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I propose to use instead of . Reasons:

  1. It shorter.
  2. It is open to be interpreted as "Digital Restrictions Management", a term of importance for the Free Software movement. (see https://defectivebydesign.org/what_is_drm_digital_restrictions_management)
  3. "Digital Rights Management" is a loaded term, used to transport a specific meaning (Of course, the same is true for "Digital Restrictions Management". Note that I do not propose to use this term as a tag.)

Context: Does the GNU GPL 3 prohibit DRM?

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    I would support this, we could possibly add the two alternatives as synonyms and suggest using drm in the tag wiki.
    – overactor
    Jul 13, 2015 at 6:48
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    I support the shorter tag, but the backronym 'digital reistrictions management' is stupid!
    – curiousdannii
    Jul 13, 2015 at 8:21
  • I'd actually say this is a bad idea: plenty of people won't know what DRM means, but will know the full phrase. When searching for digital... in the tag auto-completion box, this won't come up because the character sequence doesn't match.
    – ArtOfCode Mod
    Jul 13, 2015 at 8:22
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    @ArtOfCode That's what synonyms are for.
    – curiousdannii
    Jul 13, 2015 at 8:31
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    @curiousdannii Yes, except the synonym should be to the longer, clearer tag - see my answer and the linked Meta.SE post.
    – ArtOfCode Mod
    Jul 13, 2015 at 8:31
  • Quite frankly, make them synonyms. We don't need a bunch of short, 3 letter tags: We just need to make them readable and make sense. [digital-rights-management] should be made the parent of [drm]
    – Zizouz212
    Jul 14, 2015 at 13:44
  • "digital-restrictions-management" can't exist because it is too long.
    – user490
    Jul 14, 2015 at 13:44

3 Answers 3

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I think that is a good proposal. The reasons:

  • is short to type for anyone who knows it
  • the longer forms can be synonyms, so anyone who knows the longer forms can still use autocomplete
  • the abbreviation is neutral, as the R is interpreted differently
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  • "Anyone who knows it" - What about the people who don't?
    – Zizouz212
    Jul 14, 2015 at 13:43
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    @Zizouz212: For these is point 2: synonyms for the longer forms
    – Mnementh
    Jul 14, 2015 at 13:46
  • Ahhh, lovely. But point 3... neutral?
    – Zizouz212
    Jul 14, 2015 at 13:49
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    @Zizouz212: Digital Rights Management vs. Digital Restriction Management
    – Mnementh
    Jul 14, 2015 at 14:00
  • But then wouldn't restrictions fall under rights?
    – Zizouz212
    Jul 14, 2015 at 14:01
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    While this site is in English, drm might add a bit of multilingual comprehensibility, as the abbreviation holds for several languages. For instance, the German word for DRM is ... DRM (digitales Rechte-Management).
    – O. R. Mapper
    Jul 15, 2015 at 20:13
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Let's not.

As I said in a comment above, there are plenty of people who won't know what DRM means, but will know the full phrase. When typing digital... in the tag auto-completion box, won't come up, but will.

Digital rights management and digital restrictions management are more or less the same thing anyway, with some very minor differences. If it's really necessary, we could synonymize and so that both work with tag auto-completion.

As mentioned in this Meta.SE post, we should prefer longer, expressive names over acronyms where possible. Shorter ≠ better.

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    The "longer is better" policy has the problem that "digital-restrictions-management" is too long. The system has a limit of 25 characters.
    – user490
    Jul 13, 2015 at 8:30
  • @EricGärtner Hadn't counted the characters, but true. We can still use digital rights management though.
    – ArtOfCode Mod
    Jul 13, 2015 at 8:31
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    My proposal is not only about the length. My main point is that I want to make "digtial restrictions management" as prominent here as "digital rights management". This can only be done by using a third form that can mean both.
    – user490
    Jul 13, 2015 at 8:34
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    making digital-rights-management a synonym of digital-restrictions-management or vice versa might prove to be a bad idea. Making both a synonym for drm is sure to be harmless.
    – overactor
    Jul 13, 2015 at 14:05
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    "As I said in a comment above, there are plenty of people who won't know what DRM means, but will know the full phrase." - I am slightly surprised by that claim (although it might be true in this case), given that time and again, catchy, short acronyms tend to become well-known while hardly anyone knows what long form they are supposed to expand to.
    – O. R. Mapper
    Jul 15, 2015 at 20:09
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"DRM" has five meanings related to Information Technology on Wikipedia's disambiguation page and a dozen or so other meanings. No doubt there will be other meanings for the acronym in future.

We definitely shouldn't use DRM, since a question tagged so may have nothing to do with Digital Rights Management.

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    Of these meanings only one is relevant in the context of this site.
    – user490
    Jul 14, 2015 at 6:37
  • @EricGärtner you're wrong, one of them is Direct Rendering Manager which could easily be on-topic: dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/DRM. It's part of the Linux project. Also there are many are other meanings for "DRM" that aren't important enough to have a wikipedia article.
    – Abhi Beckert
    Jul 14, 2015 at 9:15
  • Maybe. But the votes on the question and the answers are clear. The proposal is approved, the tag will be changed.
    – user490
    Jul 14, 2015 at 9:18
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    Regardless, even if we have a [drm] for this Direct Rendering Manager, it likely won't have activity to warrant a tag of its own.
    – Zizouz212
    Jul 14, 2015 at 13:48
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    We definitely shouldn't use DRM, since a question tagged so may have nothing to do with Digital Rights Management. - In that case, we also have beautiful things called excerpts.
    – Zizouz212
    Jul 14, 2015 at 13:50

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