"Peter MacPherson" wrote in message
news:6imyd.226425$5K2.106543@attbi_s03...
Paul summed it up pretty well for me here....

I presume you're talking about posts with subject lines like "Good FBO for
BAF" or "Why does ILS23 at QQQ have a bend in the middle?"

Most of these questions are aimed at people who regularly use the airport.
If you don't know the identifier off by heart, then chances are you don't
fly there often enough to answer the questions about it.

However, if you're unfamiliar with the airport, you may still find the
ANSWER useful. But you'll never know, because the elite "I know the ID and
it shouldn't matter to you" folks refuse to spell things out.

Just because you don't know the answer to the question, that doesn't mean
the question isn't interesting to you. If we expected only those who knew
the answer to a question to involve themselves with the post at all, then we
could save a LOT of bandwidth by simply having those who know the answer
email it directly back to the original poster. Why post back to the
newsgroup at all?

Bottom line: there ARE people reading these threads who do NOT know the
answer, nor are they necessarily familiar with the airport(s) in question,
and yet who DO have an interest in what's being discussed. It's an
incredibly minor imposition on the person using the abbreviation (be it an
airport ID or whatever) to define the abbreviation, especially for those
that are not part of the basic jargon on the newsgroup (I'll concede on
things like FBO, ATC, IFR, etc.), and it's incredibly wasteful to make
thousands, or possibly even tens of thousands of people look up the
identifier individually.

This is basic Usenet etiquette. It's a common enough request, and for most
people who have any basic sense of having a *usable* Usenet community, it's
regarded as "the right thing to do".

Just spell it out. It's not that hard, and it permits *everyone* to be
involved, not just those who know the secret handshake.

Pete