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bawolffyesterday at 9:44 PM6 repliesview on HN

Which acronym do you mean? CTF? I think that acronym, just like BGP, is more well known by itself than what it stands for.

More generally, not every piece of writing is meant for every audience. Like if someone writes a blog post about CTFs aimed at people who like CTFs, nobody in the target audience needs to have CTF explained to them. Ultimately HN is a link aggregator, but sometimes its a bit like eavesdropping on a conversation. When you are just listening in you don't get the full context sometimes.


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0x20cowboytoday at 1:04 AM

I dont know what CTF stands for so I dont know if I am interested in this article or learning anything about it. Maybe I am.

Are you really arguing for not just typing out whatever 3 words this stands for once in the name of clarity?

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doublescoopyesterday at 10:28 PM

Best practice in writing about technical concepts is to spell out acronyms like this on their first use. There is a ton of stuff I learn about here on HN that I didn't know anything about before.

It doesn't help that the linked article never bothers to explain this either.

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ergonaughttoday at 1:35 AM

You could have just said “No”, if you had to say anything at all, rather than continuing the behavior.

Actively rude.

razstertoday at 2:42 AM

What I see CTF I think Capture The Flag, Tribe player in me.

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Gigachadtoday at 12:53 AM

The annoying thing is even if you know what it means, multiple groups will use the same initialisms for different terms. So without more context you can’t know what it means.

It isn’t common but I feel it would be best when posting to HN to just expand the initialisms even if the source title didn’t.

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