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Contents 1 Wiki corollary? (And applicability of W-McC to various media) 2 New Corollary (Well, not quite) 3 Unity 4 McCandlish's Third Corollary 5 "Citation of" vs. "citation to" 6 My participation here 6.1 Where's the "subject is an editor" warning template? 7 Never thought I'd see this happen 8 Old or obsolete discussions 8.1 Link to User:SMcCandlish

[edit] Wiki corollary? (And applicability of W-McC to various media)

There is a corollary to this for wiki. now what could that be? -- 70.29.131.204 06:09, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

It already applies to wikis, at least when wikis are used for asynchronous personal discussion/debate in public. The beauty, if you can call it that, is that W.-McC. applies to any online textual medium of many-to-many communication (as in Usenet, mailing lists, wikipedia Talk pages, SlashDot, etc.) It does not apply to one-to-many communication, including web sites, creation/editing of wiki articles, blogging or podcasting. Nor does it *generally* apply to one-to-one e-communication (e-mail, IM), though to the extent that an e-mail discussion's participants go about a debate between themselves *as if* it were a Usenet debate, W.-McC. would apply more and more; but the more like a phone call or personal conversation the e-mail is, the less W.-McC. will apply. Which brings me to the fact that I specifically disclaim that it applies to aural media, including F2F conversation, phone calls, and other situations in which voice tone helps keep conversations, even debatory ones, from going completely off the rails. Thus, Skype calls would not be very applicable. W.-McC. was written a long time ago, before the existence of audio chatting over the Internet, so it's wording is a little bit obsolete. I would also add that W.-McC.'s applicability is stronger when the medium is asynchronous as in Usenet, wikipedia Talk, and e-mail lists, and much weaker when it is synchronous (e.g. AOL's live chat rooms, and IRC.) It also does not seem to apply very much to greatly-asynchronous offline text communication; while debates in scientific journals can become very heated and last for years, I don't observe a general trend toward the problems that W.-McC. and its corollaries point up, which seem to be particularly and peculiarly endemic to keyboard-mediated public discourse. SO TAKE THAT, YOU JERK! (Just kidding!) --SMcCandlish 02:46, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

All users are trolls: any wikipedia article containing empowering information will be systematically trolled, then stigmatized with NPOV dispute and factual accuracy warnings, eventually leading to AfD. Any wikipedia author who causes people to think for themselves will be viciously attacked. Any wikipedia author who prefers to share their work anonymously (or point out that NPOV, which is a set-in-stone and non-negotiable emperor's new clothes policy for wikipedia, does not exist) will be called a troll, and attempts will be made to out them, or if that fails, to ban them. --70.29.131.204 23:56, December 30, 2005 (UTC)

