Condensed tips for beginners?

[kenwyn]

Think "U" is rather universally recognized, unlike Civ codes, rite?

 

[Pangaea]

As it looks like we crossposted...

It's a huge stumbling block unfortunately. There are still things that make me scratch my head in "WTH-ness", but in the beginning it was actually infuriating because it was almost like reading declassified/leaked military documents.

Here is a list, but it's far from complete. The main ones should be there though.

If we just take some of the recent ones above

BPT = Beakers Per Turn (your research)
CS = Civil Service
BtS = Beyond the Sword, the latest expansion pack to Civ 4.

Another bug bear of mine is the CIV and CiV, which is apparently supposed to mean Civ 4 and Civ 5. I mean, it's hard enough to know what people are speaking about to begin with, now we have to take special notice of capitalisation too?

 

[kenwyn]

Holy s__t! What a list, what a game, what group.

There actually IS a list (a much needed list). Thanks Pangaea.

Now i/we can go back & read all this stuff with some comprehension.

 

[Nick Carpathia]

What the hell is a Mounted Oscillating War?

 

[Sisiutil]

What the hell is a Mounted Oscillating War?

A very rare but debilitating condition. See your doctor.

 

[RD-BH]

What the hell is a Mounted Oscillating War?

I thought it was built by Kubota ...

 

[damerell]

Think "U" is rather universally recognized, unlike Civ codes, rite?

Recognised with the same enthusiasm that I might, for example, recognise half a maggot in an apple I was eating. Speak English, please.

(And if you produce a thick enough chunk of that "u m8 w8 lol" stuff, I'm lost. I'm not fourteen, and I don't send three hundred text messages a day.)

 

[aggri1]

Why was the "U" capitalised? The word "you" is not, in English. Oh yeah, "U" isn't English either.

I would also like to add my voice to that of those decrying the excessive use of abbreviations. It aids understanding greatly when the whole word is typed out, and doesn't really take that long - and besides, you're taking the time to post on an online forum about a computer game, clearly a few seconds more are available!

Edit: Furthermore, that list is stupid. A whole bunch of acronyms have two or even THREE meanings. Having worked on numerous reports where there was at least one page of acronyms at the start (defence and gov' love these stupid things), having the same acronym for different things is just unacceptable.

Grrr!

;-)

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I agree that acronym usage is often excessive on these forums. I try to set an example in my own posts avoiding them for the most part. I will use an acronym when a word is used many times in a post, but only after using the acronym's fully qualified name.

I recently ran into a new acronym that had me baffled:

C2 = City 2 = Combat II

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[GKey]

^^ Oh I remember that infuriating experience back when I arrived here for a first time.

I suggest we switch to CS for faster CS

That one just killed me then.

Why don't admins put acronyms list on the front page?

 

[Pangaea]

"Generate a GA for a GA" is bonkers too.

It's like a tribal language. It would be much easier for new people to feel welcome (and understand what people are talking about) if people didn't use so many acronyms. I think it's hard for guys who have been here for years to understand how big of a stumbling block this is.

It is a littler quicker to write by using lots of acronyms, but it's a LOT harder for others to understand.

 

[damerell]

It's like a tribal language. It would be much easier for new people to feel welcome (and understand what people are talking about) if people didn't use so many acronyms. I think it's hard for guys who have been here for years to understand how big of a stumbling block this is.

It's not. I only joined about a year ago and had no real trouble. It's not like there isn't a list of them readily Googleable, and most of them are obvious anyway.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

It's not. I only joined about a year ago and had no real trouble. It's not like there isn't a list of them readily Googleable, and most of them are obvious anyway.

Maybe not so obvious when players make up there own names for cities, but use brief acronyms to refer to them. Try to follow what they are refering to without access to the game save. Plus they use rarely used acronyms too. Practically every forth or fifth word is an acronym. It almost becomes a specific dialect of a foriegn language. Let's further assume they are using an analysis technique that they assume their readers have seen before and thus leave out the details. However, their readers often have never seen the analysis technique before. Even a genius might become confused.

So, I would not so quick to say that acronyms are easy to learn. Finally, not every one has a photographic memory; many of us need a fair amount of repetition to continously refresh our memory of acronyms.

Your mileage may vary,

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Pangaea]

Exactly.

Many HAVE problems with the ludicrous over-use of acronyms. That is a fact. Okay, so not everybody have a problem with it, but many do, and it makes reading these forums more difficult, especially as a new user wanting to learn more about the game.

 

[damerell]

Exactly.

If the best example that can be come up with is one particular player who assigns acronyms to their own cities that match other commonly-used acronyms, this is obviously a non-issue, since that is not normal practice.

Many HAVE problems with the ludicrous over-use of acronyms. That is a fact.

No, it isn't, not least because of the implicit assumption that there is a "ludicrous over-use of acronyms". That is your opinion, not a matter of fact. "Many" is also an unjustified assertion.

It is a fact that some new users complain about the use of acronyms.

 

[Manco Capac]

Acrophobia

 

[Pangaea]

Whatever. It's simply an observation that some users have problems with it, whether you want to acknowledge it or not. Far from everything is obvious, even now when I've been here for quite a long time and read hundreds of threads. In the beginning, it was naturally nigh on impossible to understand what people were saying.

 

[damerell]

It is a fact that some new users complain about the use of acronyms.

Whatever. It's simply an observation that some users have problems with it, whether you want to acknowledge it or not.

I can see how you might think I'm not acknowledging that, given that I only wrote exactly that in the post you replied to. Wait...

In the beginning, it was naturally nigh on impossible to understand what people were saying.

Can you explain why anyone would persist with a Web forum that was "nigh on impossible to understand"? (Answer: no, because that was more hyperbole.)

 

[Pangaea]

I'm not interested in splitting hairs. If you can't understand there might be a problem with this heavy use of acronyms, then whatever I say won't convince you.

To answer your question though, if I didn't like the game so much, I would certainly have stopped visiting this place, because many of the posts read like gibberish. It took a while to get used to it, and learn some of the most used acronyms. Not everybody will have that kind of patience.

 

[GKey]

What the point in this argument? It's obvious acronyms make it much harder for newcomers to get needed info.

Here in S&T we have threads made by experienced players for experienced players, using acronyms is fine there.

However using acronyms in strategy article, oriented on relatively inexperienced player, without giving translation of these acronyms within the body of this strategy article is ... (many terms crossing my head: from counterproductive and impolite to silly and dumb, yeah something like that).