[mindcrime]

I'm a big fan of always expanding acronyms when used for the first time myself, so I hear ya on that point. That said, I find it slightly more excusable here because the source publication (cyclingtips.com) is targeted to a specific audience, and most members of that audience (as opposed to the public at large) would generally know what a Strava KOM is. I'd find this a more egregious issue if this were in the Washington Post or another "general audience" publication.

It's kinda like how many articles meant for the "standard HN audience" (to the extent that one can speak of such a thing) might use TCP or DNS without expanding them. Not an issue when one of "us" is reading the article, but might trip up a less technically inclined person.

[saila]

You make a good point about knowledge domains and what can be assumed about the intended audience, but KOM isn't a technical term and pretty much anyone could understand what "king of the mountain" means. Adding a quick aside or popover would make the article approachable to just about anyone.

On the other hand, someone who doesn't know what TCP is isn't going to understand the expansion to "Transmission Control Protocol" either. They would need to read up on at least basic networking first, so links to further reading would be more helpful.

[naikrovek]

it's not excusable. if it cost $1000 to define it, sure, and it doesn't. it's four words surrounded by parentheses.

no one is born knowing these things, and a lot of people discover a new hobby or interest via reading articles about areas in which they are otherwise uninformed.

no excuse for this. just put the meaning in. takes you less time than it takes one person to Google it, nevermind multiple (dozens/hundreds/thousands of) people who are actually going to need to Google it because you're too presumptuous to type four words and two parentheses in a 10,000 word article.

[rdiddly]

Or "HN" for that matter