Unwritten Rule
Unwritten Rule
the rule that can be writ is not the unwritten rule
* 1 Don't write down the rules * N+1 Delete Rule N
Unwritten rules are conventions rather than law.
Examples: would be coding styles, naming conventions, netiquette, common courtesy.
Problem: a group of people need to work together, or wish to cooperate with each other.
Observed Pattern: Conventions arise through customary use. They usually begin as the aesthetic biases or wisdom of respected initial participants or FoundingFathers. Later, members of the community begin to voice their objections to violations and suggest solutions for deeper communication problems that they observe or perceive. Such suggestions often harden into IroncladRules that must be explained to a newcomer before he or she can be effective in a given community. Hmm...does this lead to "implied rules?" Perhaps that should be ImpliedRules?.
Dependent Patterns and AntiPatterns
Patterns: PolitessePattern?, is this a misspelling of PolitenessPattern?? Politesse: Courteous formality; politeness. [From Old French, cleanliness, from Italian pulitezza, politezza, from pulire, to polish, clean, from Latin polre.]
Examples: TipsForBeginners, GoodStyle
"Such suggestions often harden into IroncladRules that must be explained to a newcomer before he or she can be effective in a given community."
But do they have to?
I don't think so. I think that it's better if the rules can be learned through following the example of existing pages. Hopefully people will see pages whose format they like and decide to imitate that format on the pages that they edit. Conversations about formatting are useful for identifying problems and proposing solutions. But the real proof of any solution is whether it gets used. Since written rules are much more inflexible than unwritten rules it actually seems counterproductive to try and enforce written rules. Not that they aren't useful. Writing a rule down along with an explanation for its existence is a fine thing. Expecting it to be followed probably isn't, and trying to enforce it almost certainly isn't. At least not here. -- PhilGoodwin
There was also a particularly ironic instance of this in some NomicGame or other, where a rule was proposed which would have forbidden itself from appearing in any list of rules. Presumably the voting history and mailing-list archives would have validated that, yes, it really existed...
Hmm... such a mention in an archive would count as a list of one, wouldn't it?
Certainly not. For instance, the FirstRuleOfFightClub?, which I just mentioned, is not listed until:
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(last edited June 28, 2007)
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