ABOI: The Wilcox/McCandlish Law Of Online Discourse Evolution (andCorollaries)

[Michael Warner]

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> Newsgroups: alt.fan.warlord
> Date: Tue, 01 Oct 1996 17:16:49 GMT
> From: David Wilcox <wil...@psy.fsu.edu>
> Subject: IHNW-IJWT Share
>
> The Wilcox/McCandlish Law
>
> Of Online Discourse Evolution
>
> (and Corollaries)
>
>
> THE WILCOX/MCCANDLISH LAW OF ONLINE DISCOURSE EVOLUTION
>
> The chance of success of any attempt to change the topic or direction
> of a thread of discussion in a
> networked forum is directly proportional to the quality of the current
> content.
>
> MCCANDLISH'S FIRST COROLLARY TO THE WILCOX/MCCANDLISH LAW
>
> The chance of any change to the topic or direction of a thread being a
> change for the better is
> inversely proportional to the quality of the content before the
> change.
>
> THE EXCEPTION TO MCCANDLISH'S FIRST COROLLARY
>
> When a thread reaches the flame-war stage, all changes in thread topic
> or direction will be changes
> for the worse.
>
> MCCANDLISH'S SECOND COROLLARY TO THE WILCOX/MCCANDLISH LAW
>
> Thread bandwidth consumption increases in inverse proportion to thread
> content quality.
>
> WILCOX'S COROLLARY TO THE WILCOX/MCCANDLISH LAW
>
> The more involved one is in a flame-war, the less likely one is to
> recognize it as such.
>
> THE WILCOX/MCCANDLISH PARADOX
>
> Thread degeneration can (theoretically) be forestalled or even
> reversed by citation to the
> Wilcox/McCandlish Law.
>
>
>
> - Bryce Wilcox (wil...@cs.colorado.edu) & Stanton McCandlish
> (me...@eff.org)
>
>
>
> C.f.: BENFORD'S LAW OF CONTROVERSY
>
> Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information
> available.
> - Gregory Benford, 1980.
>
>
>
>

--
Michael Warner
war...@wsu.edu