[r-t] Philip's new Decisions, including Wiki page

[Mark Davies]

Ted writes,

> What we see is a wonderful demonstration of the difficulty of writing a 
> set of rules to cover a variety of complex inter-related issues with 
> numerous special cases in a way that will be at once acceptable and 
> understandable to everyone while avoiding ambiguity and omission. It 
> simply cannot be done simply!

Disagree strongly. Yes there are some problems with Philip's first draft, 
but that's probably because he knocked it together extremely rapidly and it 
hasn't up till now had much in-depth peer-review.

Describing and naming methods is not that complicated. There is a balance to 
be struck between several factors, including the practical and the abstract; 
the right level of detail also needs to be found. Short and simple is good, 
but we do have to be watertight and cover everything that needs covering (in 
a practical way). However none of this is impossible or even particularly 
difficult.

Yes, what may be much more difficult is finding consensus on every nook and 
cranny of the new formulation. But no-one's ever going to agree on 
everything, so finding the most stable common ground should be the guiding 
principle here.

MBD