Below is a famous memo sent out by Elon Musk to SpaceX employees in May 2010 with the subject line "Acronyms Seriously Suck" (before he failed to adhere to the ass rule himself). Even though we're not building rockets, the use of acronyms in Apify seriously sucks too. Way too often, people don't understand what the acronyms mean and might be afraid to ask not to look stupid.
So here's the rule: Only use an acronym if you are CERTAIN that >95% of the current and future Apifiers immediately understand what it means. Here’s the original SpaceX ASS policy.
There is a creeping tendency to use made up acronyms at SpaceX. Excessive use of made up acronyms is a significant impediment to communication and keeping communication good as we grow is incredibly important. Individually, a few acronyms here and there may not seem so bad, but if a thousand people are making these up, over time the result will be a huge glossary that we have to issue to new employees. No one can actually remember all these acronyms and people don't want to seem dumb in a meeting, so they just sit there in ignorance. This is particularly tough on new employees. That needs to stop immediately or I will take drastic action - I have given enough warning over the years. Unless an acronym is approved by me, it should not enter the SpaceX glossary. If there is an existing acronym that cannot reasonably be justified, it should be eliminated, as I have requested in the past. For example, there should be not "HTS" [horizontal test stand] or "VTS" [vertical test stand] designations for test stands. Those are particularly dumb, as they contain unnecessary words. A "stand" at our test site is obviously a test stand. VTS-3 is four syllables compared with "Tripod", which is two, so the bloody acronym version actually takes longer to say than the name! The key test for an acronym is to ask whether it helps or hurts communication. An acronym that most engineers outside of SpaceX already know, such as GUI, is fine to use. It is also ok to make up a few acronyms/contractions every now and again, assuming I have approved them, e.g. MVac and M9 instead of Merlin 1C-Vacuum or Merlin 1C-Sea Level, but those need to be kept to a minimum.
Everybody can use widely known industry-standard acronyms. These are acronyms that >95% of people in the company would understand without hesitation. Litmus test: when you Google for it, the explanation of the acronym must be the top result in Google.
Here's the list of widely-known industry-standard acronyms (these are first results on Google):
On top of that, we support these Apify-made acronyms:
TODO: Define these in ‣ instead of here!