Thanks for this post! I appreciate your writing, and also appreciated including images in your post—it made it more fun to read.
I wrote some feedback privately which the author thought would be good to share publicly, so this is a lightly edited version of that feedback:
The post was quite long, taking 10-15 minutes or so for me to read. I think this was because you wrote this in quite a careful way, including caveats, counterarguments, etc., and I’m not sure all this was necessary.
I think a shorter (~1/3rd the length) post which just explained what convenience meant using a few examples could have been better. In particular, it would be useful to emphasise examples where existing terminology fails but where ‘convenience’ succeeds.
On that last point: I can’t immediately think of an example where ‘convenience’ would be helpful (except for times I would already use the word ‘convenience’) and so I don’t feel sold on the term. I also think we should have a very high bar for adding jargon. In the examples you gave, I think I generally either: prefer the original sentence you included, would already use the term convenient (if it came to mind), or think there’s a better way of conveying the same meaning using a different term.
To combine the few comments above: I think it’s difficult to decide which jargon will be helpful from the armchair. So I think rather than a carefully made argument for the uptake of a particular term, I think it’s better to just define the term and put it out there (with a few examples) -- if it’s useful enough, people will use it; if not, it probably won’t catch on (and I don’t think a careful argument would have made the difference).
I found the convenience accounting part quite confusing. Specifically, I don’t get how the concept of convenience helps do this kind of accounting, and (as I think you seem to believe based on your “accountant foolishly trying to list...”) I don’t think this accounting is actually helpful for most decisions.
I really like the general concept of trying to keep track of what is and is not convenient to you, your organisations, others around you, etc. I appreciated you giving such honest examples of your own conveniences. I’m not sure you needed the term to do this, but I do think it’s good practice.
Thanks for this post! I appreciate your writing, and also appreciated including images in your post—it made it more fun to read.
I wrote some feedback privately which the author thought would be good to share publicly, so this is a lightly edited version of that feedback:
The post was quite long, taking 10-15 minutes or so for me to read. I think this was because you wrote this in quite a careful way, including caveats, counterarguments, etc., and I’m not sure all this was necessary.
I think a shorter (~1/3rd the length) post which just explained what convenience meant using a few examples could have been better. In particular, it would be useful to emphasise examples where existing terminology fails but where ‘convenience’ succeeds.
On that last point: I can’t immediately think of an example where ‘convenience’ would be helpful (except for times I would already use the word ‘convenience’) and so I don’t feel sold on the term. I also think we should have a very high bar for adding jargon. In the examples you gave, I think I generally either: prefer the original sentence you included, would already use the term convenient (if it came to mind), or think there’s a better way of conveying the same meaning using a different term.
To combine the few comments above: I think it’s difficult to decide which jargon will be helpful from the armchair. So I think rather than a carefully made argument for the uptake of a particular term, I think it’s better to just define the term and put it out there (with a few examples) -- if it’s useful enough, people will use it; if not, it probably won’t catch on (and I don’t think a careful argument would have made the difference).
I found the convenience accounting part quite confusing. Specifically, I don’t get how the concept of convenience helps do this kind of accounting, and (as I think you seem to believe based on your “accountant foolishly trying to list...”) I don’t think this accounting is actually helpful for most decisions.
I really like the general concept of trying to keep track of what is and is not convenient to you, your organisations, others around you, etc. I appreciated you giving such honest examples of your own conveniences. I’m not sure you needed the term to do this, but I do think it’s good practice.