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Wilcox-mccandlish Law Of Online Discourse EvolutionThe Wilcox-McCandlish law of online discourse evolution, developed by Bryce Wilcox and Stanton McCandlish on USENET, is - 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.
There are numerous corollaries: 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.
McCandlish's third corollary to the Wilcox-McCandlish law: - Any attempt at recourse to formal logic or identification of classic fallacies will simply increase the irrationality of the discussion.
The Wilcox-McCandlish paradox: - Thread degeneration can (theoretically) be forestalled or even reversed by citation to the Wilcox-McCandlish Law.
See also: Godwin's law External links and references - http://www.eff.org/Net_culture/Folklore/Humor/wilcox-mccandlish.law
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