Dave Burke - Freelance .NET Developer specializing in Online Communities

A freelance .NET Developer

To SPS2003 : Having trouble with WSS. Not the product, the acronym.

When a new product comes along its important to embrace standardize acronym descriptors.  These typically come from credentialed individuals and other reputable resources.  I might not like those acronyms, but that's the way it is.  The non-credentialed adhere to the verbage of the credentialed.  That's life.

So the Credentialed Set like to use WSS to denote Windows Sharepoint Services.  From a purely grammatical perspective, this makes a-okay sense.  But to people like me who are still reek from the dirt they picked up working with Sharepoint Portal Server 2001's Web Storage System (WSS), using the same acronym for the new, the glorious, Tomorrow's Joy, Windows 2003 Sharepoint Services, well, it sucks. 

I've seen “WinSS” in places to denote Windows Sharepoint Services, but those letters should be on the grill of a Camaro or El Camino or something, not in my application documentation.

So I'm hanging tough with SPS2003 until I'm credentialed and people start following my lead.  Or I could suck it up, pretend I never got beat up by Web Storage System technology, and start using “WSS” so people know what the hell I'm talking about.

Being non-credentialed stinks.

 

Posted: Jun 16 2004, 02:05 PM by daveburke | with 5 comment(s)
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Comments

SBC said:

hmm.. I thought WSS stood for 'What s*t service' when you visit a bad restaurant..
:-)
# June 16, 2004 2:29 PM

Bil Simser said:

I know the pain Dave. I want to refer to the new WSS as WSS, but it's so often confused with the old WSS when you're talking about SPS. How's that for acronym hell?
# June 16, 2004 6:27 PM

Dave Burke said:

Bil, thanks for your empathetic words. That's exactly my problem.
# June 16, 2004 7:01 PM

Mark Harrison said:

WSS = Windows Server System :-)
# June 17, 2004 7:01 AM

SBC said:

But seriously - I worked with a US Army Med project last year and learned quite a few acronyms & it was all well organized (see http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/doddict/acronym_index.html). There were no confusing duplicates, etc.. Perhaps MSFT folks can learn something from the Army?
# June 17, 2004 7:15 AM
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