To your first point I think it comes down to either embracing "The Rails Way" or not. I understand that many parts of Rails are magical but since they're well documented and there is a shared understanding amongst Rails developers about how they behave we accept the magic. I'm not so concerned about number of lines of code but conciseness, because I know what to expect from `first_or_create` I can instantly distill what is going on just from looking at a single line. I can see how it might be more obtuse for someone who isn't steeped in the Rails framework day in and day out :smile: but I don't know if we've decided who our audience should be.

As far as consistency I don't think we should be overly dogmatic about it but I know I make a best effort to align with other programmers coding styles so when an outsider looks in they have a understanding of how the project should progress.

If "The Rails Way" doesn't jive with you we should have a breakout at some point and determine how we want to approach problems moving forward.