Warnock's Dilemma

Written July 20. 2003, at 21:18 GMT.

The concept of "Warnock's Dilemma" is rooted in a post sent by Bryan Warnock to the Bootstrap mailing-list at Perl.org:

The problem with no response [to a post] is that there are five possible interpretations:

  1. The post is correct, well-written information that needs no follow-up commentary. There's nothing more to say except "Yeah, what he said."
  2. The post is complete and utter nonsense, and no one wants to waste the energy or bandwidth to even point this out.
  3. No one read the post, for whatever reason.
  4. No one understood the post, but won't ask for clarification, for whatever reason.
  5. No one cares about the post, for whatever reason.

Dee of Classy.dk paraphrases it thusly:

"Warnock's Dilemma: The act of choosing whether the lack of response to a discussion-list post is because of its brilliance (there's nothing to add) or because of its stupidity (it doesn't deserve comment)."

As a blogger I face this silent dilemma all the time... At least now I know it has a name.


More like this: English Entries, .


Reader Comments (5)

  1. Tryggvi R. Jónsson replies:

    Yeah... what he said...

    July 20. 2003 kl. 22:21 GMT | #

  2. Jósi replies:

    No comment.

    July 21. 2003 kl. 08:38 GMT | #

  3. Bryan S. Warnock replies:

    I didn't know Warnock's Dilema was such a big problem.

    September 1. 2004 kl. 23:08 GMT | #

  4. Már replies:

    Hello Mr. Warnock. I'm honoured. :-)

    The dilemma itself, and the anguish it causes, is real, as can be seen by the spreading of this meme so far (more than 2800 web pages reported by Google).

    September 2. 2004 kl. 00:44 GMT | #

  5. 42: Being Warnocked

    "Thanks to LWN: python-dev Summary I found that the python-dev Summary for 2004-08-16 through 2004-08-31 referred to Skipped Threads Warnocked (i.e., emails that get essentially no response) emails very insignificant threads are not listed. I only recen..." Read more

    September 23. 2004 kl. 20:44 GMT | #

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