An original exposition about an invented consultation exercise.

Thirty residents each wrote one main concern about a proposed public fountain. To summarise the responses, a reader placed every comment under one heading, choosing the first concern that seemed clear. A second reader later sorted the same comments after reading each one in full.

The total number of comments had not changed, but the apparent pattern had. One card began, “It would be expensive to put rails around the basin.” The first reader noticed “expensive” and selected cost; the second decided that the writer's real concern was safety. Another resident asked, “Who will pay to clear the leaves?” Although payment was mentioned, the action being discussed was maintenance.

Headings are useful because they turn a pile of separate comments into a pattern that can be considered. However, they are lenses rather than containers: they bring one feature into focus while making another less visible. If we published only the largest number, a reader's judgement might be mistaken for a fact contained in the comments themselves. We therefore recorded the sorting rules, included examples and marked the few cards whose main concern remained uncertain.