User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-188432-20121207092215/@comment-188432-20121207194253

Eladkse wrote: Now if I may address CzechOut directly, I think you need to be a little less critical of the other comments here and allow the community to make the decision.

I know what you're saying. There's a risk that I'm putting people off. But in my mind, there is a huge difference between active defence of an idea and an unwillingness to be governed by consensus.

Fighting a spirited campaign means that various assumptions are thoroughly vetted. I think it shows respect for the other participants, because I'm taking their ideas seriously enough to argue against them.

And it often yields fruit.

For instance, it was good that I broached the idea of the new design incorporating "tardis" and "doctorwho" because it allowed you to point out that the current design already does this — something I hadn't actually considered. Consequently, the weakness of that particular aspect of my argument is revealed, and it can now be dismissed.

This is a huge decision, so if the community decides to stick where we are, I want to make sure that they're doing so after having fully considered the facts. That way, if people 2 years from now say, "Why is this place called the "Tardis Index File?", we can just point them to Thread:117468 and be reasonably assured that they'll see their questions addressed somewhere in here.

I am always reminded in these counter-intuitive decisions of the long discussion, Italics or Quotation marks? I lost that battle, but at least it had the virtue of being thoroughly argued. Now, the fact that we counter-intuitively use italics to indicate episode names – like A Good Man Goes to War — can at least be said to be the will of the community, even though it goes against virtually every English-language manual of style.

In the same way, if we're going to keep this logo, we need to be very clear that we do so despite a number of facts that argue against it.