To Delete Is Harder Than To Add

This is a phenomenon that I have been noticing in a number of contexts that's worth pulling out.

Contexts

Context 1: Getting rid of stuff around the house. For many things, I need to know if my wife would like to keep something I'm thinking of pitching, or vice versa. But this takes time and someplace to set aside the thing(s) in question.

Context 2: Editing Wiki content. Assuming some kind of SharedOwnership? of the content, you get the same dynamics as in my household. It's much less controversial to add material than to delete it. One man's refactoring is another man's MindWipe. (Several pages on Wiki are testament to this.)

Context 3: Refactoring source code. I haven't had as much problem with this personally, but have heard of it anecdotally. For example, the code that no one dares touch but rather works around carefully - even if the code is no longer applicable or even operative.

Context 4: Legislative action. I don't think I need to say much here to make my point. :-)

Solutions

Since this is such an old and common problem, there must have been some bright minds working on solutions. Any known out there? Here are some ideas:

Solution 1: Have a convention for setting aside "deleted" content for a period of time. If no-one is interested in reinstating the content during that period, it is eventually garbage-collected.

Solution 2: Break the CollectiveCodeOwnership logjam by assigning an owner to content. That owner, for better or worse, has discretion to delete as he/she sees fit.

Solution 3: Allow things to get worse until the whole medium is polluted, then junk the whole thing and start over (e.g. move to another house, throw the prototype away, stage a revolution, etc.)

Solution 4: Store content on a "leased" basis, always with an explicit expiration date. Depending on the dynamics of the contributing community, a vote is required to renew the lease (cf. Jini-style leasing of resources).

Solution 5: Adopt a set of objective standards for deletion which any responsible co-owner can apply (e.g. moldy food in the fridge, broken appliances, unpunched chads...)

Solution 6: (Pre-emptive) Practice YouArentGonnaNeedIt and only add code (and wiki comments?) that are absolutely necessary. True system requirements seldom go away, while neat-o things added as programmer whims have a short life time.

Contributors: JeffMantei

Solutions Discussion

Re: Solution 2

Partly as a result of interesting experience gained during the ChristianPagesTrauma? I agree on adopting this option more formally and more frequently than at present, except I would advocate transferring ownership to a WikiPairing at least, with at least two of the "sides" in a dispute being represented. Or two excellent non-partisans or whatever. -- RichardDrake

Side Topics

Motivations for deleting, Community standards

There appear to be at least two types of value systems at work here. One judges the appropriateness of content - whether it is on or off topic, how it is structured and presented, etc. The other judges the appropriateness of strategies for fairly integrating viewpoints from a diverse community (including its dissenters). An example of the latter value system is the viewpoint that there is One True Measure of page quality, and that "deleting bad stuff is fair game." Another extreme example is that there is No True Measure of page quality, and that you can never delete stuff. This page attempts to explore that second value system, where the truth is probably somewhere in between. -- JeffMantei

CategoryDelete