[Ads-l] bikeshedding

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

Dan Goncharoff mentioned that "bike shed" concept goes back to C.
Northcote Parkinson. The Wikipedia article about "Law of triviality"
agrees.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality

[Begin excerpt from Wikipedia]
The law of triviality is C. Northcote Parkinson's 1957 argument that
people within an organization commonly give disproportionate weight to
trivial issues.
[End excerpt from Wikipedia]

This thread is about the emergence of the verb form of "bikeshed". Ben
Zimmer noted that Paul McFedries' Word Spy has a pertinent citation
for "bikeshedding" in 2002.

The modern revival of the "bikeshed" concept in the computer software
domain occurred by 1999 (or earlier). There was a pertinent
explanatory email from Poul-Henning Kamp dated October 2, 1999, which
mentioned C. Northcote Parkinson, but this email did not use
"bikeshed" as a verb.

https://phk.freebsd.dk/sagas/bikeshed/

I performed a quick search in the Google Usenet archive. The search
function is partially broken, but it often yields helpful matches.

"Bikeshedding" appeared in a Usenet message dated  December 13, 2000.
"bikeshedded" appeared in a Usenet message dated  December 31, 2000.

Usenet discussion message
Timestamp: Dec 13, 2000, 8:30:28 PM
Newsgroup: sol.lists.freebsd.net
Newsgroup Description: FreeBSD Mailing List Gateway: freebsd-net (Moderated)
From: bi... at mu.org Bill Fumerola
Subject: Ratelimint Enhancement patch (Please Review One Last Time!)
Database: Google Groups Search (Accessed: September 29, 2026)

https://groups.google.com/g/sol.lists.freebsd.net/c/zU7fR8ONU9Q/m/zFJPQdAOheMJ

[Begin excerpt]
Exactly. Bikeshedding the millions of possible reasons the
queue/ratelimit was triggered is silly.
Bosko, please change the descriptions to something very generic before
committing them ("ratelimiting TCP RST packets: x/y pps" or something)
[End excerpt]

Usenet discussion message,
Timestamp: Dec 31, 2000, 2:14:50 AM
Newsgroup: sol.lists.freebsd.ports
Newsgroup Description: FreeBSD Mailing List Gateway: freebsd-ports (Moderated)
From: w... at softweyr.com Wes Peters Softweyr LLC
Subject: Package signing tools
Database: Google Groups Search (Accessed: September 29, 2026)

https://groups.google.com/g/sol.lists.freebsd.ports/c/ELSU4JeIE-Y/m/Ubfut9ToxEkJ

[Begin excerpt]
This has been in the queue for 8 months. The original OpenBSD code has
existed for several years. You can have it if you want it, but I'm not
going to have it bikeshedded to death, or into pkg_info or pkg_version
or pkg_anythingelse. The functions are not related: this program signs
a a package and checks the signature on a package is valid; pkg_info
and pkg_version do other things.
[End excerpt]

Garson

On Tue, Sep 29, 2026 at 5:25 PM Dan Goncharoff
<00001bc983129c8b-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:
>
> The concept, including the bike shed, goes back to C. Notthcote Parkinson.
>
> DanG
>
> On Tue, Sep 29, 2026, 5:13 PM Ben Zimmer <
> 00001aae0710f4b7-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:
>
> > Paul McFedries' Word Spy has it back to 2002:
> >
> > https://wordspy.com/words/bikeshedding/
> >
> > First noted here in 2012:
> >
> > https://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2012-July/121028.html
> >
> > --bgz
> >
> > On Tue, Sep 29, 2026 at 4:40 PM Dennis During <
> > 00001bcaf94bd005-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:
> >
> > > See wiktionary: bikeshedding
> > > <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bikeshedding> (current
> > > form approximated in 2014)
> > >
> > > See Wikipedia: Law_of_triviality
> > > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality>.
> > >
> > > On Tue, Sep 29, 2026 at 4:09 PM Amy West <medievalist at w-sts.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > New to me. Wiktionary's got it.
> > > >
> > > > Here's a usage with a gloss:
> > > >
> > > > "What struck me the most from that September 24 TLSS meeting, though,
> > > > was that the committee spent ten minutes asking questions about flag
> > > > football and no time asking questions about the proposed gender support
> > > > plan. This is called bikeshedding, which is the tendency of groups to
> > > > spend disproportionate amounts of time debating relatively simple or
> > > > familiar issues while giving far less attention to complicated,
> > > > consequential ones. This was a painful example."
> > > >
> > > > ---Aislinn Doyle, 29 Sept. 2026, WPS in Brief (Worcester, MA, USA)
> > > >
> > > > https://www.worcestersucks.email/p/wps-in-brief-september-2026
> > > >
> > >
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org