Talk:Abbreviations

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i hope i'm not overstepping bounds creating this page, but sometimes i see TF abbreviations (including on various pages of TFWiki) and i don't know what they mean, or they don't make sense because i know they mean something else. i've been thinking about a page like this for quite a while, and i couldn't sleep, so i finally decided to start it (i'm sure i'm missing plenty). i hope others will add to it as needed.

i wanted it to be http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Category:Acronyms but i couldn't figure out how to make it a chart like http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Category:Shattered_Glass_Decepticons or http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Category:Computers ,so i guess it wound up less of a category and more of a list like http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Popular_Earth_vehicle_alternate_modes

Rhymus (talk) 06:40, 18 November 2013 (EST)

Seems like a good idea to me. For too long I've wanted to see a page explaining what "CHUG" is. This does it one better, I think. -- Repowers (talk) 07:36, 18 November 2013 (EST)
I'm generally in favor of it, although I think it might need some TLC to get to Wiki standards. (I eagerly await the relevant image captions - "OMG WTF RTS BB?!") -hx (talk) 10:41, 18 November 2013 (EST)
I really don't see the need for acronyms that already exist as page titles or redirects on this site to be listed here. Anyone who is confused by these abbreviations is already be able to locate their meaning, simply by using the search function. --Khajidha (talk) 10:09, 22 November 2013 (EST)

Thanks! / Help!

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Thanks to everyone who approves of and/or assists with the "Acronyms" page!

i was mainly thinking of acronyms when i created this page, but i've also seen (and occasionally misunderstood) abbreviations which are not acronyms. Should this page include non-acronym abbreviations? Such as:

Back on the subject of acronyms...

i can't remember if "OP" sometimes means "original packaging", or if i made that up.

Does "SS" ever refer to Sunstorm or Slipstream? i feel like i'm forgetting uses of SS that i've seen...

Other acronyms i remember seeing but can't remember the meaning:

  • GT
  • GTS
  • RTS (@hx)
  • TOC (@M Sipher)

i would prefer to list FIBRIR, FIRRIB, RIBFIR, and RIRFIB separately instead of in pairs; anyone who sees one of those acronyms and fails to recognize it won't know to look up the counterpart.

Do people prefer, for example, Optimus Prime or Optimus Prime (disambiguation)?

Opinions about capitalization variants (such as MTMTE or MtMtE, TRoOP or TROOP, WFC or WfC)? List them all, or just the most commonly used, or any of them as long as it includes all the right letters in the right order?

--Rhymus (talk) 04:11, 21 November 2013 (EST)

Okay, I had a look at the page and I've reorganised it into three columns rather than just one as it was a bit, er, long and thin. For consistency I've changed all the links to disambig pages to the format [[Optimus Prime (disambiguation)|Optimus Prime]]. Added a couple of fictional acronyms too. --Emvee (talk) 05:08, 21 November 2013 (EST)
Sorry, but that both looks awful, and is nigh-useless for jumping right to a letter. "collist" will NOT keep the bullet points under the subheaders. It turns a long thin page into a jumbled morass of broken flow. We can put pictures on the right to break up the whitespace.
Reveal the Shield. -hx (talk) 17:43, 21 November 2013 (EST)
[bangs head on wall] i knew that. --Rhymus (talk) 20:54, 22 November 2013 (EST)

CHUGGEURTS "sometimes used to describe toys repurposed as characters from said continuity, official or otherwise"? like who? Not that i doubt the claim, i just can't think of any examples. --Rhymus (talk) 20:54, 22 November 2013 (EST)

Is it appropriate to list GEEWUN as a definition of the abbreviation G1? i thought the point of spelling GEEWUN differently was to, um, differentiate it from G1 as a whole. --Rhymus (talk) 20:56, 22 November 2013 (EST)

Just a couple of things I want to comment on.

