Tech Forum

Should we allow the use of acronyms or postal codes for places in article titles, or rename ("move") titles containing acronyms?

So, for instance, if an article about Montgomery County, Maryland is named "Montgomery Co., MD" should the title remain or be renamed to "Montgomery County, Maryland?"

Best use should be Montgomery County, Maryland. Postal codes can be confused with other abbreviations, as can the "Co." abbreviation.

CA = Canada? or California?

Eschew obfuscation.
Avd. abbrvns.

That example is good, it has been found in the IGI when for some reason or another, names that were completed went into the wrong region. This was found by workers at a temple in Central America.

They found the abbreviation 'CA' with the place names that were supposed to be in the Central America region and not in California.

The problem was eventually fixed. I don't know what they did, but this does point out why abreviations may not always be the right thing. Sometimes they are necessary but they must be used with caution in some other cases.

The title says 'acronyms' but you seem to be asking about abbreviations.

I think that abbreviations should be used where they locate a place, but do not significantly diferentiate.

There should not be an article named 'Georgia, USA', but one named 'Georgia, United States of America'.

Likewise, it would be appropriate to have an article titled 'Atlanta, Georgia, USA', instead of the full name.

The Earl

Again consistency between products. I believe we should follow the same standards for place-names as new FamilySearch, etc.

Maybe we can change the search results page to indicate that if you searched using an abbreviation, you may consider spelling out that which was abbreviated.

Hey, why is abbreviation such a long word anyway? (Sorry, that is off topic )

Or maybe if no match is found, it would automatically recognize some of the common abbreviation and produce those results?

An example of this is when Google does not find a match, it displays something like:
Do you mean "Montgomery, Maryland"?

Similar questions can be asked about "St. George" (with or without the period) versus "Saint George", "St. Croix", and those other common abbreviations.

Thomas_Lerman wrote: Similar questions can be asked about "St. George" (with or without the period) versus "Saint George", "St. Croix", and those other common abbreviations.

'St' with and without the period seem to work the same as 'Saint' in my sandbox wiki.

The Earl

Good to know. Same question on Mt. Pleasant, Ft. Collins, etc. Does it recognize these abbreviations as well as it spelled out?

The Earl wrote:'St' with and without the period seem to work the same as 'Saint' in my sandbox wiki.

The Earl

Oddly:

Searching for 'St George' returns pages in this order:

1. Saint George, Utah (5 bytes)
   1: Test1
2. Saint George, Washington, Utah (5 bytes)
   1: test2
3. Saint George (5 bytes)
   1: test3
4. St George (5 bytes)
   1: test5

The oddity is that a 'Go' search would put you at the page that the regular search ranked lowest, even though it matched the search string exactly.

Their search is broken :D