I am quite confident that both of you are better architects than Donald Ross.
Ira
Ira, I hate to derail Mark's nice "conceptual design thread" which I always find to be the most stimulating type of discussion here, over access, ranking, or specific course/hole threads.
That said, part of my new role is to stay in touch with many architects. Many of them say they don't believe they could do any better than Ross (or another famous gca) and I always ask, "Why not?" Frankly, the ego needed to be successful in this biz makes it unlikely, to me, that any practitioner doesn't really believe that he/she is better than Ross, etc. As a profession, I think any design profession takes the best of the past and blends and builds on it, then applies those ideas to new conditions and site specific designs. If we are building, then naturally our top tier architects should be as good or better than the old guys.
That is not to say we don't recognize all the great things they have done, often with more limited resources, and yes, there are many holes we shouldn't change, but many more that we probably should.
The only real question (to bring it back to Mark's point) is to consider why a false front makes sense or doesn't in the particular case the architect is facing. So, I gave you the considerations I would take into account in design....others gave you a few instances where particular examples of false fronts were either good or bad. Again, neither general rules or specific examples given would be the final say in whether most professional architects would use an FF in any particular situation.
No problem, though.......I am sure you think you are a better poster than any professional architect here.....so we're even!