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Message: <blockquote data-quote="aboyd" data-source="post: 5534884" data-attributes="member: 44797">Now that I've read the OP's follow-up post, I want to come at this from a slightly different angle.  It appears that you're now engaged in a back-and-forth debate with the guy.  He's lured you in, and we've now bought into his premise that the rule must be justified, and we're all now working through that.  I would like us to consider another angle: don't do it.This debate won't end well.  He's decided; he's clearly far more stubborn than any of us here on the forum are -- I'm watching all of us scrambling around his answers, trying to debate away his reasons, and he's just standing there like a rock, unmoving.So, stop meeting him for street fights.  Walk away, metaphorically speaking.  Give him a decision and be done.  Be comfortable with the fact that he will be uncomfortable.Here's my thought.  A few years ago the guys who run slashdot.org were bought out by a media company.  And something happened that annoyed some other company.  I don't remember what anymore, but slashdot.org is a big tech forum that believes in free speech, and I recall someone there posting something that Big Intimidating Company didn't like.  Suddenly lawyers were involved, and the media company that now owned slashdot.org contacted the guys running the site and said, "Please stop.  We are freaked out by this big bully company getting mad at your posts."And then the guys who ran slashdot.org did something I didn't expect: they told the person they were talking with, "Sorry, we won't capitulate.  Expect your day to get worse."  And then they just left the parent company & management team to deal with that.I remember thinking, "You can do that?!?!?"  You can just tell someone that they're not going to get what they want, and that you're fine to leave them in an uncomfortable state?  You can tell someone to manage their own feelings about the problem and just shrug if they can't handle it?  Really?It was all revelation to me, Mr. People Pleaser.But I'm better at this now.  I've tried it during a few hopeless arguments before, and sometimes it's what you have to do.  The guy wants to draw you into a debate that only ends -- as far as he is concerned -- when you give in.  But as we can see from this discussion, giving in has potential to undermine at least part of how the game is expected to work.  It could have unforeseeable consequences.  And of the consequences we can predict, it's pretty negative all around.So it's time, in my opinion, to resolve this.  Make a decision.  When he balks, tell him that you understand it's going to be uncomfortable for him, but that you're OK with leaving him to sort through those feelings and decide if he wants to stay or not.  If not, that's actually OK.  He's stirring up a lot of stuff and making the game be more about the debate than about the fun.  So maybe it's OK for him to bow out.  But if he doesn't, be firm, and when he opts to stay, he's doing it with the full knowledge that you made a decision and he's got to accept that you run it by RAW.(Of course, if you feel that you'd much prefer to capitulate or try to "design by committee" and keep engaging him hoping to find some compromise, then my entire post is moot.)</blockquote>

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