StickyDefinitions/Abbreviations

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
FWIW - For What It's Worth (not technical, but used frequently)
GSD & GSC - Global Service Desk/Center. (Sometimes called GSC for Global Service Center.) 24/7 support for PIX and ASA installations.
HQ - See CHQ
IIRC - If I Remember/Recall Correctly
IMHO - In My Humble Opinion (not technical, but occasionally seen)
LCR - Leader and Clerk Resources
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).
OTOH - On The Other Hand.
PC - Personal Computer
PIX - Church-managed Cisco PIX firewall used primarily for FHC Internet connections.
SAV - Symantec Anti-Virus
SEO - Search Engine Optimization
SERP - Search Engine Results Page
SFS - Stake Financial Summary
STS - Stake Technology Specialist
TES - Temple Entry System
TPTB - The Powers That Be
VPN - Virtual Private Network (How the GSD support person "talks" to your PIX or ASA box from their location.)

Techgy wrote:LUWS - Stands for Local Unit Web Site

MLS - Stands for Member Leader System (this is the membership software on your wards pc.

SAV - Symantec Anti-Virus

There is an ACRONYMS link at the top of the Tech Forum page that has some common acronyms. The first two are already there. SAV is not. Maybe we can get some added.

I'm interested in adding more of these acronyms to keep it as up to date and as useful as possible. Keep any other acronyms coming that you'd like to see added

On the Acronyms page there's a link on the GSD page that says "Global Service Desk" and points to;

http://magic/selfsupport/servicedesk.php

The above link does not work.

CUFS - Church Unit Financial Statement

SFS - Stake Financial Summary

HQ or CHQ - Church Head Quarters, usually referring to the help desk in Salt Lake.

Thanks crislapi, good additions. I included them in the above list.

Mike

Techgy wrote:...

MLS - Member Leader System (This is the membership/finance software on your ward's PC.)

...

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

rmrichesjr wrote:Doesn't MLS stand for "Member and Leader Services"?

Yes, it does. [grin]

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

Yup, good catch. Thanks.

Techgy wrote: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

There are some oddities on the Acronyms page:

1. There are some terms and definitions that seem like they are mostly for internal Church use, and don't really belong on a public site: KB, BO, DIZ, BEZ; perhaps EUP, EFD, PDD and SRD.
2. ICS could use a definition, since it isn't obvious what that department's scope is.
3. The definition for CSV references "ascidia", which as near as I can determine refers to creatures called sea squirts. I don't think it has anything to do with plain text. Could ASCII have been intended?
4. The link on GSD seems to be one that could only work on the Church's internal network.

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

Thanks for catching this.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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

CCN, for Church Communications Network (???)

MorettiDP wrote:CCN, for Church Communications Network (???)

CCN is already on the Acronyms list. It isn't mentioned in this thread, but the whole purpose of this thread is to update the Acronyms list (it would be redundant to have two lists of acronyms).

Alan_Brown wrote:CCN is already on the Acronyms list. It isn't mentioned in this thread, but the whole purpose of this thread is to update the Acronyms list (it would be redundant to have two lists of acronyms).

Sorry...

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

I've noticed a few updates, but there are still many of the abbreviations listed on the post at the beginning of this thread that are not incorporated in the Acronyms page.

Is that because they were overlooked, or because they were considered, but rejected?

Also, that broken link on the GSD definition page is still a problem (it might not be broken, but rather only work on the Church's internal network, but to those of us on the outside, it is the same as broken).

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

In reference to the Acronyms page, the GSD acronym has a link below it for Global Service Desk. The link is broken.

McDanielCA wrote:I'm interested in adding more of these acronyms to keep it as up to date and as useful as possible. Keep any other acronyms coming that you'd like to see added

I just added TES to the list.

Edit: Also, OTOH.

Roy,

The reason you don't see the newly added acronyms is because we will soon be changing the acronyms page up. It should be a little easier to navigate and will have most, except for the most recent few, included. You'll see it in a couple of weeks.

McDanielCA wrote:Roy,

The reason you don't see the newly added acronyms is because we will soon be changing the acronyms page up. It should be a little easier to navigate and will have most, except for the most recent few, included. You'll see it in a couple of weeks.

Thanks Cassie. I look forward to the upgrade.:p

The acronyms have been updated and the format has been changed a bit. Check it out here.

McDanielCA wrote:The acronyms have been updated and the format has been changed a bit. Check it out here.

