Alexander Johannesen wrote:
> "Good enough" will always be subjective. I can give any example of
> searching through Google to be good enough for me, and someone will
> come and say "Ah, but it can't find THIS!" "Ah," I would
> respond, "but
> it can find THIS!" And so it goes, on and on.
>
> What we're doing is putting down certain requirements on what "good
> enough" is, and it will always be different, depending on who, context
> and when. In that respect, we will *never* ever have one set of
> requirements that we can all agree on being "good enough." Every time
> we try, we're setting up a straw man in our favor in the argument.
> "Let's pretend I wanted to find X" is not going to make you *not* find
> it through your example. It's a straw man; you already know you'll
> find it (or *not* find it, if that's your example).
>
> Hope that makes it clearer?
The problem with "good enough" is that there is an unspoken assumption that you know what is available. I may think that my doctor is "good enough" until I find out he's a quack; my lawyer may be "good enough" until I discover he's a shyster.
When something is "good enough" it means that I will stop complaining about it. Somebody may think that the information in Wikipedia is "good enough" until they find out that it's completely wrong.
I think that what we should discuss is (in library terms) "ready reference" questions. These are subjects such as "what is the address of my congressman," or "how high is Mt. Everest," as opposed to questions with less clear answers such as, "why did the communist system collapse" or "what should we do in Iraq?" In these cases, "good enough" doesn't really make any sense.
Jim Weinheimer
Received on Fri Sep 07 2007 - 02:20:53 EDT