The expression bike shed discussion, which comes from a FreeBSD mailing list post by Poul-Henning Kamp, describes the experience of being bogged down by interminable debate on a subject where everyone feels comfortable in their expertise -- such as the building of a bike shed. It also can be stated as a law:

... the amount of noise generated by a change is inversely proportional to the complexity of the change.

Looking at the naming effort for the new syndication and weblogging format briefly known as Pie, Echo, and Atom, perhaps it should be dubbed BikeShed (via RC3.org).

-- Rogers Cadenhead