Ward Cunningham

In How To Take Smart Notes, Ward Cunningham is invoked for the maxim “The best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it’s to post the wrong answer.” Kyle reads this — cross-referenced with Tim Berners-Lee — as a cornerstone of his recurring Learning in Public thesis: that an idea kept private is “as good as one you never had,” and that doing everything (reading, listening, tweeting) with the purpose of feeding public thinking changes how you do all of it. Cunningham’s “post the wrong answer” line captures the generative payoff of publishing imperfect ideas: error invites correction in a way that questions don’t.

Context: Ward Cunningham is the American programmer who created the wiki (WikiWikiWeb, 1995), the first user-editable website, and is also known for contributions to design patterns and extreme programming. The “post the wrong answer” maxim is widely attributed to him and informally called “Cunningham’s Law.”

Where this appears

• How To Take Smart Notes — quoted for “post the wrong answer,” anchoring (with Tim Berners-Lee) the book’s knowledge-kept-private-vs-published thread and Kyle’s Learning in Public thesis