On Fri, Apr 3, 2009 at 7:27 AM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Thu, 2 Apr 2009, Casey Brown wrote:
In the end, it should matter what is written and how it's supported -- not who wrote it.
This idea sounds great. Is there a policy or rule for it?
Doesn't work. Any rule which says to use common sense will lose out against a more conventional rule. The reason is that rules really become necessary when you need to force someone else to follow them. If the rule gives a specific, detailed, description of what is and isn't allowed, with no room for human judgment, you can force someone else to follow it. If the rule is based on human judgment, you can't.
"If everyone agrees, this is what you can do" always loses to "if everyone doesn't agree, this is what you must do". After all, having a dispute means that not everyone agrees.
Not quite. If someone disagrees with you, you can explain why they are wrong, and at the end of the argument, you can appeal to common sense. Sometimes, if that person steps back and considers things with that mention of common sense in mind, they will be persuaded.
I see appeals to common sense as a way to jolt people out of rules-lawyering. But sometimes in a more successful way than saying something like "Ignore all rules".
Carcharoth