Re^8: To help not to misguide

[Perl Mouse]

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[eric256]

I think the main problem is that everyone has a different definition of a wrong answer. Consider this: No one will post a wrong answer intentionaly (at least I hope not). You then have to wonder where these wrong answers come from. Assuming no one intentionaly answers questions wrong, then you have a couple of flavors I can think of:

• Answering the wrong question
• Answering the question, but the OP asked the wrong question.
• Giving the wrong answer but thinking you are right.

Now if you look at those options (and please feel free to add more if i'm missing something because I could be "wrong") you should see that general a "wrong" answer could be caused by many things. The only truly wrong answer is the last one in which case the person answering doesn't know they are wrong. This is the case I think most the "pro-wrong" have been supporting. The belief is that at least the person answering the question is going to learn what they did wrong, and others who may also falsly think are right will learn as well. No bad comes from someone learning like this. Consider however that we tell everyone not to answer unless they *KNOW* they are right. Now the last answer is never given, never corrected, and many people out there continue on thinking they are right when in fact they arn't.

Perhaps you don't see it as an answering machine, but that's how PM is being marketed ("if you have questions, Perlmonks is the place to be"), and that's how the largest and busiest section looks like.

A place to get "answers" and a place to find a "machine" to get answers are two seperate things. A machine doesn't make errors, humans do. Therefor perlmonks is not a "machine" because we never ever gauruntee 100% accuracy.

[phaylon]

The premise of this entire thread is wrong answers. The fact that many problems have multiple solutions isn't being disputed. The case of a question receiving multiple answers in itself isn't being discussed either. The problem being discussed is wrong answers.

You think there's a straight limit between "wrong" and "not-optimal"? I don't think so, and I think the important part is where they meet. If someone states 'perldoc -f print' is the documentation to the integrated space-ship, this is clearly wrong, and someone will correct this. Sure, *you* know something is wrong, but you can't be sure the poster of the "wrong" answer has the same opinion. I'd rather say he must have any reasons good enough for him to post it.

Perhaps you don't, and if you restrict yourself to "discussions" and "meditation", you'll see it isn't an answering machine. But almost all threads in "Seekers of Perl Wisdom" start with a question - from someone seeking an answer.

Maybe that's not the optimum then. You can't write wisdom down, you can't categorize wisdom. You do that with knowledge, and I thought that's what Tutorials, Q&A etc. is for. I still see the main advantage of PM in being a community based on discussions, but perhaps you don't.

Perhaps you don't see it as an answering machine, but that's how PM is being marketed ("if you have questions, Perlmonks is the place to be"), and that's how the largest and busiest section looks like.

The existance of questions and answers doesn't mean it's an answering machine. The question is: where is the answer found? An answering machine takes the question, makes an index lookup, posts the answer. The benefit of a community is the open discussion that leads to answers, ideas and maybe even better answers. Or are all other communities offsprings of Project Chaos and don't allow the asking of questions?