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

[Ryan Delaney]

On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 6:46 PM, William Pietri <william at scissor.com> wrote:

> 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
>
>
This is definitely an interesting way of looking at it. I'd heard of this
before but didn't think to apply it to this situation. I'll give it more
thought, and definitely consider appealing to it in the inevitable future
IAR debates.

Thanks.

- causa sui