bikeshedding · noun — futile expenditure of time and energy in discussion of marginal technical issues. It carries an Arena rating of 1509, earned across 114 head-to-head judged battles.
Definition from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, bikeshedding ranks #268 of 17,176 for Most Incisive Words, #276 of 17,201 for Funniest Words, #495 of 17,146 for Most Storied Words, #669 of 17,188 for Words That Escaped Their Books.
Why “bikeshedding” is a great word
BIKESHEDDING — [Noun] The disproportionate allocation of time and debate to trivial, easily grasped matters, while critical, complex issues are neglected. From bikeshed (a trivial, easily understood object) + -ing (forming a verbal noun). Coined as a metaphor for Parkinson's Law of Triviality, based on the observation that a committee might spend disproportionate time deciding on a staff bicycle shed while neglecting the design of a nuclear power plant. Unlike procrastination (which is passive avoidance) or nitpicking (which is petty fault-finding), bikeshedding is a perverse form of active, democratic engagement—a collective dive into the shallow end. It is the three-hour debate about the font on a title slide while the underlying data remains unexamined; the fervent polishing of a mission statement's grammar as the mission itself fails; the meticulous planning of an office party menu amidst quarterly losses. This is the ritual of misplaced consensus, a shared sigh masquerading as productivity that confirms our urge to be seen solving something, anything, rather than to grapple with the vast and silent unsolvable.
❧ Essay by Lexicurio’s AI · definition, etymology & citations from published sources
Etymology
From bikeshed + -ing. The term was coined as a metaphor to illuminate Parkinson's Law of Triviality. Parkinson observed that a committee whose job is to approve plans for a nuclear power plant may spend the majority of its time on relatively unimportant but easy-to-grasp issues, such as what materials to use for the staff bikeshed, while neglecting the design of the power plant itself, which is far more important but also far more difficult to criticize constructively. It was popularized in the Berkeley Software Distribution community by Poul-Henning Kamp and has spread from there to the software industry at large.
noun
- Futile expenditure of time and energy in discussion of marginal technical issues.e.g.“Exactly. Bikeshedding the millions of possible reasons the queue/ratelimit was triggered is silly.” — 2000 December 14, Bill Fumerola, “Re: Ratelimint Enhancement patch (Please Review One Last Time!)”, in mailing.freebsd.net (Usenet), retrieved 20 Jun 2020, message-ID <9197ru$212o$1@FreeBSD.csie.NCTU.
- Procrastination.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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