3 ms·

Sounds like Chesterton's fence¹. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton's_fence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton's_fence

• ketzo 5y ago
  Y'know, people always cite Chesterton's Fence, but they never talk about ways to figure out why the fence was there... that's the blog post I wanna read.
  • inopinatus 5y ago
    Good thought. Maybe people should learn to put some signage on the damn thing. “Beware of the bull”
    • a9h74j 5y ago
      Always comment your fences.
  • jka 5y ago
    It's a process and culture thing: maintain descriptive context and history about all changes, and ensure that references and hyperlinks within those are temporally stable (that is, they'll still refer to the same content when they're examined by a future observer). "Chesterton's Permalinked Fence" is generally straightforward to reason about.