Tech Forum

Posted: **Wed Oct 15, 2008 11:09 pm**

rmrichesjr wrote:That's a good list. One minor question: Doesn't MLS stand for "Member and Leader Services"?

Thanks for catching this.

Posted: **Wed Oct 15, 2008 11:51 pm**

Techgy wrote:CSV stands for "comma separated variable" an ascii file with each entry divided by a comma ","

File1, File2, File3, etc

Actually, CSV stands for "Comma-separated values" (not variable).

I'm curious about the reason for this post. Was it in response to my post about the problem on the Acronyms page regarding the CSV definition? If so, I don't understand how it helps with the issue I reported to repeat an incorrect definition from the first post of this thread, when I was talking about a totally different problem on the Acronyms page.

Posted: **Thu Oct 16, 2008 6:41 pm**

I have never been keen to acronyms in any setting, time or place. In professional environments acronyms can lead to confusion and mix-ups.

Acronyms In the Church, as to their rightful use, have become tradition.

MLS - Major League Soccer
MLS - Multiple Listing Services

Posted: **Thu Oct 16, 2008 8:06 pm**

kh_design wrote:I have never been keen to acronyms in any setting, time or place. In professional environments acronyms can lead to confusion and mix-ups.

Acronyms In the Church, as to their rightful use, have become tradition.

MLS - Major League Soccer
MLS - Multiple Listing Services

Good point and thanks for the comment. I guess you have to consider the text in which they're being used.

Posted: **Thu Oct 16, 2008 10:37 pm**

kh_design wrote:I have never been keen to acronyms in any setting, time or place. In professional environments acronyms can lead to confusion and mix-ups.

Acronyms In the Church, as to their rightful use, have become tradition.

There is nothing unusual about the Church in this regard -- I would challenge you to find any field of endeavor that does not make extensive use of abbreviations (most of what we are discussing is more properly categorized as an abbreviation, not an acronym).

Abbreviations are much clearer than the full term in many cases. Just about everyone knows what a JPEG is, but what on earth is the Joint Photographic Experts Group? It's certainly not an image! (And before any kind souls rescue me from my ignorance, I am fully aware of what the JPEG is as well as what a JPEG is).

In any case, you can't change the culture so the best we can do is to make sure we use abbreviations carefully -- not to excess, especially where abbreviations may not be broadly known, but refusing to use any abbreviations (and I'm not suggestion that anyone is taking this position) would lead to weaker, not better communication.

And having a reference to help newbies is definitiely a good thing.

Posted: **Thu Oct 16, 2008 11:06 pm**

A common practice I have experienced in cross profession fields is to identify (spell out) the acronym or abbreviation on first use to alleviate confusion. Having commonly used ones in the Church provided in the acronyms link at the top of the page foots this bill just fine. If it isn't there then doing as I just described is what I prefer.

Posted: **Fri Oct 17, 2008 12:37 am**

Techgy wrote:As new members you'll run into a lot of abbreviations or buzz words some of which you may not be familiar with. I'd like to toss out a few definitions and ask that other moderators go ahead and edit this post and add to it as necessary. Please add to this post and not create additional ones so we keep the info together.
Note that at the top of the forum page you'll see the word "ACRONYMS" which also provides some of this information;
http://tech.lds.org/index.php?option=co ... &Itemid=84

Let's start with the following;

ASA - Church-managed Cisco ASA 5505 firewall used for meeting house Internet connections.
ASCII - American Standard Code for Information Interchange - a standard definition employing characters that can be read without conversion.
CHQ - Church Headquarters, usually referring to any of the Church departments in Salt Lake.
CSV - Comma-separated Values, an ASCII file with values separated by a comma "," and records separated by a newline.
CUFS - Church Unit Financial Statement
ERS - Employment Resource Services
FHC - Family History Center
FHL - Family History Library
GSD - Global Service Desk. (Sometimes called GSC for Global Service Center.) 24/7 support for PIX and ASA installations.
HQ - See CHQ
LUWS - Local Unit Web Site - Your Ward/Branch/Stake Web site under lds.org
MLS - Member and Leader Services (This is the membership/finance software on your ward's administrative computer).
PC - Personal Computer
PIX - Church-managed Cisco PIX firewall used primarily for FHC Internet connections.
SAV - Symantec Anti-Virus
SEO - Search Engine Optimization
SERPS - Search Engine Results Pages
SFS - Stake Financial Summary
STS - Stake Technology Specialist
VPN - Virtual Private Network (How the GSD support person "talks" to your PIX or ASA box from their location.)

I added a couple of definitions above. And I have to post something here for it to post.

Posted: **Fri Oct 17, 2008 9:23 am**

D.Webanalyst wrote:I added a couple of definitions above. And I have to post something here for it to post.

It would be helpful if someone harvested her additional acronyms/abbreviations from her post and added them to the first post (only moderators would have this capability).

Posted: **Fri Oct 17, 2008 10:01 am**

mkmurray wrote:It would be helpful if someone harvested her additional acronyms/abbreviations from her post and added them to the first post (only moderators would have this capability).

Completed.

Posted: **Thu Dec 18, 2008 2:32 pm**

I'm working on the acronyms right now. Any others you can think of?

Tech Forum

Definitions/Abbreviations

MLS