Occasionally various authors come up with new ideas in Mathematics. An interesting question then comes up: "Should any new idea be immediately announced in newsgroups, such as sci.math"? To determine the answer to this question, the author had to set up an experimental thread, which pretty much determined that the answer is negative.
Here are the experiment specifications:
Setup
The idea initially chose Johan E. Mebius as a propagation vector into the mind of this Author. As soon as this Author saw the original idea with John F. Simon's Java program, the idea immediately multiplied in the Author's mind, for approximately 5-10 seconds. This was the time that elapsed between this Author seeing the Java implementation and understanding the principle behind the idea.
The idea's first attempt at replication was an immediate response to Johan E. Mebius' email reference, which speculated an implementation on chess. That's how the Author tried to shut down the idea, initially.
Although Johan did not respond to this idea, the idea then returned to this Author and attempted to replicate and adapt itself to chess. It occupied the Author's mind until the Author actually coded the idea in Maple and created a web-page for it.
As soon as the Author created the web-page which dealt with the Maple chess implementation, the main question which concerns this web-page appeared: "Should the new idea be announced immediately"?
In order for this Author to determine an objective answer to the above question, the Author set up the experimental thread.
The idea then chose this Author to investigate itself because he was the quickest to find a Maple implementation of a chess adaptation. Then it chose Johannes Bauer as a second subject because he was the quickest to find a C implementation of a chess adaptation.
The Idea's Strategy of Survival
The idea chose this Author to defend itself and Johannes Bauer to attack itself. Through this Author it defended itself as interesting and non-trivial, and through Bauer it attacked itself as uninteresting and pointless.
During the above process of defense and attack, the idea attracted several bystanders who followed the thread with moderate interest, not only from a mathematical perspective but also from a psychological perspective. Several of these bystanders commented on various issues, most of which were irrelevant to the main issue. One bystander (David Bernier) actually verified the main mathematical principle behind the idea as correct. One other bystander was James Waldby, who commented on this thread near the end. James' comment was the actual experiment terminator, after which the author revealed his true intentions behind the experiment.
Conclusions (Psychology)
In its desire to survive the idea pushed both subjects to their limits, psychologically. The Author on purpose engaged in extremely aggressive behavior (with ad hominem racial remarks and slurs) against Johannes Bauer while defending the idea to see how far Johannes would go to defend his position and how he would react psychologically (another reason why Johannes was chosen was because he was relatively immune to racial slurs and remarks). Johannes did not reciprocate with racial remarks, rather, he attacked the Author's reputation and math abilities directly (a fairly common line of ad hominem attack between mathematicians). It is therefore interesting that the main idea used Johannes to attack even the main propagation vector of the idea itself (the Author).
Conclusions (Mathematics & Chess)
The idea first chose John F. Simon to propagate itself in Java (Every Icon Project), then chose this Author to propagate in Maple (Every Chess Configuration) and finally chose Johannes Bauer to propagate in C (example given in thread). By replicating thus, it pointed out the three of the most efficient computer languages of today (Java, Maple, C). In the process of the idea adapting itself to chess, it also pointed out the most promising method of AI testing (chess).
Main Conclusion
New ideas are best left dormant in one's web-pages and should not be announced.