[MIT: from the Schroedinger’s Cat thought-experiment in quantum physics] A design or implementation bug in a program that doesn’t manifest until someone reading source or using the program in an unusual way notices that it never should have worked, at which point the program promptly stops working for everybody until fixed. Though (like bit rot) this sounds impossible, it happens; some programs have harbored latent schroedinbugs for years.
[Unabashedly copied from: http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?schroedinbug]
See also: HeisenBug, BohrBug, MandelBug; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schroedinbug , http://twoday.tuwien.ac.at/IMHO/stories/3320/ , http://computing-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/heisenbug .
Discussion about deleting this page:
In favour of deletion:
The three ‘bug pages are not used anywhere on the site, and cannot really be used except as jargon in a convivial discussion, since there are no well-defined approaches to finding such things, and in such a discussion anyone who doesn’t know it already can just Google for it.
However, the term is usually used to mean a bug that exhibits itself everywhere after discovery even when it’s not yet been announced. This kind of situation is only usually noticed in complaints departments! It manifests in multithreaded programming, when a new piece of hardware brings to light an old bug that might not have manifested on less aggressively parallel hardware, for instance.
Against:
*This page give the definition of a real term used in programming. It’s relevant, it’s accurate, it’s vaguely informative, and it’s not cluttering anything.
Though as noted, these pages are not actually tied in anywhere.
N.B. The aim here is not to settle an argument, but to reach an agreement. Since the community has not agreed, it’s best to leave this page and decide what to do with the arguments above. One approach might be to flesh out the three pages and try to link them in to existing content.
Presenting yourself as a voice of reason doesn’t hold water when you remove the deletion tag from pages ‘because consensus has not been reached’ rather than simply editing the pages to keep them alive, while at the same time adding to the delete me page that you can keep a page alive by continuing to edit it with the delete me tag in place. Practice what you preach, please.
I am. There is no point in continuing to edit this page with DeleteMe still on it. Consensus has not been reached, and there is no further progression towards it. Therefore, it is not going to be deleted.
I’m referring to the other two related pages. I’m all for the idea of combining them onto one page. The community will decide of course, but it’s hardly fair to remove the delete me. Just because the argument has not leaned either way doesn’t mean you can automatically remove the other side’s vote by removing delete me. Your actions most definitely belie your words.
Votes? There is no voting, only veto. If you believe you can convince anyone further, do try, but after a long silence and no new arguments, there seems little point. If you concede that there is no unanimous consensus, then deletion is not going to happen. If you concede that deletion is not going to happen, there is no point leaving the DeleteMe mark on the page.
If you want to rename the other pages to something more snappy, that might be an idea, but you would be breaking with standard jargon. Otherwise, there’s no point merging them, since they are currently kept in the correct place.
Marking a page for deletion is a vote for deletion. Please don’t split hairs; it won’t gain you any ground. The long silence from the pro-deletion people is due to the fact that the delete me tag speaking very loudly for itself. If you want a ‘new argument’, then fine - Delete Me! … consider the debate continued. I think this page is pointless with regards to the purpose of this wiki (and so do at least four others I’ve identified by IP). I find it absurd that anybody would use the argument ‘because we can’t agree, I win’ and / or ‘because you haven’t recently reaffirmed your disagreement or invented some new argument to bolster your side, I still win’. It’s positively ridiculous. (removed delete me tag from my own post because I don’t want to be considered a troll, but my point remains)
I am one of the people arguing for the deletion of the page. If you want to argue that unanimous consensus is a bad idea, do so. If you think DeleteMe should be on the page, give a reason why - not a reason why it shouldn’t be removed.
As to the page being pointless, that point’s already been raised. It didn’t convince then, and it’s certainly not new now.
The reasons why the page should be deleted were given a hundred times already. That’s my entire point. Just because no new arguments weren’t recently added doesn’t mean the others are now invalid. I don’t see why this is such a difficult concept. To the other poster, just because someone else removed the deletion tag doesn’t mean it ‘didn’t convince’. It just means it didn’t convince the individual who removed the tag.
I’m just one poster. I like paragraphs.
Anyway, the reasons why the page shouldn’t be deleted were also given repeatedly. The proponents just gave up trying to reason, probably because they felt they were merely being shouted down instead of participating in a discussion.
Last point: you say “ It just means it didn’t convince the individual who removed the tag”. Perhaps you should look up “uniform consensus”? If one person disagrees, that’s not uniform. It’s a veto. It will continue to be a veto. Read all my discussion above. Trying to delete these pages is a waste of time and community attention. There are many better targets for deletion. Continuing to bang our collective heads against the brick wall of the ‘bug pages is pointless.
It’s obvious to me that voting isn’t going to work out. Not only does the wiki not support it, but getting people to vote for every single deleted page is ridiculous.
We’re left with argument and consensus. It appears that the arguments never sway anybody, they just let people air their ideas and allow a rough count of support on either side. But eventually it will just bog down into repetition.
So the fundamental question is this: what is the default policy for any given page? Do we delete by default, or do we keep by default? In other words, does bogging down into repetition mean that the page should stay, or that it should go?
Obviously, on any given page, the people who feel the page should deleted will say that bogging down means it needs to go, and the people who supported the page will say that it needs to stay. What I’m after is a site-wide policy on this. That is, when any page whose content is not spam or blatantly offensive gets into a delete war and ends up with never-ending arguments over its destiny, what should we do with it? I think that having a site-wide policy will make sure that these arguments do end eventually, instead of flaring back up every time somebody decides that a conclusion has been reached.
In my mind, it seems clear that default-keep is the only rational way. If default-delete becomes the rule, then any person or small group with a grudge bout of insanity can delete a useful page by just holding out until the argument bogs down. (Note: I’m not saying that any particular page is or is not useful, I’m just talking in general here.) However, if default-keep is the rule, then the only risk is that we accumulate some useless pages, which is not a very large harm. Remember that this is only for pages that bog down into argument, like this one; the vast majority of DeleteMe pages are either a case where everybody agrees with it, or it’s a lone troublemaker who gets quickly corrected, and this policy would not apply there.
What does everybody else think? Default-delete, default-keep, or some other policy? – MikeAsh
Obviously my opinion is encoded in the deletion policy. Default-keep. StevenFrank agrees. – KritTer
I vote default keep. -JeremyJurksztowicz
Default keep.