The steak knife analogy

Imagine you want to open a steak house. For everyone to eat their steaks, they'll have steak knifes. Your restaurant manager is worried that someone might use the knife to stab someone else in your restaurant. In order to protect your customers, he proposes to build a steel cage around each table. What would you do in this situation?

This proposal is ridiculous. Nobody wants to be caged in a restaurant. It's meant to be ridiculous. The scenario is an analogy by Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia. He uses it as an argument to stop designing systems around how bad actors might misuse them. One example of this is that any Wikipedia user is able to edit anyone's comments.

The reason why steel cages in a restaurant are ridiculous is that steak knife stabbings are rare. Yes, if its happening, it's a tragedy. But there are already systems in place to deal with this case (calling an ambulance, for example). Therefore, setting up steel cages in your restaurant has a negligible benefit at a disproportionate cost.

This isn't to say that there shouldn't be any safety guards at all. Exposing your databases directly, for example, s a bad idea. If someone who wants to do harm gets access to your database, he only needs a single command to delete everything that's stored in it. But exactly how much harm is done if a comment is edited to mean the opposite of what it meant before? It's annoying, confusing, and the absolute opposite of helpful. But if there are only five decent people for every bad actor, his changes will be reverted much faster than he can make them. And it won't be long before he's banned.

The steak knife analogy is a reminder to be a bit more trusting of your fellow humans. Also, if you want to design everything around bad actors, why is it still allowed to sell cushions? After all, they can be used to smother you in your sleep.