OT: Acronyms [was RE: Question]

[Henry Spencer]

On Sat, 28 Feb 2004, Chris Keelan wrote:
> > Is the purpose to communicate, or to show off how cool you are?
> 
> How does typing acronyms in common useage in dozens of internet
> forums, across a significant period of time, equate to me trying to show
> how cool I am?

Are they in common use *here*?  No, they're not.  So lay off them.

You keep saying "but people are supposed to understand these things".
This misses the point.  If your goal is to communicate, you should try
to be as clear as possible, not merely meet some minimum standard that
you think "ought" to be enough.

> I didn't use YHBT/HAND because I wanted to confuse Mr. King
> or Mr. Hill, rather I couldn't imagine that either participant of this
> sometime technical discussion list /wouldn't/ know those acronyms. 

Sorry, they're not familiar to me either.  Probably I don't hang around
the chat rooms enough; I have better things to do.

> It turns out that Street Smart wasn't trolling and for that I owe him an
> apology. I made that assessment based on his two messages, the first of
> which was a question to the list asking how he could ask the list
> questions (?!?), the second offered the observation that FreeBSD might
> be the best Linux distro for a beginner.
> Are you telling me that your antennae didn't twitch at that?

Odd, but more suggestive of very naive beginner than deliberate troll.

                                                          Henry Spencer
                                                       henry-lqW1N6Cllo0sV2N9l4h3zg at public.gmane.org

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