Cunningham's law

Cunningham's law says the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer. It is named after Ward Cunningham, inventor of the wiki, though it was Steven McGeady who attributed it to him, and Cunningham has said he never put it that way.

#How it works

Answering an open question takes effort: you have to frame the problem, decide what matters and write something from nothing. Correcting a wrong answer is easy and, for many people, satisfying. So a concrete, slightly wrong claim draws faster and more specific responses than a vague question. It also forces the details into the open; people argue about the exact claim on the page.

#Using it at work

You don't need to be wrong on purpose. You need to be concrete early:

• Write the strawman design doc. "We'll store sessions in Postgres and expire them hourly" gets real objections in a day. "How should we store sessions?" gets a meeting.
• Open a draft pull request. Code people can read and comment on draws better review than a description of code you might write. The pull requests lesson covers keeping drafts small enough to review.
• Propose a default. In a discussion that's going in circles, state a specific choice and ask who objects. Silence is a decision; objections are the information you needed.
• Let an AI draft it. A model's first answer is a fast strawman. Your job is to correct it, which is easier than writing it.

#Where it fails

It only works when people feel safe correcting you and have time to do it. In a team where pushing back is costly, the wrong answer just becomes the plan. And a confident wrong answer that nobody bothers to correct can spread further than the question would have. Say clearly that it's a proposal, and follow up if no one replies.