Uhm, you seem good at cut-and-paste, taking stuff slightly out of the context they were written in. I'll try to refrain from using scissors just for fun, but I'm glad to have understood what you meant in the first post:
The suggestion wasn't to delete any nodes - the suggestion was to restrain yourself from guessing an answer, and to only answer if you know.
which was basically what I was looking for. My only comment is that most people seem to behave themselves here, and I like to thing that they're in good faith when they try to give an answer, i.e. they think to *actually* know the answer. Call me an optimist.
Yes, once a wrong post has been made, a correction post is better than nothing at all. But there's a barrier for posting correction posts: they are often awarded with negative reputation. Now, I don't care, but many people do care about their XP.
Here I don't follow: where and when a good correction post gets downvoted? My guess: when one forgets to be polite and flames. This has nothing to do with correction, it has to do with education. The brightest example IMHO is ikegami, which is awfully smart and knows a big bunch of Perl: I never saw a correction from them being downvoted, and this is because they're correct, hit the nail right in the head and don't flame. And, I dare to add, taught me a lot.
OT: as a side note, I agree that
[...] claiming gravity doesn't exist isn't a "point of view". It's plain wrong.
but your hyperbole is misplaced IMHO: my post tried to stimulate some deeper thought, just not to remain stuck with Newton... and give Einstein a try.
Flavio
perl -ple'$_=reverse' <<<ti.xittelop@oivalf
Don't fool yourself.
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But there's a barrier for posting correction posts: they are often awarded with negative reputation.
I don't find this to be generally true, but maybe it depends on the tone of the answer. Correction posts which insult the author or disparage his ability to program seem less well accepted than those which simply point out the mistake. I would construe this as a feature of the PM system rather than a bug though, because civility can be more important than content.
And I also think that a chance at receiving negative votes should not prevent one from posting content that one thinks appropriate, just as the chance of receiving upvotes should not be the only reason one posts (wow, lookee here, full circle to the OP ;-). Personally I've learned a great deal from answers which correct mistakes or misunderstandings in nodes that I wrote, and I think it'd be a shame if people held back on constructive criticism just because they think it may be unpopular.
But claiming gravity doesn't exist isn't a "point of view". It's plain wrong.
Unless gravity really does not exist in your frame of reference because you're a CGI script. :-)
A computer is a state machine. Threads are for people who can't program state machines. -- Alan Cox
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