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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 ...
#1: Initial revision
by
matthewsnyder
·
2023-08-14T18:25:28Z (over 1 year ago)
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](https://proposals.codidact.com/posts/288863), what do you think is the best option and why? 1. Change nothing, let people use well-known acronyms without spelling them out. 2. Require people to spell out all acronyms, no exceptions. Downvote and comment on questions that don't. 3. Create tags for each acronym, like `oriented-strand-board`. Ensure the tag mentions both the full name, the acronym (I'm assuming typing `osb` can be made to still suggest `oriented-strand-board`) and an appropriate reference site like the wikipedia page. 4. Something else (please explain in your answer).