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Comment by genericuser | Hacker News Reader

I personally am a fan of professional tools breaking away from the need to be serious all the time.

It is just that I experience joy when I find little things like GTFO in the world which not only make sense in their context but have a bit of humor. So I guess I just disagree with the idea that standards should not contain anything crass.

Also I have a question concerning the 4th point as I am admittedly unfamiliar with the HTTP 2.0 spec.

"GTFO, if it really stands for "General Termination of Future Operations," has a surprising definition and may produce confusion. We should strive for absolute clarity above all else in editorial changes."

Can someone elaborate on what the confusion it would produce would be?

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I believe that the surprise would come from it not meaning "get the f* out." Which makes perfect sense to me - GTFO has a meaning, and re-backronyming it can only harm understanding of the standard. Also consider non-native English speakers, which is really important when developing international standards.

The fact that someone suggested a corresponding "HTTP TITS" should set off at least minor warning bells that "HTTP GTFO" is not a good thing to put in the standard. I certainly don't want to see HTTP LOL (Long Overdue Listen), HTTP WAT (Wireless Ask Transmit), etc.

Humor is great, but good standards are better.

How does surprise about what the acronym stands for lead to confusion about what it does? This question is hopefully more along the lines of what I wanted to ask and clearly didn't.

Edit: To further clarify I mean surprise about what it stands for when both interpretations convey a similar idea.

WAT is a perfectly valid acronym, actually.

Certainly no more problematic than SMTP's HELO...

> I believe that the surprise would come from it not meaning "get the f out." Which makes perfect sense to me - GTFO has a meaning, and re-backronyming it can only harm understanding of the standard.*

Considering the general highlevel meaning of "get the fuck out" and "General Termination of Future Operations" in the context of this protocol is the same, is it really going to harm anybodies understanding of the standard? Worse case scenario, people know what it does, but are surprised that it is an acronym for something "SFW".

> Also consider non-native English speakers, which is really important when developing international standards.

Is the concern here that they will not be familiar with the typical "internet meaning" of GTFO? They might not get the joke, but I don't see how that would harm their understanding of the standard. They'll read about GTFO, learn that it means "General Termination of Future Operations", learn what that means, and they'll be good to go. Just because they don't get a chuckle out of it doesn't mean that their ability to work with it is impeded.

My guess is people would see the message, know it's an acronym, but refuse to believe that the UrbanDictionary results they got from googling were the actual explanation?

My favorite example of professional tool fun has to be the "Cowardly refusing to create an empty directory" result in tar (http://erictarn.com/post/393019949/tar-cowardly-refusing-to-...). That adverb adds a lot of character and justification to the message.

I've always liked GNU Screen's "Suddenly the Dungeon collapses!! - You die..."

Well I mean, I hate when that happens, but the message is great.

It's surprising in that it doesn't stand for what most people use it to stand for, and its definition can't be inferred from a lay-understanding of the term. (Whereas "GOAWAY" has a bit more of that "I bet I know what this is before I even look it up" feeling.)

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