Makes some interesting points, but too many of them, with too much jargon, and too narrow a focus. It would need to be succinct; one or more of: wise, pithy, brilliantly observant, or hysterically funny; demonstrably true as a generalization or rule-of-thumb; and applicable to all textual online communications media that are many-to-many. Much of the point of the original and its corollaries is that they are not limited to any particular "submedium" like Usenet, or a webboard on a particular website (like what you are reading right now), or FidoNet BBSes in the olden days of 9600 baud — they're generally applicable to ALL such e-media. --SMcCandlish 02:10, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Additionally, I think the above attempts overgeneralize in various ways ("All users"?), and reflect too much personal angst about something others are not likely to understand or do not regularly experience. E.g., I'm a fairly frequent participant in/user of/contributor to wikipedia, and have had no run-ins with trolls ruining "empowering" information (I'm not sure what that means), have not had my experience marred by NPOV disputes or an excessive number of accuracy debates, and have only once been involved in a debate over an AfD issue, and it wasn't a painful one. So, it's both under- and over-generalizing in a negatively synergistic way that makes it sound like a rant. Again, I do think it raises some interesting issues, but they need to be "zenned" a little bit before a new Law, or a Corollary to this one, are likely to arise. Also, too much of it devolves to a complaint about how wikipedia in particular is administered. A key idea worth working on is, to me, that good information on an online resource automatically attracts trolls, and the better and more popular it is, the more likely to attact trolls it will be. Badly phrased, and overgeneralized (doesn't apply to websites no one can comment on or edit, huh?), but I'm not trying to write a new Law here. Another one might be something a long the lines of the more popular or controversial a topic is in an editable e-forum, the more likely it is to eventually be deleted or locked from further development because of edit wars and ad hominem author-on-author attacks, or something like that. Neither of these are stated well enough to be of any use at this point, but maybe someone can develop them further and make them: true, insightful, well-written and amusing or at least ironic. I don't feel myself to be steeped well enough in "wikidom" to be the person to do that, and I don't think the results will relate very much at all to W.-McC. (at least not any closer than W.-McC. relates to Godwin's Law or Benford's.) Sounds like there needs to be a [Someone]'s Law of Wikis and some corollaries to it. This is not a suggestion to make one up and wikipedia it tomorrow; I think these things work better when distributed in e-mail, blogs, etc., for a while until known well enough that someone else creates a wikipedia page for it. I didn't create this one, and neither did Bryce Wilcox. Someone else did - enough people out there found the memes insightful, funny or whatever enough to rate having an article here. I almost feel guilty adding the new semi-corollary, since it might be the dreaded "original research", but whatever. If wikinazis want to delete it, be my guest (but remove it from "See also" links on the pages of the Laws it refers to, as well.) Oops, I just violated Godwin's Law, so according to some of its corollaries, this conversation is OVER. Heh. --SMcCandlish 04:46, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New Corollary (Well, not quite)

Added a new corollary of sorts, in response to all the overgeneralization and hype about the positive power of network effects. I think this one actually is applicable to wikipedia article writing and a few other contexts, to which W.-McC. and its direct corollaries are generally not (which is why I didn't make it McC's 4th Corollary). It also suggests another point, which could be codified as something like "The value of being able to easily become an online publisher decreases multiplicatively with the number of online publishers", but I think this is too obvious (though very true; if I were going to be a blogger, I should have started in 1997; it's too late to bother now), and really has no irony, humor or pith to it, so I'm not going to name or include it. Anyway, McC.'s Foil is the first new thing I've felt like saying on the topic in approximately 10 years, so it'll probably be the last addition to the list (from me anyway) for that long into the future, unless things change faster, and other people keep overgenerallizing about the gee-whiz "value" or "utility" of making networks of all kinds larger without any thought to the downsides. :-) --SMcCandlish 03:44, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unity

It is likely that this is so because the use of formal logic immediately raises the quality of the discussion to unity...

Unity here is vague. Can someone explain it to me? --ZephyrAnycon 23:44, March 2, 2006 (UTC)

It's engineering lingo (sometimes borrowed by other technical fields, and seemingly borrowed and modified from philosophy terminology originally). The phrase "bring to unity" in engineering terms basically means "normalize" (ergo "raise to unity" means "move from a sub-standard state to an acceptable one".) An actual engineer could probably clarify further; I'm sure I'm missing a shade or two of meaning. In philosophy, to bring or raise to unity can mean more than one thing, based on context. The relevant one here (e.g. not the one used in philosophy of science), is the idea of unity of human consciousness with 'reality' or 'the universe' or 'God' or whatever conceptualization one wishes to engage in for 'that which is beyond usual human understanding'. So, the corollary means either "the use of formal logic immediately raises the quality of the discussion back to an acceptable level", or "the use of formal logic immediately raises the quality of the discussion to a more enlightened state", depending which derivation of the phrase you prefer, and both of them mean about the same thing; indeed, "to unity" could simply be omitted. But it wasn't, as originally and anonymously authored, so I'm not going to edit it, since that would be me revising history for personal reasons. Which I don't really hold in this case - I kind of like it as-is; reminds me of the math-geek use of "modulo" in plain English, e.g. "Godwin's Law is cooler than the W.-McC. Law modulo its more limited scope." --SMcCandlish 02:02, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

