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@amrav
Created April 5, 2016 12:04
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Zen of Metakgp
Together is better than alone
But beware, for groups cannot be blamed
Consensus trumps authority
And should be won by argument
Surround yourself with your betters
And strive to best them
Ignore what is commonly accepted
Change is wrought through defiant perfection
But shipping beats perfection, every time
@icyflame
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icyflame commented Apr 5, 2016

I really like the line:

Ignore what is commonly accepted

Can we add the line?

Notice what is commonly overlooked

@amrav
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amrav commented Apr 5, 2016

Yeah, I like that addition, although now the sense changes a bit to "be different", which is not necessarily what we are advocating. We need another line, that explains that non-conformity is no substitute for rationality. Sometimes you need to do what the crowd is doing, but be aware that they might be doing the right things for the wrong reasons.

@icyflame
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icyflame commented Apr 5, 2016

Um, well, I didn't want to add that line to advocate be different. Of course, we shouldn't advocate that.

What I really wanted to say with Notice what is commonly overlooked, was small things that would generally be left to chance, left out or completely overlooked in the starting stages of a project, but then it would come back to haunt us should be paid more attention to.

For instance, with the mfqp source project, while deciding the subject line, we made it regex-able, yes, but

  • we asked for the name of the course, which added no value for us, since we only need the course code.
  • we didn't ask them to tag the semester for which they were uploading the paper in the subject line.

So, small things like that, which can be more well thought out, if only we deliberately tried to not overlook it.

@amrav
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amrav commented Apr 6, 2016

Sometimes what you intend to mean, isn't the same thing as what it ends up meaning (to most people). For example, what you're talking about sounds more like sweat the details, but I thought notice what is commonly overlooked is a heuristic for generating new ideas - by looking at frequently neglected areas, you're likely to find high impact projects. The way in stocks, you would advise someone to notice what is commonly undervalued.

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