Avoid Premature Standardization

The post warns against standardizing too early. Standards can improve interoperability, but if a pattern is still evolving, locking it down can push people to follow the rule instead of trying alternatives.

It then treats social standards as something that should emerge from use, not from declaration. In the GitHub label example, the author says labels like “easy-fix” or “docs-and-samples” work better than a generic label such as “UpForGrabs” because they describe the issue and let contributors choose for themselves.

Reading notes

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• Standards help when a technology is old and well understood, but premature standardization can suppress innovation.
• Once a standard exists, people may spend more energy obeying it than testing other ideas.
• Social standards differ from software standards because they arise from people’s behavior and are enforced through pressure rather than code.
• The Octokit team’s labels were not meant as a new standard, only as an experiment.
• The author prefers descriptive labels for issues because different contributors are drawn to different kinds of work.