Actually, no. You might want to experiment on a test system to see what "tradition" actually does. Then you, you know, learn the consequences because you are, you know, curious to understand the result of the operation. And many people find this, well, fun. Normally people who do this sort of thing exhibit the traits that make them a good sysadmin because they are verifying Unix-lore to ensure that they aren't just following some sort of cargo cult methodology.
> Unix has a long tradition of doing a `rm -rf /` before reinstalling a system. I don't agree with the people saying "don't do that".
So, yes, "tradition".