Forum glossary idea for abbreviations/acronyms

[PTR 444]

Over recent weeks, I have noticed that many forum users (including myself on one occasion) have used abbreviations and acronyms in posts without explaining what it stands for as per the forum rules. While this usually gets rectified, it adds unnecessary information for long-standing users, while not everybody has the time to go back and edit posts. I’ve therefore wondered whether there might be merit in having a glossary page on this forum for abbreviations?

The glossary could be divided into sub-sections, so for example you could have a section for station codes (BHM, BNS etc), one for technical terms (ECS, TPWS etc), and one for organisations (NR, TfL etc) among others. Users posting any abbreviations or acronyms on the forums can then use a feature similar to the quote tag which allows the poster to add a hyperlink from a drop-down menu to the chosen abbreviation in the glossary, instead of having to spell it in full beforehand. Once posted, users reading the post can click on the link which takes them to the abbreviation’s definition in the glossary.

I appreciate such an idea would require quite a bit of coding and technical tinkering from the forum staff, but would be interested to see if it could be made to work.

One last thing, I might as well explain the abbreviations in this post in full. This might give some ideas as to how the navigation of such a system could work.

Station codes
BHM - Birmingham New Street
BNS - Barnes

Technical terms
ECS - Empty coaching stock
TPWS - Train protection and warning system

Organisations
NR - National Rail (or could it be Network Rail? Luckily hyperlinks can differentiate between the two)
TfL - Transport for London

 

[najaB]

This suggestion comes up from time to time, and I believe that the mods were working on one, but I suspect the problem is that nobody has offered to do the leg work to collate it and keep it up to date.

 

[Railsigns]

TOPS - Train operating protection system

Really?

 

[PTR 444]

Really?

I mean a lot of people new to the world of railways might think that’s what it means. That’s why I think it’s important to have a database for people to familiarise themselves with jargon and all that before making the same schoolboy error that I just have (maybe it was intentional)

 

[Gloster]

A good idea, but it needs to be simple to access when you are reading a post. If you have to go through a series of stages to get to it and then, after finding out what the letters mean, go through a long series of moves to get back to what you were reading, people won’t bother. It also needs to be compatible with the simpler devices.

 

[Purple Train]

I have had to look up quite a lot of the abbreviations used on this forum - however, none of them have been railway-related, so I'm somewhat on the fence.

 

[XAM2175]

Just need one that sees "BML" in a draft post and sticks up a big banner asking "Do you mean VTB?"

 

[Mag_seven]

This is an idea that has been suggested by posters before and as a result discussed by the forum staff. We are still looking into but don't expect there to be any news in the near future on it for various reasons.

In the meantime I will remind posters of our forum rule on acronyms and jargon which we would appreciate that all posters continue to comply with:

Please remember many members do not understand rail “jargon” (including acronyms, station codes and specialist terms). Such terms should be correctly defined the first time they are used; codes and abbreviations must not be made up.

Thanks all.