Phil Sandifer wrote:
If Susan can make the edit from memory, we're
good. But if Susan has
to go Google the fact to find it somewhere else, we're already losing
precious seconds of Susan's time.
But how does that work out overall, when you save seconds of Susan's
time, and cost me a half-hour of research to figure out why an article
is inconsistent with all the ones it links with? Scholarship is tricky
enough on its own, we don't need to make it harder by mixing in a bunch
of random half-remembered bits.
This is one of those half-empty or half-full kinds of arguments.
Without Susan's edit her idea might never have been raised. What she
sees as half-full you see as half-empty. You evidently enjoyed your
half-hour of research, or you would not have done it. The point that
she made was worth that much of your time. At least you researched it.
The one who simply dismisses her comments out of hand and without
comment is really committing the same error that she did.
Ec