Opening the first address you see

What people actually do

Faced with three strings and no guidance, nearly everybody takes the first. It requires no decision, it is quick, and there is nothing on the page suggesting a reason to do otherwise.

It is worth stating plainly that this is fine. Given the argument in there being no correct choice, a rule that picks arbitrarily and quickly is exactly the right kind of rule for the problem.

Why it is defensible

A good rule for an arbitrary decision has two properties: it terminates immediately and it costs nothing when it is wrong. Take the first has both. There is no penalty for having picked the one that turns out not to answer, because trying another is a paste and a keypress.

Compare it with the alternatives people invent. Try the shortest, try the one you used last time, try the one that sounds nicest. All of them take longer and none of them is better informed.

The one situation where it fails

It fails when the first thing you see is on a page you did not choose. The rule is a rule about arbitrariness, and it only stays arbitrary while the ordering in front of you is arbitrary too.

A search result page is ordered by something. A forum thread is ordered by time and by whoever posted last. A message from somebody has exactly one entry in it by definition. In all three, take the first is no longer picking randomly from a set. It is accepting somebody else's selection while feeling like you made a choice.

The difference between a set and a stream

A set you hold

Three strings you already have, from a source you already decided to use. Taking the first is arbitrary and harmless.

A page you landed on

One or more strings arranged by somebody with their own reasons. Taking the first is a decision about a source, disguised as a decision about an address.

A single string handed over

Not a choice at all. There is nothing to be first among, and the whole question is whether that one string belongs to the set.

The fix, which is not about ordering

The fix is to make sure the set you take the first of is your own. If the three strings in front of you came from your own store, first is as good as any. If they came from wherever you happen to be, the ordering is somebody else's and the rule is doing something different from what you think.

This is the practical reason the list you keep yourself matters more than any argument about which source is trustworthy.

Why the arrangement here is not a ranking

The three strings printed on this site sit in the arrangement they were handed over in. They are not sorted, scored or ordered by anything, and the first one is not being recommended. That is what reading order is not a ranking is about.

If you use take the first on this page, you are picking arbitrarily, which is the correct thing to do. If you use it on a page that sorted its list, you are not.

A rule worth keeping

Take the first, from a set you already hold, and move on. The strategy is fine. The place you take it from is the thing that decides whether it is fine.

The rule stated in its safe form

Take the first one from a set you already hold. Both halves matter. The first half makes the decision instant, which is correct for an arbitrary choice, and the second half is what keeps the choice arbitrary rather than delegated.

Almost everything that goes wrong with this strategy comes from dropping the second half, usually because the set was not to hand and something else was. The remedy is not a better rule. It is having the set within reach so the rule can be applied to it.

What this study is not. It is not advice about which page to get your addresses from, which is a question about sources rather than about plurality.