Gaudere cannot injure another doper or, through inaction, allow a doper to come to harm.
Oh wait. OK, those that point out the typo of one poster will inevitably have a typo in his or her own post. Well, that’s all well and good, but we need more laws, by golly. Without that, it’s anarchy! And anarchy is just one step away from Ann Arbor and Lord help us all if that happens. So, anyway, I propose another Law for the books.
Call it Ender’s Law:
Posters that refer to their sigs within a post will forget to add said sigs to the end of their post.
Only upon hitting the “Submit Reply” button will the true meaning of the OP become crystal clear, meaning the unrecallable post being submitted is completely wrong, inane or just plain idiotic.
[sub]Gawd forbid we have ‘Ann Arbor’ and her twin sister ‘Dear Anarchy’ near each other, Enderw24. The whole world would just implode.[/sub]
There is a certainty that a “NASA moon landing conspiracy” thread will be started within 45 days of the last one dropping off the hotlist.
First Corollary: The thread starter will probably never be heard from again. This probability approaches 1 proportional to the newbieness of the starter.
RickJay’s Second Law:
No matter how the OP is phrased, what forum it is in, or what question or comment it offers, any thread concerning Microsoft or Bill Gates will become an OS Holy War.
First Corollary: In any thread concerning Microsoft or PCs in general, the probability of someone claiming that Macs are better approaches 1 as the thread nears 50 posts.
[list=1][li]Any thread -no matter how serious- regarding cultural/political/economical differences between the United States of America and “Europe” has a high chance of becoming Pit Material.[/li]Any such thread started in the Pit is doomed.[/list=1]
Any thread for flirting will be ruined by me, as I come in and drop the love bomb on all the ladies in the house. Then I will be so busy loving them all up and down, and the thread will die.
I know it hurts, but I’m just that smooth. Call it a curse.
Whose law was the “Hitler”-comparison law? The one by which any thread where some adversary is compared to Adolf Hitler is logistically dead and on the fast track to being locked?
And for my own contribution, AHunter’s law:
The likelihood of your browser software suddenly crashing increases exponentially as a function of the length and seriousness of the post you are composing
Godwin’s Law. For any debate, there is a certain probably that one side will compare the other to Hitler or the Nazis. When this happens, any chance for rational continuance of the debate is gone. FWIW, the accusing side lost.
Corollary: For any debate involving homosexuality or Heinlein, the probability of Godwin’s Law being invoked is 1.
Sublight’s Law: If Poster A writes a thorough, well-researched reply to an OP, only to be followed by Poster B spouting a half-assed, inaccurate, drive-by answer, the writer of the OP will reply with “Thanks for the info, B!”
AHunter3, it’s called Godwin’s Law. Paraphrased, it’s that the longer a thread goes on, the chance that Nazis or Hitler is referenced approaches 1. When this happens, the thread is done with.
A year or two ago on another board I used to post on I introduced Lamia’s Law:
“Do not expect people to realize that you are joking or being sarcastic when you post something intentionally outrageous. No matter how obviously stupid, bigoted, wrongheaded, or downright crazy your post is, someone somewhere on the Internet has already posted the same thing and meant it.”