The best way to get the right answer online is to post the wrong one.
Cunningham has disclaimed it; the coinage is Steven McGeady's. It works because correcting an error is lower-effort and higher-status than answering a question.
In practice
- Post the wrong version number in a technical forum and three people will correct it before anyone would have answered the question.
- A draft circulated with a deliberate error gets more substantive comment than the clean version.
- Possible explanations
- The explanation is asymmetric effort and status: correcting an error is quick and makes the corrector look knowledgeable, while answering a question is work that earns less.
- In its favour
- The pattern is familiar to anyone who has posted online, and it is consistent with research showing that people respond more readily to claims than to requests.
- Against it
- It has not been measured, the attribution is wrong, since Cunningham has disclaimed it and the coinage is McGeady's, and deliberately posting errors imposes costs on everyone who reads them and never sees the correction.
- Standing
- Coined by Steven McGeady; Cunningham has disclaimed it.
- Subject
- Communication & Media
- Essay
- The folk laws of argument and attention