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I was reading a post only moments ago where people seemingly was amazed that a person didnt know the expression "STFW" and that he though that it was a typo and it should have said "STFU".
This amazes me.

I use the web ALOT! From i wake up in the morning till i go to bed in the evening, im basicly in fron of my computer, yes its true, i have no life. (ok, maybe im exaterating a bit) and i didnt recognize "STFW" and allso asumed it was ment to say "STFU"

Theres alot of those, what you callem? like fx. rolf, lmao, lol, ty, wd, gg, gm, wb, gtg, g2g, bbl, cu, cya, i could keep it up forever, and while i may not allsways know what they mean, i allways recognize them if i have seen them before. "STFW" i have never seen before.

So, im making a poll to find out who actually know/knew what it means and who doesnt.

In this case, use your head and come to a rational conclusion..

STFW in my opinion means... "See The F***ing Wiki!" or "Search The F***ing Wiki!"

But it might also be "Forum" instead of "F***ing" and/or "Wiki" could be "Web"..

Go through a process of elimination and make sense of it..

Obviously it wouldn't mean something like "See That Flying Witch".. unless the occasion permits.. perhaps next month?

I myself would of used "RTFW" or "UTFW" though, I'm sure you'll figure them out.

Let me answer that with: IDAWU or UGBKM
does commong sence help you here?

anyway, i dont really care, just though i would make a poll to see if its just whos odd...

Search the fine web. Old one.

IDAWU / UGBKM escape me, though.

DBDDHKP, UKKU... (nevermind, that's a German one...)

Yeah it means Schweizerische Technische Fachschule Winterthur and they teach you everything about how to build cars, homes and about informatics, electrical enginering and such.

Lol. It was my post that someone got confused and thought I'd meant STFU. I only learnt the acronym when reading a nice link about how to ask questions on newsgroups/forums and not get flamed in response. The link is around here somewhere!

JamesM

Another forum I frequent has an emoticon dedicated to the same concept as "STFW". It's an angry yellow face holding a big placard with "Google" written on it. Much easier to understand IMO.

When I found Mega-Tokyo, there was a big sticky thread with link to "how to ask questions" with a large comment that could be summarized as "required reading: <link>", so I did.
I guess when you know how to do things correctly, you can be very easily bothered when someone does that very same thing wrong.

And then, there is also a bit of ignorance to not enter an unknown word into google to find out what it means.

(...) it should have said "STFU".

Like stfw/rtfm, it also tells you to go home and rethink your sins, so there wouldn't be much of a difference.

Edit: I like Cln. Kernel's idea, maybe we should bother Chase with it?

Ok, say what you may, but so far the score it 8 against 6.
6 who have known the expresion like forever and 8 who have knows either from the got familier with this forum, or this dicusion started and then theres them who still doesnt know what it means.

I frequently play a game called armagetron advanced where there wiki is frequetly refered to, as there is some things in there game that arent obious and they are simply to hard to explain ingame, but still i have never seen the expression, it is allways: "read the wiki at www.armagetronad.net" or simular.

Couldn't resist:

Ya google is a nice tool, however some searches are difficult to do, fx. (and im not saying that would be the result) searching for STFW could easily relult in you getting ALOT of hits where it is used, but not explained.

I just did a search and my first hit was: www.stfw.ch
and the second hit, which actually explains it but allso discusses it was: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTFM

googling "define: stfw" gives:

Search The F***ing Web, more information ...
www.cryer.co.uk/glossary/s/

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=define ... =firefox-a

seems pretty concise to me. Unless people don't know how to use the define: function in google...

actually ive never heard of it and i use, site:, intitle:, filetype:, and some more....

"stfw" gives me:

#1 - Wikipedia "RTFM", with "STFW" explained in the summary;

#2 - Jargon File 4.2, node "STFW"

#3 - "What does STFM stand for?" at acronyms.thefreedictionary.com.

"Use Google" means more than entering the phrase and looking at the first hit, but it suffices surprisingly often. Personally, I think being able to use a search engine efficiently and being able to distinguish "mishits" (like my #4, being www.stfw.ch) from "good hits" quickly, is a core skill of any IT worker.

That being said, I didn't know about define: either.

Solar wrote:That being said, I didn't know about define: either.

Im glad im not the only one

Anyway, im only saying that you cant know everything about everything, im actually quite good a using google. me entering STFW into google and nothing more was just to give an example.

Some things are actually very hard to look up in google and you sometimes have to use very complex search criteria to get what you want. My search criterias fx. can easily be 100 letter long, dependent on what im searching for.

fx. (just an example)