That's rather completely wrong. "Unity" is a less common, more elegant term for the number one. See Root of unity. --68.11.213.52 07:58, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

I think we're all aware of the mathematical usage, but it doesn't make sense in this context: "the use of formal logic immediately raises the quality of the dicussion to 'one'" is completely meaningless unless we have already established a scale by which to measure discussion quality, which we have not; otherwise it's simply an arbitrary numeral with no signficance. Godwin's law makes use of the statistical sense of "one", meaning "certainty", but the W.-McC. law and its corollaries do not, and that sense doesn't parse in the context of the corollary in question, either. I stand by my interpretations above. PS: If you're going to tell people they are "completely wrong" you'd do well to back that up with reference citations that establish that alleged fact. I can actually cite references for both the philosophy and engineering usages, and will do so if asked. Can you cite any demonstrating that these usages don't exist or are incorrect? Or to put it another way, do you really find it necessary to attack others' veracity when offering an alternative theory? If your theory were correct it would probably be self-evidently so, or at least easily demonstrable with some additional material like source quotes and examples of usage that apply to the corollary in question; combativeness doesn't add anything. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 18:08, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

"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." implies a maximum quality for content (else a chance above 1); the sensible thing to do is to establish a scale from 0 to 1, as it allows the removal of "directly proportional to" and is generally convenient. This renders my statement meaningful, and it was presumed. It also makes the original statement [edit: The Sub-corollary to McCandlish's Third] logically precise instead of quite vague.

In response to postscripts: I said your interpretation was "rather completely wrong," not you, and I didn't mean any offense; I just don't feel the need to start statements with "in my opinion," as it is implicit when offering opinions. Proof of nonexistence is notoriously difficult for well-established reasons; for that matter, I did not deny such usages, merely their application. Regarding "attack[ing] others' veracity," the omission of "That's rather completely wrong. " makes my prior comment sound like an additional datum, not a disagreement. I suppose I could have been less "combative" in tone, but I was trying to be brief. I apologize for any offense. --68.11.213.52 22:34, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] McCandlish's Third Corollary

the fifth variant ("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.") is wrong. i've had excellent success in ending irrational flamewars by pointing out, one by one, the logical fallacies in statements made in a post. it usually shuts the argument up immediately, and makes the arguers very reticent to attempt such tactics against me in the future. however, because it immediately raises the quality of the thread to unity, it also raises the probability that the thread will change course (as the original statement of the Wilcox-McCandlish law is still true). but starting a new flamewar at a somewhat rational level is not the same as increasing the irrationality of the old one. thus the fifth variant is wrong. though this does not mean it should be removed, some attempt should be made to point out that it is wrong in the article. 216.237.179.238 21:11, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

okay, i've realized that it can be read as true if it's explained that it already presumes the mechanism i've outlined above. so i explained it. hth. 216.237.179.238 22:53, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

A) Whoever you are, let me know, so I can credit you! I liked this so much I made it "official".

B) "it usually shuts the argument up immediately" - You must be lucky or something. The entire point of McC.'s 3rd was that (in my experience) this was generally NOT the case: either 1) The flamers simply ignore the logic points and continue with their current flame in progress, or 2) as you point out, the discussion is technically improved, making it likely the topic will veer; and it does - into an argument about logic that ironically usually turns ad hominem immediately if not directly beginning there! It's just inexpressable how many times I've seen the latter happen. It both cases it follows the pattern of the law and its relevant corollaries perfectly.  :-) --SMcCandlish 04:46, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Citation of" vs. "citation to"