  • Do you think it is necessary to include things that don't actually stand for anything, like BB, EZ Collection, KB Toys, 3H, and various Arms Microns?
  • I don't think "FARTS" is an actual acronym.
  • What is a GoBox? - Gimmick (talk) 11:06, 23 November 2013 (EST)
FARTS wasn't used in-universe, was it? Does it count? (Mind you, lots of things on this page aren't acronyms. NEST, HOPE, and NAIL are acronyms, CNA, GTS, and RPM are not. Also has anyone ever used FuP for Fun Pub? This is the first time I've seen it anywhere.) GoBoxes are the boxes on the left hand side of TFWiki pages with "Go!" in them, though the only place I've seen them abbreviated GB is in image file names. --abates (talk) 19:06, 24 November 2013 (EST)
My intention for this page was a "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" kind of thing. Sometimes i see an acronym or abbreviation, think "What the heck does that mean?" ...Sometimes i can puzzle it out, or track down the answer, but sometimes not. Sometimes i forget even ones that i know. (See RTS, above--despite my having already defined CHUGGERTS.) Sometimes i find out that it isn't actually an abbreviation, even though it looks like one. So i hoped this page would be like a master answer key, so yes, i'm inclined to include BB, EZC, etc. Also abbreviations like Alt, Arm, Cyb, and such, but the page is called Acronyms... How do people feel about changing it to Abbreviations? (And how does one go about changing a page name anyway?) How do people feel about "Acronym", "Abbreviation", and Abbreviations redirecting to Acronyms?
How are CNA and RPM not acronyms? (i still don't know what GT or GTS means.)
If i remember correctly, i once saw a GoBox showing some Super deformed Transformers, and i wanted more information on the comic strip that used that artwork, but the GoBox itself actually linked to the character shown in the picture. i thought GB was an abbreviation for the name of the comic, but--surprise surprise--none of my searches for anything related to GB got me the results i wanted. Eventually i figured out that the GB in the file name actually referred to the GoBox and had nothing to do with the comic. That's why i put GoBox on the list, to save others from similar fruitless searches.
FARTS wasn't canon? i don't think i knew that. Heard it was an accident, but i assumed it was canonized when they added BUTT and... i forget, i thought there was another one.
Slightly on-topic: What does the G.I. in G.I. Joe mean?
--Rhymus (talk) 05:18, 25 November 2013 (EST)
Acronyms spell out a word that is pronounced. NEST is an acronym because it is pronounced "nest." CNA is considered a different kind of abbreviation called an initialism because you say each individual letter "c-n-a." I don't think G.I. Joe stands for anything in fiction. In the real world it was a slang term and G.I. stood for Government Issue. I seem to recall the movie Rise of Cobra made the whole term G.I. JOE some kind of goofy acronym, but I don't remember what it is. - Gimmick (talk) 08:45, 25 November 2013 (EST)
It's like, "Global Initiative Joint Operations Extravaganza" or some such nonsense. But it isn't in any continuity that's interacted with the Transformers, so it isn't for our purposes. -hx (talk) 10:12, 25 November 2013 (EST)
I'd be in favour of moving it to "Abbreviations", as a more accurate title. --abates (talk) 14:56, 28 November 2013 (EST)
I think Abbreviations is a better term. On the subject of FARTS, this page already covers fan terminology and I'm sure it's been used in that context - and it would be a shame have BUTT without FARTS. --Emvee (talk) 15:25, 28 November 2013 (EST)
If everyone agrees, let's move it to "Abbreviations". --Sabrblade (talk) 16:47, 8 December 2013 (EST)
I don't know, if the article were called abbreviations, that would break the scope of the article wide open, wouldn't it? How many abbreviations are there? Would people want to add "Quints" as an abbreviation of "Quintessons"? Just a thought. - Gimmick (talk) 19:02, 8 December 2013 (EST)
Yet, a good majority of what's on this page aren't acronyms, but abbreviations. --Sabrblade (talk) 22:30, 8 December 2013 (EST)
Repeating my previous post from the above section: "I really don't see the need for acronyms that already exist as page titles or redirects on this site to be listed here. Anyone who is confused by these abbreviations is already be able to locate their meaning, simply by using the search function." Does anyone really think someone would come to the wiki and search for a page of acronyms/abbreviations to find out what FARTS or 3H means when they could just search for those exact terms? While there may be a need for a glossary of acronyms, abbreviations and fan terms; this current page is filled with unnecessary bloat. --Khajidha (talk) 10:30, 9 December 2013 (EST)
By that measure, so is every disambiguation page - after all, a user can simply search for anything that's on a disambig, so why bother including those links?
