The Justification Method

Getting People to Reply

[zulufox]

I've been doing a weird experiment lately. I go to different forums on the net (some popular, some dead) and see what types of questions get people to post.

I've made about 500 posts so far and one type of post stands out, "the Justification" (I gave all my post types names).

The method behind "Justification" is to find a thing people identify with and create a very a clear challenge to that.

For example on webmasterworld I would post:

"10 Reasons Why All Independent Webmasters Will Fail within 5 Years"

The post itself has to be of good length (oddly, very short posts, even if they say the same thing, don't get good replies).

This type of post works because I am challenging what people identify with. They think: "I am a webmaster, and this guy is saying I will fail!" and inevitable write high qualities (and sometimes lengthy) replies justifying their beliefs and through that themselves.

The reason this works so well is that humans have a powerful self-identification system. "I AM a mother, I AM a soldier, I AM from Africa, I AM successful, I AM a geek, I am Republican". When someone challenges that, they leap to its defense, half to prove the other person wrong, and half to justify it to THEMSELVES.

Just thought it was interesting...

[rogerd]

Very interesting, zulu. "How do I get people to post?" is a common question around here, so your method is something for forum owners to try out.

People are more likely to post in response to a thread they disagree with, particularly if there appears to be some thought behind it.

[WA_Smith]

Using your methods to analysis blog comments would be interesting. I've thought one method to rank blog posts is the number of comments they get. I've seen no search that have done this yet. Even if most of the high commented posts are started by a "justification method" post I would still like to use a search engine ranked by number of comments ... reading justification posts provides both sides and provide alot of food for thought.