Keegan Paul wrote:
>> Can you explain the obvious to people it isn't obvious to? With references?
>>
>> - d.
>>
> Ah, well, that's the advantage of a wiki. If you know what to do and can't
> explain it, you can {{sofixit}} yourself with others to review and figure
> things out on their own.
>
> Instruction creep: The dumbing down of the world.
>
It's dumbing down, but that too derives from the premise that everything
has an origin. Computer geeks tend to be fanatically logical, and that
does not leave much room for alternative explanations or sources. In
many subjects we can fill in the blanks later when someone has the time
to spend tracing things, but that approach is not shared with those who
believe in the immediacy of a deletion debate. The older ones among
us, and seniors in general, have an enormous amount of background
thinking built up. Nevertheless, we may no longer have access to the
references that we used to build this up 40 years ago. A mathematician
working through an explanation of a complex theorem should not need to
reference why a + b = b +a unless the contrary would be meaningful in
that context.
When sourcing and original research rules start to exemplify a phobia
about being wrong the system has come around to bite us in the ass. The
trickster/raven has come home to roost.
Ec
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