In case someone missed the recent minor site reorganization, the standard link to the updated Acronyms page that Cassie linked to is now on the right-hand side of the LDS Tech home page, under the heading "Community."

McDanielCA wrote:The acronyms have been updated and the format has been changed a bit. Check it out here.

The Global Service Desk link is still broken (at least for those of us outside the Church network -- my guess is that the URL http://magic/selfsupport/servicedesk.php would work inside the Church network, and that is why Church employees don't see the problem).

Personal Ancestral Files : There should be no "s" in the last word -- it is simply "Personal Ancestral File." Also, the word "genealogy" is misspelled as "genealgoy"

API :The word "provides" is misspelled as "provies"

BO : "BusinessObjects" should not have a space between the two words (see http://www.sap.com/solutions/sapbusinessobjects).

Fixed. Thanks.

CSV still refers to "ascidia" which is a genus of sea squirts. Try ASCII instead. But CSV doesn't technically have to be ASCII, so that's not really correct anyway.

Many of the terms in the acronyms page are explained well in the wiki. Just as some of the definitions link to Wikipedia, wouldn't it be helpful to link those clerk-related definitions to more extensive wiki articles?

Interesting. I took that directly from an internal acronym finder we use.

GIDS : There is an extra "to" in the definition. Also, the definition seems to refer to what has come to be known as LDS Account. Is that correct? If so, the definition should be updated to mention that.

This page has plenty of overlap with the Glossary wiki page, although the glossary does go far beyond simple abbreviations.

But putting it on the wiki would simplify editing and extending it. Is that good or bad? It seems good to me. If we did move it, should we merge it with Glossary, or keep it as a separate article, perhaps "LDS Tech Acronyms"?

Alan_Brown wrote:This page has plenty of overlap with the Glossary wiki page, although the glossary does go far beyond simple abbreviations.

But putting it on the wiki would simplify editing and extending it. Is that good or bad? It seems good to me. If we did move it, should we merge it with Glossary, or keep it as a separate article, perhaps "LDS Tech Acronyms"?

When I started the definitions page, I hadn't even noticed the Acronyms on the top of the page. At this point I'd vote for whatever works. Leaving it where it is it's difficult to find as it's being buried beneath all the "suggestions" and additions posts.

Roy, I'm not sure I know what you mean. The acronyms link is under the "community" menu on the right hand nav on the main page.

McDanielCA wrote:Interesting. I took that directly from an internal acronym finder we use.

That may be, but I guarantee that "ascidia" is not the right term in the context of "CSV".

Alan_Brown wrote:Personal Ancestral Files : There should be no "s" in the last word -- it is simply "Personal Ancestral File." Also, the word "genealogy" is misspelled as "genealgoy"

The PAF name is fixed down in the definition, but the extra "s" is still in the list of links at the top.

I don't know what CDOL is but it has been used in a few threads. Perhaps that can be added?

coloradotechie wrote:I don't know what CDOL is but it has been used in a few threads. Perhaps that can be added?

The Glossary wiki page is a much better reference than this out of date thread (there is no longer an Acronyms link on the main menu of LDSTech).

On the wiki, you can easily find out what CDOL stands for and what it is.

Actually I still found Acronyms on the right menu, but I copied the definitions over to the Glossary page. In hindsight it is listed under Clerks, so if too technical, feel free to revert my edit.

kgthunder wrote:Actually I still found Acronyms on the right menu

I only said it wasn't on the main menu anymore. I know it's still on the right menu, but that isn't available from the forum or wiki, so that makes it significantly less prominent.

kgthunder wrote:I copied the definitions over to the Glossary page. In hindsight it is listed under Clerks, so if too technical, feel free to revert my edit.

Thanks for the contribution. I'll review it and clean it up. The Acronyms page was always a bit strange, since it contains an odd collection of terms:

1. Many terms that seem to be internal Church or software development process terms, but which I've never seen mentioned anywhere on LDSTech: DIZ, EFD, SRD, BEZ, EUP, FCH, GIDS, PDD, SORT.
2. Church buildings that are never referenced on LDSTech: JSMB, NOB.
3. Many computer industry terms that have little to do with the LDSTech site in particular: ASCII, ASE, ASP, PC, AD, EAD, B2B, B2C, B2E, BI, Blog, BO, COTS, CRM, IP, KB, SDK, SEO, SERP, SSH.
4. Random items: FWIW
5. Family History terms: PAF, PRF, IGI, FHL
6. Technical terms that are indeed referred to commonly on LDSTech: PIX, CSV, GIS, SAV, VoIP, VPN
7. Technical internal Church terms that are also common on LDSTech: GSD, ASA, CCN, CES, ERS, ICS, LUWS, MLS, RSS, SOAP.

