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We agree. To elaborate. I agree it should be. Unfortunately it is not. This is why I compliment the economist. They do it as I believe it should be. One exampl
by mejutoco 6y ago
We agree. To elaborate. I agree it should be. Unfortunately it is not. This is why I compliment the economist. They do it as I believe it should be.
One example is the amount on comments here on hn about some acronyms thrown without explanation.
There are, for instance, 1200 matches for 'What is IC' (Individual Contributor)
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=what%20is%20IC&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
- rhines 6y agoI think most people still see Hackernews as a website for people in the software industry, where IC is common knowledge. Plus comments aren't written to educate or sell a subscription, rather they're to ask a question, continue a discussion, or contest some point, so it's natural for the writing style to lean towards the informal and be less patronizing. And of course the search you show is a great example of why this isn't too big a problem - since HN is a discussion board, if someone is confused and they can't find the answer on Google, they can just ask for clarification in the comments, often getting a reply from the person who made the original comment that confused them. With a newspaper you can't really do that - even in comment sections authors rarely answer questions, and other readers don't tend to engage with the comments unless they have reasons of their own.