Very useful way to think about politics. Always remember that people have valid concerns you might not understand... but also that their solutions are probably terrible.
It’s exactly the opposite. Most concerns aren’t valid (even if and especially if they think it is) and most ideas for fixing things aren’t even contemplated let alone attempted.
That you have to lock down the ability to edit the docs in your project wiki because otherwise anyone would be able to edit the wiki.
That we have to lock down installation of unsigned extensions in Firefox on Linux because spyware/nagware in the form of add-ons that re-install themselves have been observed in the wild (on Windows) and caused problems.
Those sound like proposed solutions, not the underlying concerns. Motivating concerns here might be things like "our wiki will be full of inaccurate info", "people will unknowingly install spyware".
The stated concern embedded in the first example is "anyone would be able to edit the wiki".
> Motivating concerns here might be things like "our wiki will be full of inaccurate info", "people will unknowingly install spyware".
Right. That's the point. The concern that "anyone would be able to edit the wiki" is not a valid concern. The concern that "our wiki will be full of inaccurate info [if just allow anyone to edit it]" has to be determined through empiricism. Avoiding locking down the wiki and seeing whether it fills up with junk will reveal whether the concern was valid. It's possible that it's an invalid concern and therefore requires no solution.
I don't think this means "most concerns aren't valid", it's more "people aren't always good at vocalizing their underlying concerns, and instead treat a proposed solution as the concern".
Your distinction between stated concerns and underlying concerns is a red herring.
If their underlying concern is "our wiki will be full of inaccurate info because the wiki is open", and if that's empirically shown that opening the wiki doesn't produce a wiki full of inaccurate info, then it's an invalid concern. Neither it (the "underlying concern") nor the stated concern are valid.
You're not engaging with the premise. There is no problem involving a wiki that is full of junk and that locking it down is a way to solve that. The concern is that it would be filled with junk if flipped from closed to open.
Oh, every day citizens have terrible ideas too. Sometimes even worse. Sometimes our elected officials who "don't get anything done" are serving as necessary filters for those terrible ideas.
