Submitted 2 weeks ago by Two9A@lemmy.world to selfhosted@lemmy.world
I’ve had some feedback today that Decronym is “spamming” unrelated acronym definitions into threads that don’t need them. Unfortunately, details of which acronyms are superfluous wasn’t forthcoming, so:
From this list, which acronyms do you guys think can be removed as unnecessary to explain?
carrylex@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago Just get rid of this bot altogether. People can just copy paste the stuff that they don’t know into a search engine.
A random comment by a bot - that 80% of the viewers don’t even need and read - is neither good visible nor helpful.
I agree with the person who suggested linking to Wikipedia articles.
For example, it’s not much help to learn that PCIe stands for Peripheral Component Interconnect Express, because nobody calls it that. As an outsider, now I’m wondering what a component interconnect is. It’s much more useful to link to a page that gives context about how PCIe is actually used.
irmadlad@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago Not sure why someone would down vote this but, that’s a spot on idea.
In a previous post, someone pointed out it does not help much saying what PCIe stands for without a short explanation.
You are trying to de-jargon topics, and that’s fine, but the two following categories do not help, they are localized habits and don’t have any value to non-english or nontechnical people, or both:
Side note, DNS stands for domain name system, it has never meant domain name service.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| AP | WiFi Access Point |
| CA | (SSL) Certificate Authority |
| CF | CloudFlare |
| DNS | Domain Name Service/System |
| HA | Home Assistant automation software |
| ~ | High Availability |
| HTTP | Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web |
| HTTPS | HTTP over SSL |
| IP | Internet Protocol |
| IoT | Internet of Things for device controllers |
| NAT | Network Address Translation |
| RAID | Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage |
| SSL | Secure Sockets Layer, for transparent encryption |
| a11y | A(ccessibilit)y |
| i18n | I(nternationalizatio)n |
| l10n | L(ocalizatio)n |
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I like the bot as is and wouldn’t change it or remove any.
I think a lot of people here take for granted how much they know.
irmadlad@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago I have no hard opinion either way. It’s kind of neat in what it does. I’ve often wondered if we wrote a post with nothing but acronyms, if it would sent the bot into a tizz.
I’ve blocked the bot because I find it’s more annoying that useful (I’m not complaining - just giving feedback).
That said, IMHO from that list you should remove the entries that:
Also, you should keep the acronym expansion (“RAID” => “Redundant Array of Independent Disks”) from any comment you may want to add (“for mass storage”) and - since you are at it - provide relevant links to wikipedia articles and/or other resources.
PS: since a lot of entries in the list are not even acronyms… maybe you should consider renaming the bot to something related to “abbreviations” or “glossary”?
MagnificentSteiner@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago I haven’t any issue with it myself, I think it’s a great idea.
These acronyms I’ve never seen before and have never been used by the bot:
a11y i18n l10n
cecilkorik@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago i18n is definitely a real thing and it’s often even used as an abbreviation in repos, folder structures and filenames related to internationalization/translation, I don’t love it, but it is definitely in real world use. l10n is one I’ve seen before and is also a real thing, but much less common (and even less acceptable in my opinion). a11y is not one I’ve ever seen before.
kind of ironic to abbreviate the word accessibility
MagnificentSteiner@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago LMAO spot on!
cecilkorik@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago If this is about the bot I think it is, I haven’t personally complained but I have noticed it’s weird and often wrong, it seems to detect HTTP/HTTPS in every post (perhaps seeing links and URLs?) and it seems to maybe possibly be detecting any words with those strings of letters somewhere in them and presumably also doesn’t care about case sensitivity? The short ones in particular like “AP”, “CA”, “CF”, “HA” and “IP” seem to come up frequently almost every time it posts, and “NAT” and “IoT” seems common, and none of things seem to be actually mentioned in any of the comments that I see.
Pika@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I’ve never personally had any issues with the bot, but I’ve also never really needed to look at the bot either to see what the acronyms meant, but I’ve appreciated that someone’s trying to help if someone didn’t know what the acronyms were.
Being said, I do have to agree with what others have stated. It would be nice, if possible, to have it so the definitions link to hyperlinks to persistent pages such as Wikipedia. Even more so on technical style terms like DNS, for example, because that’s one of those terms that if someone doesn’t know the acronym to it, chances are they don’t know the full name to it either.