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Heuristics
How guessing wrong drives participation.
If you give the user a chance to provide information, they will probably pass it up.
Most people seem to have an inborn compulsion to:
- Avoid extra work.
- Deny others' requests.
- Especially if the request is for information.
- Divulge information.
The desire to divulge information is stronger than the desire to avoid work, but not stronger than the desire to avoid extra work, which other people's requests certainly are.
In other words, wanting something from someone makes them less likely to give it to you.
On the other hand, the desire to correct others' mistakes is often a more powerful compulsion than any of these, so providing the wrong information can be even more effective than provide neutral or interrogative prompting.
Therefore, whenever we present the user with the opportunity to provide information, we should usually do so in the form of assuming what their answer is and giving them the opportunity to correct us.
This is why it's usually better to show someone bad work in order to get them to do work than it is to request that they do the work right in the first place.
The only time heuristics should not be used is if the consequences of not being corrected would corrupt the sanctity of the information by being both wrong and indistinguishable from correct information.
In other words, it's OK to guess someone's location is Pluto, because there's no way that's true, so you can tell right away that you have wrong information. It's also OK to guess someone's location is contained in their geotags, because that's likely to be correct, and the consequences of being wrong about that are relatively low.
If, on the other hand, the consequences were high, such as ordering a SWAT hit, that assumption would no longer be safe, and you'd be better off guessing Pluto.
Guessing people's emotions, in issue #34