Talk:Three letter acronym

message: Previous discussions regarding Three Letter Acronyms can also be found at:
*Talk:Three-letter acronym
*Talk:Three-letter abbreviation
There is also a talk page at:
*Talk:TLA (the disambiguation page)
PamD 12:16, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

message: Over the short history of Wikipedia, there has been lengthy discussion on many talk pages about which page should be "the main page". (In particular, see Talk:Three-letter acronym, and more recently, Talk:Three-letter abbreviation.) At some times, two or more very similar pages have existed describing the same thing.
This page is an attempt to have just one page describing TLAs, and all other pages redirecting to it. The difficulty is, what should "the main page" be called? 
If we were to consider all variations of (T/t)hree( /-)(L/l)etter (A/a)(cronym/bbreviation), we would have 2^5 = 32 variations to choose from. 
Clearly, some of these would never be candidates. (For example, it is unlikely that either "three Letter acronym" or "three letter Abbreviation" would be considered.) The point is: there are plenty of candidates to choose from.
The relevant policies and guidelines are Wikipedia:Naming conventions and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (abbreviations). Please note that names of Wikipedia articles should be optimized for readers over editors and for a general audience over specialists and that spelled-out phrases are preferable to abbreviations. Of course, the most common name is to be used so if the term is almost exclusively known only by its acronym it should be the article title.
However, TLA is ambiguous. 
The vast majority of "readers from a general audience" use the term "Three letter acronym" (despite the fact that most TLAs are not pronounceable, and therefore not acronyms). 
Hence "Three letter acronym" has been chosen as "the main page", even though many readers may consider it to be the "wrong" name for TLA.
:(Although I had help, responsibility for this is taken by: Pdfpdf 11:55, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why "Three letter acronym"? 

message: :*TLA is "the" disambiguation page 
:**Talk:TLA - exists
:*tla - redirects to TLA
:**Talk:tla is a red link
::--
:*TLA (disambiguation) - redirects to TLA
:**Talk:TLA (disambiguation) - exists
:*WP:TLA - redirects to Wikipedia:Disambiguation and abbreviations
:**Talk:WP:TLA is a red link
::--
:*Three letter abbreviation - redirects to Three letter acronym 
:**Talk:Three letter abbreviation is a red link
:*Three letter acronym is THE MAIN PAGE
:**Talk:Three letter acronym - Here (i.e. This page you're reading now)
::--
:*Three-letter abbreviation - redirects to Three letter acronym 
:**Talk:Three-letter abbreviation - exists
:*Three-letter acronym - redirects to Three letter acronym 
:**Talk:Three-letter acronym contains lengthy discussions
::--
:*Three Letter Abbreviation - redirects to Three letter acronym  
:**Talk:Three Letter Abbreviation is a red link 
:*Three Letter Acronym - redirects to Three letter acronym  
:**Talk:Three Letter Acronym is a red link
::--
:*Acronym and initialism
:**Talk:Acronym and initialism contains lengthy discussions
:*Acronym - redirects to Acronym and initialism
:**Talk:Acronym contains very lengthy discussions
:*Initialism - redirects to Acronym and initialism
:**Talk:Initialism contains some brief discussion
::--
:*Wikipedia:Disambiguation and abbreviations
:**Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation and abbreviations contains lengthy discussions
Last updated: Pdfpdf 13:46, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  What points where? 

message: (By-the-way: Initially I "moved" TLA (disambiguation) to TLA. I wasn't completely comfortable with that, so I "moved" it back, and now TLA redirects to TLA (disambiguation).) Cheers, Pdfpdf 12:16, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hallo, I think it's a pity not to have the disambig page just titled "TLA" - you say you moved it there and weren't happy with that. We've now got the situation where typing in "TLA" gets you to the disambig page (good) ... but only via a redirect, which is clumsy. If you look at the "What links here" for Three letter acronym, the vast majority of links are from "ABC" rather than from "ABC (disambiguation)".  Apart from that everything seems to hang together, thanks, though I'm not sure I've looked at every reasonable variant! PamD 14:58, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

text: I think I've now done what's necessary to get it moved, subject to an admin agreeing to it - I followed the procedure at  WP:RM including leaving a note at Talk:TLA (disambiguation).  Cheers.  PamD 12:31, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  TLA 

message: Treekids: Whilst I was thinking about your changes, you started a new batch of changes, and hence I got an edit conflict.I've put my changed version (of the front of the article) at User talk:Pdfpdf/TLA.I'll have a look at your latest batch of changes later (when you've finished your current editing). Cheers, Pdfpdf (talk) 21:48, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Edit conflict

message: Hallo again, Treekids and Pdfpdf:  I haven't got a lot of time today - lots of real life things to do - but a few comments:
* The article isn't intended to be about three letter acronyms as such, in the wild as it were, but about the concept of the "Three Letter Acronym" being recognised and talked about.  I had already thought of the usefulness of linking to :Category:Lists of TLAs before I saw it in pdf's version - I think we need to do this.
* There's a piece of wording we've always had in the article which is plain wrong! It says "A three letter acronym (commonly referred to as a TLA) is an abbreviation, an alphabetism, an initialism or an acronym consisting of three letters.". Not so!  That definition would include "etc" or WP's own "dab" for disambiguation!  Perhaps it should say "A three letter acronym (commonly referred to as a TLA) is an abbreviation consisting of three letters which are initials of words of the term abbreviated, and always written in upper case letters."  There's an interesting point whether it can also include two letters plus a digit - as in the category listing!  I don't think so, myself.
*I really don't think we need to give a lot of examples, though I can see that Treekids has put a lot work into providing them, thanks. As I say, the article isn't about the existence of them but the recognition of them as a phenomenon.
No time - got to get on with a weekend's full of stuff.  Good luck with it all. PamD (talk) 10:02, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Back to the main topic

message: I've done a bit of tidying up of the article, which I hope will meet with approval! PamD (talk) 18:14, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Back again