My inclination is to:

• eliminate categories 1 & 2; since they seem to be internal to Church processes, they have little use for the community
• eliminate 3 &4 -- these categories have no practical limit and are better documented elsewhere.
• category 5 is probably worth including
• categories 6 & 7 have some nice additions that are used on LDSTech, so I would include them. Even though some of these terms are similar to category 3, they have enough specific usage in the clerk and community development worlds that they deserve special mention.

I'll mention this categorization on the Glossary's Talk Page, but I thought I'd solicit some feedback here as well.

FWIW :rolleyes:, uh, I guess the question is how on-line savvy are we expecting our users to be? Category #4 could be eliminated if we expect our users to all have significant experience with on-line phraseology. But if we're to be open to the newer group, perhaps it should be included.

RussellHltn wrote:FWIW :rolleyes:, uh, I guess the question is how on-line savvy are we expecting our users to be? Category #4 could be eliminated if we expect our users to all have significant experience with on-line phraseology. But if we're to be open to the newer group, perhaps it should be included.

There's only that one entry in that category now. But my point is, where do you stop? Do we have to add BTW, LOL, ROFL, IANAL, IMO, IMHO, RTM, etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseum?

Adding these dilutes the Glossary, IMHO :rolleyes:. Since there's no good place to stop, let's not get started. I suppose we could add a link at the top to other sites for acronyms in certain categories, such as online acronyms or common technical acronyms. But I really don't like the idea of including those individual terms in the Glossary itself.

Alan_Brown wrote:But my point is, where do you stop?

IIRC, it seemed like your main suggestion is that we drop all items that are not used on LDSTech. I think that's a good balance.

The obvious follow-up question is how hard will it be to keep it up to date? Would it be possible to set up something to report on words used in all caps that could be run periodically to spot new ones?

RussellHltn wrote:IIRC, it seemed like your main suggestion is that we drop all items that are not used on LDSTech. I think that's a good balance.

I suppose that's a reasonable argument, but I still would vote against including online acronyms. Just because one of the 30,000 posts from thousands of users happens to use an acronym doesn't make it worthy of inclusion in the wiki. I prefer a link to another site that specializes in such acronyms (although we'd have to be careful about finding a site that tastefully handles the many vulgar variations on these acronyms).

RussellHltn wrote:The obvious follow-up question is how hard will it be to keep it up to date? Would it be possible to set up something to report on words used in all caps that could be run periodically to spot new ones?

If we are going to adopt your proposed standard, maintenance would be unreasonable unless someone could set up such automation. That's certainly not anything a mere moderator could do. Now if only there were an administrator lurking nearby....

Alan_Brown wrote:Now if only there were an administrator lurking nearby....

Good thing you said administrator, as I don't think that's something a mere community administrator can do.

It's worth noting that we decided to include some of those terms on the acronym page for 2 reasons:

1. Employees frequently blog on the main page and therefore some acronyms that seem relevant only to employees become relevant once they're posted in a blog. Some are even just for interest sake. If someone wanted to know where Church employees are housed those would be of interest to them.

2. LDSTech has a few different audiences, one of which are those who are just interested in technology and aren't necessarily community developers or clerks. Although we are (for the most part) a very tech savvy group of people, many of those who read the blog are not.

If you think there's a good addition to the Acronym page please let me know.

What does CDOL mean in the MLS Tech forum

lindabelle wrote:What does CDOL mean in the MLS Tech forum

It means Church Directory of Organizations and Leaders.

The wiki's Glossary defines lots of useful abbreviations.

What's mean by https?

Marsh85R wrote:What's mean by https?

HTTP is Hypertext Transport Protocol, the protocol most often used to transfer information using the World Wide Web. HTTPS is Hypertext Transport Protocol Secure, which combines HTTP with another secure protocol and encrypts Web communications in both directions, making them more secure.

You will normally see http:// or https:// at the beginning of any URL (Uniform Resource Locator, or web address) near the top of your browser. When the S is there, the communication is more secure because it is being encrypted.

These are such common Internet computer terms that they would probably not be added to the Glossary. Detailed definitions of terms such as these can readily be found using a Google search.

CUBS: Church Unified Banking System.

waynecooke wrote:CUBS: Church Unified Banking System.

CUBS: Church Unit Banking Services is already in the Glossary, if that is what you are suggesting.

FM -- Facilities Management