7 ms·
At a certain point you need to set a baseline expectation of your audience in order to communicate effectively. Do you think they should also explain exploitat
by dfc 10y ago
At a certain point you need to set a baseline expectation of your audience in order to communicate effectively. Do you think they should also explain exploitation, img-src, the mechanics of parsing unmatched quotes, javascript or CSRF? The target audience of the article knows what CSP stands for and most likely has been reading the other entries along this journey.
- Ericson2314 10y agoAnd I had thought it was communicating sequential processes for a second
- rcfox 10y agoI was hoping it meant "constraint-satisfaction programming".
- rcfox 10y agoI would expect them to expect their readers to look up concepts that are unfamiliar. Throwing around overloaded acronyms without definition makes that difficult.
- tlrobinson 10y agoAnecdotally, I was aware of both Content Security Policy and Communicating Sequencial Processes, and first thought of the latter. I figured it out by the end of the first paragraph though.
- lubomir 10y agoAnd then there's also Constraint Satisfaction Problem.
- peteretep 10y agoYou are getting downvoted because in complaining we are below your technical baseline, you've ironically revealed you're not familiar with the rather more interesting CSP.
- radicalbyte 10y agoMy thoughts exactly. We should prefix the security CSP with an m (for mundane) to differentiate it with the interesting CSP :)
- skj 10y agoAs one of the more prominent gophers out there, dfc is quite familiar with communicating sequential processes. That said, I disagree with his original point. I am a regular HN reader and did not know about content security policy.
- LamaOfRuin 10y agoI did already know about content security policy. I still wasn't certain that's what the article was referring to without reading several paragraphs of the two articles.
- niftich 10y agoI think this comment raises a very good point and I struggle to see sure why it's proving so unpopular so far. It's true that the submitted blog post doesn't expand the CSP initialism -- this has been acknowledged as an oversight by the author and the post will be edited, as it's simply good practice as recommended in several style guides [1][2][3][4]. But the post's very first sentence links to a previous entry about the same subject; there, the topic is explained to readers who may not be familiar with it. There is simply no reason for a follow-up post, which this submission is, to repeat the explanations given by its predecessor. Meanwhile, a reader approaching the post with confidence about its topic will have realized rapidly what it is and isn't about. So given the intense disagreement, what approach would have been preferable? [1] http://amastyleinsider.com/2011/11/04/cheat-sheet-for-abbreviations-style/ http://amastyleinsider.com/2011/11/04/cheat-sheet-for-abbrev... [2] http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/16/ch10/ch10_toc.html http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/16/ch10/ch10_toc.html [3] https://www.rfc-editor.org/materials/abbrev.expansion.txt https://www.rfc-editor.org/materials/abbrev.expansion.txt [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style
- Sacho 10y agoI think your comment is much more reasonable than parent; I too wondered what CSP they were talking about so I clicked the first link, and figured it out(after scrolling through several paragraphs). However, parent asserted that the audience here was not up to the level to read the author, when actually, the confusion was an overloaded acronym.
- dfc 10y agoMy comment was not about establishing an across the board level of technical competence. In my opinion the audience was not general tech people, the audience is security / infrastructure folks. I apologize if anyone felt slighted.
- skj 10y agoIn my opinion, it is good writing style to expand technical acronyms with their first use in any publication. It's certainly the rule for academic writing.