With relation to the page title, Wikipedia lists "Initialisms" and "Alphabetisms" as terms for things like AHM or ATT where it's not an acronym because the letters don't make a new word. Personally I find both of them kind of obnoxious and unwieldy as opposed to simply "Abbreviations" --Emvee (talk) 11:48, 9 December 2013 (EST)
Items on a disambiguation page cannot be individually searched for by a naive user who does not already know our disambiguation system. Therefor, having all possible Optimus Primes linked to from a page is, in itself, useful as that lets the user know that the term itself is ambiguous. How does having all of these abbreviations listed here, on a page no one is likely to think to look for, help our users more than simply making the appropriate redirects? --Khajidha (talk) 13:27, 9 December 2013 (EST)
To pick a disambig page at more or less random (Abominus came up first alphabetically) that's just not true. You can type "Abominus" into the search box and it brings up every single version of Abominus in the suggested links underneath. What's the point of the disambiguation page? It's just unnecessary bloat by your reasoning. Besides, if you start deleting acronyms and abbreviations from this page you're guaranteeing yourself a lifetime of constant patrols as other and newer users add them back in. Which is fine if you want to spend your time doing that, but there are probably more important things to worry about. --Emvee (talk) 10:33, 10 December 2013 (EST)
You have completely misunderstood my point about disambig pages. My point was that a naive user looking for this "Optimus Prime" or "Abominus" they have heard of cannot simply type in Optimus Prime or Abominus and go directly to the page that tells them about the exact version of that character that they are looking for. They must go to the disambiguation page and pick through the list as you describe. The disambig page is thus not bloat. Typing in B.A.T., 3H, A3, AT-AT, D.O.L.T.S. and many, many others on this list takes you to the article about that subject. How or why would anyone come to this particular page looking for the explanation of those things? A glossary of abbreviations that are used in the fandom but do not have/need full pages could be useful but right now the few useful entries (such as CHUG) on this page are hidden amongst things that are already fully explained elsewhere. --Khajidha (talk) 11:01, 10 December 2013 (EST)
  • i want to thank Emvee for adding PARD, which i only know about because of its presence on the mis-named (sorry) Acronyms page. The notion of a Shattered Glass PARD amuses me.
  • That said, i think i agree with Khajidha. It seems counterintuitive to me to deliberately leave out any "Initialisms" or "Alphabetisms" or acronyms, and i was leaning towards expanding the list to include other types of abbreviations like the aforementioned Alt, Arm, Cyb, Quint, etc., but maybe redirects would be more effective... in most cases. Some abbreviations may call for multiple redirect pages (such as MTMTE and "MtMtE", or B.A.T., "BAT", "b.a.t.", etc.). Some abbreviations might warrant their own disambiguation pages, such as AM. However, what about abbreviations which might confuse TFWiki readers, but do not have TFWiki pages because the terms are not exclusive to Transformers? Examples that come to mind are OAV/OVA, RPG, STD, and TPB. Also A.R.T.S., which i just discovered tonight on the pages for Blackarachnia (Animated) and Bumblebee (Animated).
  • Slightly on-topic: Is there a reason why, for example, [ [ Optimus Prime (disambiguation) | Optimus Prime ] ] is preferable to [ [ Optimus Prime (disambiguation) ] ] or [ [ Optimus Prime ] ] ? Originally i preferred the third option for items on this page, but then i thought the second option might be better, but the consensus seems to be for the first option, and i'm curious why. Does linking to a redirect increase wear and tear on computers or something? [ [ Optimus Prime ] ] is easier to type than [ [ Optimus Prime (disambiguation) | Optimus Prime ] ] and seems to yield the same results, while [ [ Optimus Prime (disambiguation) ] ] is in between as far as difficulty to type but comes out ahead in terms of informing the user where the link will go.
  • Slightly more on-topic: If the decision is to move the page from Acronyms to Abbreviations, how is that done?
  • --Rhymus (talk) 05:46, 18 December 2013 (EST)

GTS

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While I don't have anything to back up its use as such in Transformers, GTS in the auto industry is generally taken to mean "grand tourer sport", referring to a car that has the comfort of a grand touring car for long drives and the performance expected out of a sports car. This seems at least plausible for its use here, too, but without any sources I wanted to mention it here first. Waverod ✈️ (talk) 18:00, 3 September 2018 (EDT)

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