For some reason I'd always been under the impression that the 'F' in 'TFA' was a different word. This makes so many exchanges less hostile in retrospect. Oops.

Featured, Fine, Fu… could be any of those. Deliberate ambiguity is fun for a lot of humans

This, right here, is why I never use acronyms with the sixth letter of the English alphabet anywhere in them. Heck, as you might already have noticed, I don’t use said letter at all, unless it is part of a word.

This is one “human corner case” I have no shame working around. Wouldn’t want to convey hostility where none exists.

The F-word (I'll spare your virgin eyes), or even the letter F, is not capable of conveying hostility on it's own, so there is no sense in omitting it.

The acronym was coined with the non "fine" meaning for that letter. It was much later that internet culture got more polite and people retroactively replaced the meaning on RTFM and RTFA.

I'm almost certain what you're thinking is the original usage. TFA (disparaging, implying the person you are responding hasn't read it) was co-opted as TFA (neutral)

"Fabulous!!!"

Correct.

I prefer "TFA" to "OP" as the latter may be ambiguous as to whether it refers to the article or, more typically in my experience, commentary on it. Even here, "OP" might reference either a thread root or the parent of the post immediately being replied to.

In the second case, if I were to say "OP" here, I'd be referring to your comments parent, by tchalla, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30345056

Would it be so difficult to just write "the article?"

"TFA" is a well-known and long-standing usage within the hacker community. It came to prominance at Slashdot, which I'd read back in the day, and is at least some decades old.

It refers specifically to the submitted article, and carries an overtone, sometimes tongue-in-cheek, sometimes subtle, sometimes more blunt, that the person being referred to ought to read the specific submitted work more closely. Perhaps at all. And without crossing HN's guidelines against specific accusations.

That is, the meanings are similar but different. "TFA" is more concise and specific. All of which make it the more fabulous ;-)

It turns out I do use both terms fairly frequently, as my comment history shows. The distinction is largely as I've described above. "The article" usually refers to some additional or other reference rather than the HN submission. "TFA" in the context if "you/I should have read that closely".

TFA: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=1&prefix=true&que...

"the article" https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=1&prefix=true&que...