City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

how about an acronym dictionary sticky?

Aett_Thorn

By Aett_Thorn,
Posted on: 2011-11-08 08:21 in Player Questions

 

Posted

i personally have a rule that i never use an acronym unless i first define it... such as Single Origin enhancer (SO)... after which i THEN feel i can use SO as often as i want in the same post...

now... most come to this forum to get help on stuff they are new at... the problem is that those who do know the answers, because they have played a long time, tend to immediately use acronyms... but those who are trying to learn probably don't know the acronym, making the advice look like a different language... and the advice sometimes worthless!

for example, someone trying to learn about the various types of enhancers is just going to be confused if given the answer "there are DO's, SO's, and IO's"... see what i mean... this kind of response basically assumes the audience already knows the answer!

this is because there has always been the problem (not just in this sense) that people who offer help tend to know the subject so well they talk in a language that assumes who they are talking to does too (i call it the 'user manual author's paradox')... which tends to defeat the purpose...

for me... i just saw the acronym ED... i assume this is some artificially imposed system that makes it so the more of the same enhancer one uses in the same power use the less effective it is... i'd like to look up more detail on this subject... but i can't... because i have no idea what 'ED' stands for so i can't look it up via search (a search for just 'ED' result is nothing found)! i also saw people in-game saying all the time DFB, DFB, DFB... i didn't know what this meant ('Death From Below' quest) for weeks...

thus, assuming it doesn't already exist, i suggest that there should be an acronym dictionary sticky topic so one can look up common acronym's...