Asking "what is this?" is fine. Treating "I was unfamiliar with this" as evidence that the post is deficient is not.
HN already assumes a baseline of technical literacy. When something falls outside that baseline, the usual move is to ask for context or links, not to reframe personal unfamiliarity as an author failure.
So please, don’t normalize treating "I don’t know this yet" as a failure of the post.
But not defining acronyms on first use is a failure of etiquette. Its your prerogative to not hold this to be true, but many of us do. There is little value in eliding the on-first-use definition.
I agree but if someone asks “What is this?” and it’s not covered by the article, what we shouldn’t do is put that person down by telling them to “just google it”.
If that is your answer, please just don’t comment.
Telling people who want to have that participation and discussion to “RTFM” is not a good response.
Often you’ll come across the authors on these posts that can shed direct, 1st person evidence, of what we’re talking about.
So please, when someone asks “what is that?” Don’t respond with “RTFM”.