What guidelines could we use for when to use an acronym vs. write out the phrase?

Question

Although specialized vocabulary and acronymization is part of all professional fields, I believe that in general questions on StackExchange, and especially Area 51, could benefit from using language that is accessible to as many people as possible.

What guidelines could we use for when to use an acronym vs. write out the phrase?

Another perspective is that if an individual is not knowledgeable enough to know the acronym, they are probably not knowledgable enough to answer the question.

Answer 1

It would be helpful encourage the use of a markdown syntax to allow a mouseover of the acronym to expand the full meaning

for example, the mouseover behaviour of the following acronym

YAGNI

is achieved using the following markdown

[YAGNI](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_aren't_gonna_need_it "You aren't gonna need it")

I found this useful feature in the following question

Tooltip text for markdown hyperlinks in comments doesn't render single quotes correctly

Answer 2

If you have space in your question to write out the phrase, write out the phrase.