[WikiEN-l] Can sweet reason still work on en:wp? Occasionally.

[William Pietri]

Ryan Delaney wrote:
> [...] Since IAR is not itself
> a justification for anything, there is never any useful information added by
> saying "I am invoking IAR." The only defense is "I did this because X" where
> X is the reason that what you did was a good idea, so you might as well skip
> to the end. Rather than saying "I am invoking IAR and I did this because X",
> just say "I did this because X."

Are folks here familiar with the shu ha ri model?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuhari
http://martinfowler.com/bliki/ShuHaRi.html

You can think of it as roughly equivalent to apprentice, journeyman, and 
master. This division has been useful to me in my work, helping people 
adopting software development methods. In particular, I end up 
explaining things differently.

People at the shu level are very focused on rules and rituals. People at 
the ri level have transcended them. In that framework, IAR is an 
explicit shu-level indicator that there are other levels to work at, and 
that rule-followers should honor that.

Given that, I think shu-level participants can sometimes use an explicit 
mention that IAR is being invoked, even if it is almost insultingly 
obvious to the ri-level participants. In other contexts, IAR is 
unnecessary; power structures lets masters do what they want anyhow. But 
as in so many other ways, Wikipedia is different.

William