Dont Complain Without Alternatives

Often people complain about the situation but do not offer alternatives. Examples from the real world:

Churchill's famous "Democracy is the worse form of government, except for all others." [paraphrased] in response to mumblings about democratic problems.
Iraqi's bitterly complaining about American military presence, but not offering a working alternative (before own troops trained).
Complaining that a decision or suggestion lacks an OfficialCertifiedDoubleBlindPeerReviewedPublishedStudy even though the alternatives also lack one.

The titular advice is foolish. An alternative without an established complaint is a solution in search of a problem. Complaints need to happen first. Identify the problem. Define it. Verify it. Discuss it. Understand its root causes. Then search for alternatives.

Please clarify "established".

A complaint is established after completing the first three steps: identified, defined, verified. Initial complaint would correspond to 'identify'.

In practice unless there is a viable replacement or repair path, pointing out a flaw is not very use-able info. Example:

A: "I don't like file systems. I always lose my files in them."
B: "Well, what would you want instead?"
A: "Uh, I don't know. Do you know anything?"
B: "Nope."

You seem to assume that an established flaw needs to be immediately usable to have value. In practice, a flaw only needs to be eventually usable. And it doesn't even need to be usable by the person that pointed it out. In practice, it isn't at all unusual for each step - identify, define, verify, proposing solutions, and trying them - to be performed by a different person.

E.g. even though neither A nor B know what to do about their FileSystem, C might come into the conversation a month later and say:

C: "Well, we could try a desktop search engine."
A: "But I sometimes delete files, too. I really hate that."
B: "I'm assuming you mean 'delete files by accident'. So the problem is deleting files and finding them?"
C: "Maybe a 'trashcan', too? If you have to delete things twice, you'll at least have a chance to recover something."
[... time passes ...]
A: "I don't like trashcans. They always fill up, and I never remember to check each file before deleting permanently."
[... and the cycle begins anew, this time with suggestions like Time Machine. ...]

It is perfectly valid to complain without alternatives. Solutions can, and probably should, come later. Sometimes much later.

Perhaps the wording can be improved to make it not sound so negative or attacking. For example, "your system stinks!" is probably the wrong way to say it. Suggestion: "I'm a bit irritated by feature X and Y in your system, but I'd like to work with you to see if we can find a better approach."

All too often I see on this wiki a particular marketer of his own ideas making inventive (but oft ill-considered) suggestions then whining "DontComplainWithoutAlternatives" when his ideas start getting shot down. That's an abuse of the phrase. We have a default alternative: ignore the suggestion and continue as we are.

RE: We have a default alternative: ignore the suggestion and continue as we are.

Let's explore this a bit. Why is this bad? Nothing is perfect. We seek the technology with the least flaws, not that with no flaws; for such does not exist. You also seem to be suggesting a kind of ArgumentByEstablishment?: more points to the established idea. While something that's road-tested should certainly be awarded some "points", nobody would ever consider new or different ideas if such points were overly generous.

You're inferring far more than was stated or intended. What was meant is exactly this: we do have a default alternative, therefore "DontComplainWithoutAlternatives" is a nonsensical request. There was no value judgement. The default choice might not be the best choice. It might not even be a "good" choice. However, it's the default choice - the one supported by inertia. When someone else makes suggestions (and wants to be taken seriously), that person possesses also the burden to fight inertia... hopefully by showing that the suggestion is not only "good", but enough better than the default choice to motivate transition. Is this fair? Maybe not. But it's the truth.

Being that this wiki is an explorative medium, suggesting and exploring untried or under-tried ideas is perfectly within the scope of this wiki. If the reader is looking for something to purchase for tomorrow, then the road-tested idea should certainly be given priority, barring a major known flaw or mismatch with it. However, if the idea is to expand your horizons, then considering rookie alternatives can be a good exercise.

I agree. One gets a lot of exercise shooting down ideas, and you can't properly shoot down rookie alternatives without first "considering" them - you need to find their unprotected weak points. Depending on the weather, it can be more fun than shooting skeet. ;-)

If you can show that the known flaws in the new idea clearly exceed those of established ideas, then simply state so or link. I don't see any reason to make it into a personal thing.

That's a bit oxymoronic: the presence of well-known flaws in new ideas and links to pages explaining these would imply rather strongly that the new idea is not "new". The realistic choice is to determine (via inference, exploration, and experiment) the flaws of the idea then state and explain them - right there, on the page - thus allowing the possibility of real discussion (i.e. finding flaws in your inference).

It doesn't need to be personal, but I understand that some people take it hard when someone comes along and shoots down their pet-theories. People become emotionally attached to pets of any sort. Some might even forsake math, reason, evidence, and (metaphorically) all that is good, choosing to sacrifice their souls to sophistry and fallacy in attempt to resurrect their dying pet-theories. Some people do it repeatedly and slowly become trolls, never noticing their slow but inevitable transformation.

People truly interested in exploration will see that one sojourn has reached a dead end, back off a little, let the dead lie, and move forward with a modified theory. That is an approach to evolve an idea into a full-fledged theory, refining and modifying it as necessary until it has either proven bullet-proof or sufficiently superior to the established situation to motivate transition. If this wiki is to be more than a repository of people smiling and nodding at half-developed crackpot theories, this is also a "good" thing.

Even if the ideas are by chance bad, documenting the reasons reduces the reinvention of bad wheels down the road. (EvenBadIdeasShouldBeKept).

By itself, I doubt documentation would help all that much - the ratio of bad ideas to good ideas is just too large, and it's already almost impossible to find good ideas similar to your own. Perhaps if we had a very powerful search engine that could take a statement of an idea and find equivalent and directly related ideas with a very, VERY small amount of error, it might be possible, but this WikiWiki collaborative environment is NOT the right place to keep the bad ideas.

Perhaps its a worthy goal, but the big problem is finding fair and balanced criteria for removing the bad ideas. The list of HolyWars is filled with one side claiming the other side has a "bad idea" with no slam-dunk math/science to prove one way or the other. We cannot even agree on the rules to evaluate the ideas. Related: WikiFilterist.

Don't complain without alternatives sounds like an equivalent to saying "Don't need anything until after you've invented it." and "Make all of your solutions yourself." Neither is very practical.

"Don't complain without alternatives" is simply a hifalutin' way of saying "stop whining". Reasonable, rational, substantiated, and comprehensive critique is fine, whether alternatives are presented or not. When the criticism becomes inflamed with emotion, or repeatedly cycles through the same arguments with no new material, it becomes tedious and irritating. A request for alternative solutions then becomes a polite form of "shaddap!"

I would suggest we ask [as an alternative]: "Can you please condense and explain the problem in a dedicated page?" Perhaps suggest use of AntiPatternTemplate. That way they can reference it. Repeatedly. But it won't become tedious... it will just be there, silently chastising us for our failure to address what someone else considers to be a real problem.

JuneZeroNine