Abbreviations and Acronyms

This. Some people seem to think that if a beer is common in their geographic area it must be common everywhere.

I think this site needs an easy GUI (look that one up) for adding links to individual beers in the posts. That way it could be clear if someone is referring to BCS or BCS.

 

Unfortunately our culture has become all acronyms....IMHO

 

I with you I think a few are ok, and the Beer ones I know most of but the ones that don't pertain to beer (like someone's wife or girl friend) are BS, "how's that". Stepping off

 

Ironically your response uses "OP". Yet another acronym. Somewhere there is a Beer Advocate just being born - he (or she) is off looking up OP now.

 

I can usually decipher abbreviations/acronyms, but am sometimes stumped by a few. I also find it irritating, despite having been in the military for over 17 years. I always find it a reminder of a certain kind of laziness that's slowly worked its way into our society. I usually go out of my way to spell things out because I don't want to go down that slippery slope of texting "tl:dr" as I ride a Lark through Wal Mart wearing pajamas...

 

All due respect... I too, early on, reading BA, got frustrated trying to guess what some acronymns stood for -- but isn't it just as lazy not to make use of a search engine and, with a few key words to refine the search (e.g., beer + kbs), educate oneself? I decided eventually that was a better way to go, than, whatever Tom Hanks kept saying in Philadelphia: "Explain it to me like I was a six-year-old."...

 

Or maybe it's lazy and selfish for the poster to save a few keystrokes and possibly cause many to have to use a search function?

I don't really mind them but it definitely creates a clique-ish feel to this group.

 

I am going to print that list and tape it to my computer (after I delete all the hard a references)

Thanks for sharing!

 

It doesn't create the most accepting environment for newbies. You come into this hobby already having to learn about different styles, different tastes, ratings and rankings, differences in rarity, trading?

And then on top of that you then have to figure out what brewery or beer is even being talked about? I think typing it out at length once in the title or first post should suffice and not cause too much carpel tunnel.

 

Am i supposed to know what that would mean?

 

I've thought for a little while that a sticky with this info, being periodically updated, would be helpful. Then again, I'm only curious about the acronyms because I like watching the shit-storms that develop in the trading forums (not actually being a beer trader myself).

 

And yet when, a couple of years ago, BA instituted a policy of no acronyms in the title of posts, so many BA's lost their shit that the policy was rescinded in a few weeks. Posters were saying that it was too much trouble to type out full names every time. All that was being asked was for OP to type it once per thread, and even that was too much for the cool kids.

 

It's not really that hard to figure out acronyms, which by rules should only be used in the trading forum. If you don't know the acronym, look it up. Chances are you don't have it to trade or are not looking for it anyway. If you find an acronym confusing to you, look at the context of the post or just ask. Others will chime in to clarify.

Acronyms in the trading forum weed out new traders who are not diligent in doing their homework, i.e reading the Ale Watcher's trading tips blog entry. Google is your friend, Bing if that's your flavor, but typing the word "beer" after an acronym into a search engine gives you the answer 90% of the time. Don't be lazy.

The accusation of elitism is a near psychological projection. This is by far the most silly bit of it all. I don't know of anyone who understands all/most beer acronyms feels an ounce of being better than those who don't. As a trader who took his time learning the process and acronyms, I simply dislike having to read spelled out beer names as much as I dislike having to spell them out myself.

Most of all, it will NOT change, so learn the acronyms, how to look them up, and move on.

That said, when I'm not in the trading forum, I try to be very conscious of not over abbreviating.

TL;DR: suck it up, it won't change!

 

Being a friendly Beer Advocate community forum open to all friendly people to discuss things, here's my recommendation:
- Use acyronmns as you like for speedy typing
- If you are reading forums posts and don't know the meaning, have trouble finding on Google etc., ask in the forum what it means
- Someone that is a nice person please answer them on the forum
- Any elitist, exclusionary, a-hole, snarky remarks to try to humor others at the expense of putting someone down that is just trying to learn an acyronm, you are no longer a true beer advocate, clearly not welcome on the forum website. Should be banned to troll around on RateBeer or UnTapped websites instead.

 

There are two threads that needs to be stickied.

One should be a massive abbreviation thread and the other massive pronunciation thread.

 

I never said I couldn't or didn't search when I didn't know a certain acronym, but there's also plenty of acronyms used on here that were previously established in other fields (BBC and ISO just being 2 examples). In any case, the originator of said acronyms in posts is the 1st lazy person for somehow not having the time or patience to type something out. If I have to type out a full name of a beer a few times (god forbid!) I don't think it's going to take up my whole day...

 

For people that insist on using all these acronyms, it's akin to saying: "I'm lazy, but feel kinda entitled, so everyone should print a BA acronym/abbreviation list and tape it to their monitor. Good day... I SAID GOOD DAY!!"

 

I strive to type out each word in every post (I'm sure I don't do it every time).

This is a forum that people post on as entertainment in your free time. If you have the free time to post, you have the extra three seconds to type out Bourbon County Brand Stout. Typing, "BCBS" is laziness, pure and simple.

 

I hate acronyms, not just on here either.

My opinion: Unless it is a widely known acronym like BCBS, the full name should be mentioned in a post at least once. After that they can abbreviate away.