Are We Stifling Creativity? Options

[McMark]

This forum is a great place to share ideas and get some feedback. Over the years we have built up a broad base of 'common knowledge'. The problem with common knowledge is that it can stifle creativity. For example, we just had a thread about large bore four cylinder motors, and it immediately received the standard response (myself included). It was also suggested that the place to talk about new and experimental ideas for these motors is another site.

I'm just worried that people are afraid to post about their new ideas, for fear of being told why it won't work, why they should have done something else, etc. In fact I know of one person who sent out a really cool email about some 914 work he did, but didn't post it here for exactly the reason above.

What's the 914World like from your perspective?

[ConeDodger]

This is a somewhat natural order of things. Any ideas that stray too far from the middle of the road, the mainstream so to speak will be ridiculed. I found myself doing the same thing Mark is refering to in the post he is refering to. My second post pointed out that I was limiting creativity by telling him he couldn't do what he wanted.
We do a lot of it. A recent post about adding power steering got a rather cute (I admit I laughed) response "Gold's Gym". I was tempted to respond myself but figured I had nothing to add to the OP's discussion and I resisted the temptation to just tell him how foolish it seemed.
I am not sure, as humans anyway, that we can avoid the temptation to regulate the herd to the midstream of thought. But it can't hurt to try.
I for one will try not to tell people they can't. In fact, as one person put it, it's their car they can paint it any color they want.
Trying not to stifle creativity...