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.

    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.

     _________________________________________________________________

   - Bryce Wilcox (wilcoxb`-at-`cs.colorado.edu) & Stanton McCandlish
   (mech`-at-`eff.org)


     _________________________________________________________________


    Cf.: BENFORD'S LAW OF CONTROVERSY

   Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information
   available.
   - Gregory Benford, 1980.