Originally Posted by
oklAAhoma
... It seems that you're asking me (and others like me) to spend more time typing to save you time reading. What makes your time more valuable than ours?
You might be a slow typist, oklAAhoma, but surely not a
poor typist. ;-)
As far as spending more time composing your message so that others require less time reading your message, yes, that's exactly what I'm proposing. You could look at it from a strictly economic viewpoint. If you can save ten seconds by using *A (instead of Star Alliance), you could potentially make hundreds or thousands of readers ponder over that bizarre acronym for ten seconds. That ads up to hours and hours of lost time.
It wasn't until communication writing became key to my work that I finally understood Mark Twain's line “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” Good communication takes time. If you want people to understand you, take the time to write good.
Originally Posted by
oklAAhoma
You say you can't remember airport codes. That wouldn't be an excuse because you simply don't want to make the effort, would it?
You're right, I don't want to make the effort, but it's not as simple as an excuse. I might spend an hour a week dealing with airport codes. Memorizing several hundred codes would take a considerable amount of time for a limited payoff. I spend far more time on business and leisure sites with their own jargon and grating acronyms (not to mention text formatting languages) each of which introduce their own acronyms for unfathomable reasons. I spend a few dozen hours each week dealing with a project that uses arcane and unnecessary TLA's. This I
have to memorize because this organization, sadly, has an absolute
fetish for them.
Why the need to create a new language? English works just fine. Jargon and acronyms build a gate against outsiders. While this may not be a conscious decision, it takes place nevertheless. (I'm reminded of a TV commercials where all but one person are wearing gel insoles and keep saying how they're "Gelin'" while the protagonist, trying to fit in says he's "Gelin'" too - the others just laugh at him.)
It seems entirely practical to use airport codes in Flyertalk.com, but it's not necessary to have to memorize all the codes in order to get maximum value from the information. I've encountered numerous web sites with roll-over function that displays additional information ... such as the name of the city the code refers.
Is there anyone here who thinks this would
not be a valuable addition to the site?