[fuzzythinker]

Re: "Need for 'strong backing'": I think this goes back to the seriousness of how you take the discussions here. For me, forum/msg threads are just causal discussions (one level lower than blog posts), it would be nice if the person stated where they get their backing for the idea or assertion, but it's neither "necessary" nor "too helpful". If every idea/assertions needs backing, there would be almost no discussions at all. Innovation often comes from idea/assertions that have no backings.

It is not "necessary" because to me, if I believe in it and it's important to me, I will test it out. It doesn't matter if the idea came from Steve Jobs or Joe Doe. It's not "too helpful" because often the research being done on it is flawed, outdated, or just really not too trust-able. An example for example I remember reading some group has done research on max width of cell phones people like before feeling discomfort. The Motorola design team was the first to ignore that when they designed RAZR.