Glossary??

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I looked in the FAQ section, and also tried the search engine, but didn't find anything on a glossary. What do some of the abbreviations mean? Like TPTB? I really think a glossary would be most helpful to those of us that are not up to speed on common abbreviations. Thanks.

-- Mary (mhfinch@hotmail.com), December 01, 2000

Answers

Well, here are some of the common abbreviations and their meanings:

TPTB: The powers that be (the ones in charge) LOL: Laughing out loud IMO: In my opinion IMHO: In my honest opinion

That's probably not all of them, but these are the most common ones. Hope that helps.

-- A.J. Bloomfield (amanda_bloomfiel@hotmail.com), December 01, 2000.


A couple of the basics:

TPTB: the powers that be (i.e. those behind the scenes) IMO, IMHO, IMVHO: in my opinion, humble opinion, very humble opinion

The abbreviations are not specific to this site. They're everywhere. (A book I found useful years ago was "The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Internet." This, or something like it, should help you out.)

-- Helpful (mc8869@cs.com), December 01, 2000.


Here's a list of the more frequent abbreviations seen on various sites:

grin (also - very big grin, - big evil grin, etc.) AFAIK as far as I know BRB be right back (used in the chat rooms) BTDT been there, done that BTW by the way EOM end of message -- the poster said all they had to say in the Subject line and the message is empty FAQ frequently asked questions FF fast forward FWIW for what it's worth FYI for your information GMTA great minds think alike ICAM I couldn't agree more IIRC if I recall correctly IMHO in my humble opinion IMNSHO in my not so humble opinion IMO in my opinion IOW in other words IRL in real life ITA I totally agree J/K just kidding JMHO just my humble opinion JMO just my opinion LMAO laughing my ass off LOD line of the day LOL laughing out loud OT1H on the one hand OTOH on the other hand POV point of view ROTFL (or ROFL) rolling on the floor laughing RSN real soon now SO significant other TIA thanks in advance TIIC the idiots in charge TPTB the powers that be TTFN ta ta for now TTYL talk to you later

-- Christine (mcb37@hotmail.com), December 01, 2000.


I've read this many places, but really couldn't figure it out: what's WRT?

-- samira (matb_west@chickmail.com), December 01, 2000.

I agree -- please put these responses in the FAQ section. TIA.

-- O.L. (er_fan_in_NM@msn.com), December 01, 2000.


Wow, Christine, I'm very impressed. I don't think you left anything out with the possible exception of WRT. Samira, can you give an example of where you've seen that? I came to this site pretty Internet illiterate and have learned a lot of the language within the context of reading posts and figuring them out. There's been other threads like this so it'd be good for some assistance to those new to the Net in the FAQ...nothing big, just the ones like Christine listed. But I wonder if it would stop threads being posted, but maybe...like the music on ER one will hopefully help. There was another thread posted today about the "in memory of..." from the other night...I think that's four now.

-- Diana (dilynne@juno.com), December 02, 2000.

There are plenty of resources out there available to people who are new to the Internet culture who want to become acclimated and understand the language. Five minutes worth of quality time with a search engine, or careful examination of context, will provide the answers people seek. (A prime example is my use of foo and bar as metasyntactic variables. I periodically get mail about them, but most people manage to figure it out just fine from the context.) Including an Internet abbreviation/convention list in the FAQ is kind of pointless, because it would never stop -- and because the things I think are self-evident are apparently not to many people. Eventually, I would be continually updating the list with things people found confusing, and nothing else would get done.

I have nothing against the education of new users in the hopes of getting them used to the Internet, but that's not what the FAQ is for. Moreover, I think people should do what they're best at, and there are some very well maintained lists of Internet abbreviations out there, run by people who actually care; if I were to put something together, it would be a half-assed job. Far better for readers to find a site managed by someone using their whole ass.

Of course not.

People don't read, and they don't look around for themselves. (This is not directed at any one person in particular but rather the legions of people who clutter up my mailbox with stupid questions like "what was the name of the song playing when Carter and Lucy got stabbed?") Anything that smacks of effort is avoided.

That's the problem. It's not that the information isn't available, it's that people don't want to go find it.



-- Mike Sugimoto (phloem@fumbling.com), December 02, 2000.


BTW (by the way), I think WRT means 'with respect to'. At least, that's how I find it used in business writing. (Good point, Mike.)

-- Kate (yfpy0050@york.ca), December 02, 2000.

Thanks for all your answers, & I GTP, if I want a list, I've gotta make 1 myself. But, what do FOO and BAR mean??

I would think TPTB could develop filters that would eliminate multiple posts on the same subject; i.e. music playing when Carter & Lucy were stabbed, who was the person an episode was dedicated to, etc. A little window could pop up and say something like, "this question/comment has already been posted".

-- Mary (mhfinch@hotmail.com), December 02, 2000.


You're exactly right Mary. And also subject titles aren't always clear who a song name is hidden in a thread somewhere. Usually in reveiws. So with a site this big it's almost rude to harp when a question is asked over and over again when that person is not willing to fix the problem. As an old friend used to tell me. "You're either part of the problem or part of the solution. The choice is yours." PS-Harping about a problem is part of the problem.

-- james (eorejim@aol.com), December 02, 2000.


The only thing I know about FOO and BAR comes from the movie "Saving Private Ryan" though the acronym would be FUBAR: F***ed Up Beyond All Recognition. Is that the same one?

-- amanda (amanda.rehm@home.com), December 02, 2000.

Theoretically, yes. In practice, this is much, much harder than it sounds, and would basically involve a complete re-write of the bboard software to include pattern matching and context recognition, the latter of which is a fuzzy concept (at best) right now. I'd have to come up with a set of heuristics and have the software parse each incoming post and evaluate it against an indexed table for the rest of the database. This could work if everyone was willing to use keywords to describe their posts, but it would only work for new posts being entered into the database (I'm not going through 11,000 messages to add keywords), and my experience shows that people don't use keywords anyway. Usenet has had a Keyword: header pretty much as long as there's been a Usenet (RFC 1036), and very few people use it. I don't use it.

Things would be better if I could get a full-text search engine installed as part of the database suite over here, but it hasn't happened yet. Tragically, even with a search engine, people have this weird aversion to digging around for information -- so again, the problem isn't that we don't give them the tools, it's that they won't look.

I realize this is more of a problem with the static content, mostly because there's more of it, and there's more information there. But a prime example is the music in "Such Sweet Sorrow." I get a lot of mail about that (because I haven't updated the FAQ yet; life has been interfering as usual). I would think that the first place you'd go if you had questions about the episode might be the summary page, and sure enough, the information's right there at the bottom. But I still get mail on the subject. (I'm considering installing a better search engine for the site.)

Not really. They're metasyntactic variables, like X in an algebra problem.

-- Mike Sugimoto (phloem@fumbling.com), December 03, 2000.

Thanks, Mike for the clarification of foo bar...looked at your link and it seems way over my head! I think I like FUBAR better :) ;)

-- amanda (amanda.rehm@home.com), December 03, 2000.

I never saw this page until now. I am answering this question late (four months) but if you have AOL and you put in KEYWORD:dictionaries, a medical one and other ones will come up and you can put a word or abbreviations in and it will tell you what it is.

_-.~*~*Kim*~*~.-_

-- Kim (jjohnlennon@AOL.com), April 16, 2001.


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