[Suggestion] for acronym deciphering

In order to make the site more friendly to new folks, I'm suggesting that for common acronyms such as airport codes, airline codes, etc. that if you mouse over the acronym a window appears as to what it is likely to be. For example, people can probably figure out what LAX, SEA, NYC, US, UA, CO stand for but they may have no idea what ORF, CVG, B6, AY, or FR are. (Norfolk, VA, Cincinnati, Jet Blue, Finnair, and Ryanair)

At times it can be as bad as the following exchange from Good Morning Vietnam

 

Basically like wiki uses mouse over for common terms?

 

Good idea, but we need to have it where the poster can disable it (just like there is an icon in the compose post window to disable a hyperlink). Two, three or four letter combinations can have multiple meanings. Sometimes someone might say that the security standards were lax at ORD, or their uncle Jed was supposed to be flying in from TLV but he was M.I.A.

 

Exactly. MP has made the rest of the experience much more user friendly, and I don't think we want to turn someone off because they have no idea what people are talking about.

 

I think at the minimum we'd need to make it case sensitive. It seems that most people put the airport codes and airline codes in all caps. That would have eliminated the two false positives in your sample, but being able to disable it would work as well.

 

This suggestion makes me MAD. JK. YMMV.

When I browse a page, I tend to drift around a bit, and I
really don't enjoy the feature you suggest at sites where
it's implemented - having extraneous things pop up at me
when I'm having an uncoordinated moment (being a violist
at heart) makes the cursor a curser.

I'd prefer tables be made available on the top of the page.
Airline codes, airport codes, equipment codes, perhaps.

 

We have lots of space on the right. Maybe a user-selectable option to have context-sensitive help notes appear in that space?

 

Maybe if they can do this, it can be a user setting so you could turn it off if you don't want it. Then the new folks get the help they need and the people who find it annoying can turn it off,