Please stop saying 'citaion to a law', when you mean 'citation of a law'. Brequinda 15:22, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Disagree. "Citation of" refers to a person or authority ("William Shakespear", "the Homeland Security Department", etc.). "Citation to" refers to a document or analogue in which the authoritative statement/information/etc. is stored ("the Magna Carta", "the human gene sequence", etc.) The "of" version refers to the author/creator, the "to" version to the vessel. --SMcCandlish 04:46, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] My participation here

If anyone ever thinks I cross the line, let me know. I'm well aware of Wikipedia guidelines against editing articles about oneself or one's "accomplishments" (other than simple factual corrections). I guess W.-McC. is an accomplishment of sorts, but I've made no claims in any edit to the article about W.-McC.'s value, importance, etc., simply supplied missing facts. That and done content-neutral editing like formatting of the article, typo fixes, etc. If I push a boundary, let me know! — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 16:17, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Where's the "subject is an editor" warning template?

I once encounted on another article a warning template at the top that read something like "Note: The subject of this article is also an editor of Wikipedia". I have been unable to locate it (and didn't think to save a copy of it when I saw it). I think it would be a good idea to add it somewhere here, and it should be sufficient notice that I may participate in this article, within the bounds of WP:AUTO. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 16:07, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Never thought I'd see this happen

Someone actually quoted W.-McC. ahead of Godwin's: [1] :-) Also, Benford's before W.-McC. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 14:33, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

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Archive 1

[edit] Old or obsolete discussions

Junk moved here from Talk:Wilcox-McCandlish law:

[edit] Link to User:SMcCandlish

Someone removed it, and I reverted the edit. People should be able to find out more about me (and Bryce Wilcox - I lost track of him several years ago) - if the "Law" is notable, then surely the people responsible for it are at least half as notable. In the absence of someone creating at least a skeletal article about me (I certainly don't have the vanity/narcissism to do it myself), the wikilink to my User page serves a purpose. I even allow people to e-mail me directly from there if they have any questions about this (or any other article I might be mentioned in, like something about EFF, my book - not worthy of an article in 2006, I assure you, though it was pretty cool in 1997 - online activism, the Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign), or whatever. Regardless of the usability/logic reasons, it is clear that User pages are linkable from articles intentionally, to prevent non-'notable' people from creating actual articles about themselves; instead (this is a key point) they are encouraged to create User pages, and to use them in place of articles, which is precisely what I'm doing by "vainly" linking to my barebones User page (well, yeah, it has a lot of pointless user boxes on it because I was bored one night, but it's pretty content-free. The contact info is the point). Ref.: Template:PotentialVanity PS: I can't believe there's not an article on online activism yet. Yeesh. I'll definitely have to rectify that.
— SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 18:29, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

An alternative would be to do some research on Bryce and me and add a small section about us at article bottom. If anyone ever thinks either of us are "notable" enough they can make the sections into articles or whatever. Either way, our names should remain wikilinks one way or another so people can find us. Or me at least.; if anyone has any current contact info for Bryce, please let him know I'd like to get back in touch. Someone suggested to me privately that I should replace the wikilink with a link to my personal homepage. I think that would seem like self-aggrandizing spamlinking. My User page here is VERY barebones and aside from filling it with userboxes because I was bored one night, what little content it has on it is Wiki related. I am not "the" Stanton McCandlish the online activism trailblazer (blah blah whatever) on here; I'm just an editor... and the person to go to, to ask any questions about the veracity of what appears in this particular article, incidentally. PS: Links in articles to User pages are clearly permissible when relevant inside articles; here's the most canonical possible example: Jimbo Wales! — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 16:17, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I've actually re-thought this. I can't find any other examples than the Jimbo Wales one, and he's sort of "special". I don't wnat to be seen as doing something inappropriate. And frankly, no one has asked anything about this article via my Talk page or e-mail, only on the article's Talk page, so the purpose I had in mind for the userspace link is clearly moot.

— SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 13:54, 24 July 2006 (UTC)