on Home Improvement: Is it necessary to expand acronyms like OSB?
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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).
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My thoughts are already apparent in the question body, but I will also add this:
It is inevitable that many new users will not bother to read the details of our style preferences. It is certainly common on the Internet at large and in general parlance to use such acronyms without expanding them. People will tend to assume we are not an exception. Moreover, people generally don't want to do a lot of homework to self-onboard to a site before they've had some positive interactions with it that makes them feel like the site provides some value.
If a new user happens to ask their first question about OSB boards or PVC pipes and the like (not inconceivable), and the first reaction they get is a downvote (probable, given option #2) and complaint about the acronym rather than attempt to help them with their question, I suspect that their feeling about this will be very negative. They will become inclined to consider Codidact an unfriendly, unhelpful community and give up on trying to participate. Given that there is interest in growing CD, option 2 strikes me as unproductive.
To be clear, I am not saying that style doesn't matter or that we shouldn't have standards. However, option 2 specifically strikes me as counterproductive.
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