Alright, if you really want to unpack the metaphor:
The bikeshed story is to illustrate overemphasis on something that is trivial. It uses the example of a bikeshed color and a committee wanting to spend a lot of time on it because a) they care a little about it, and b) they understand it well enough for hard-headed members to wade into the dispute rather than trust experts.
It's a failure mode -- by stipulation -- because the bikeshed color doesn't matter beyond minor (but real) aesthetic feelings among the committee, that are far outweighed the cost of high-level personnel devoting time to it. Had they been aware of the general dynamic of these thing, they could entirely prevent the loss by moving on; it's purely an internal matter.
The bikeshed model ceases to demonstrate a failure mode if and when the bikeshed color has impacts far beyond things under the control of the committee. For example, if the majority of the world's people had a near-religious devotion to destroying facilities that house a blue bikeshed, and that fanaticism was hard to defend against, this would be a valid reason not to make the bikeshed blue, and would warrant the committee's attention.
I summarize such situations as "that's not bikeshedding", though of course, to be more technically correct, I should say "that situation does not illustrate the avoidable failure mode in the parable of the bikeshed".
Similarly, if adoption matters for more than just that committee -- if they need to convince numerous other committees to adopt the design -- it's likewise "not bikeshedding" because the first committee doesn't have control over all the other ones; with respect to the first, it's an external matter, and they can't stem the loss just by saying "hey, this is trivial".
Now, you are correct that, a high enough level, this could work as a bikeshedding example, if you could simultaneously get the entire world to collectively agree on the non-importance of aesthetics on technical matters, and on what counts as technical vs aesthetic. Then the world could play the role of that first committee and say "wow, this is trivial" and it's done.
But if that were actually feasible, then that should be your product (producing universal agreement on matters where you have a logical proof-of-correctness), not a database!
The bikeshed story is to illustrate overemphasis on something that is trivial. It uses the example of a bikeshed color and a committee wanting to spend a lot of time on it because a) they care a little about it, and b) they understand it well enough for hard-headed members to wade into the dispute rather than trust experts.
It's a failure mode -- by stipulation -- because the bikeshed color doesn't matter beyond minor (but real) aesthetic feelings among the committee, that are far outweighed the cost of high-level personnel devoting time to it. Had they been aware of the general dynamic of these thing, they could entirely prevent the loss by moving on; it's purely an internal matter.
The bikeshed model ceases to demonstrate a failure mode if and when the bikeshed color has impacts far beyond things under the control of the committee. For example, if the majority of the world's people had a near-religious devotion to destroying facilities that house a blue bikeshed, and that fanaticism was hard to defend against, this would be a valid reason not to make the bikeshed blue, and would warrant the committee's attention.
I summarize such situations as "that's not bikeshedding", though of course, to be more technically correct, I should say "that situation does not illustrate the avoidable failure mode in the parable of the bikeshed".
Similarly, if adoption matters for more than just that committee -- if they need to convince numerous other committees to adopt the design -- it's likewise "not bikeshedding" because the first committee doesn't have control over all the other ones; with respect to the first, it's an external matter, and they can't stem the loss just by saying "hey, this is trivial".
Now, you are correct that, a high enough level, this could work as a bikeshedding example, if you could simultaneously get the entire world to collectively agree on the non-importance of aesthetics on technical matters, and on what counts as technical vs aesthetic. Then the world could play the role of that first committee and say "wow, this is trivial" and it's done.
But if that were actually feasible, then that should be your product (producing universal agreement on matters where you have a logical proof-of-correctness), not a database!