The to and fro with Colibri was pretty much the same as it was with some of the others - my futile attempt to deal with what I perceive to be misdirected criticism - people are responding to some other idea than the one I actually proposed.
No. I was completely in earnest, as always. That motive exists only in your imagination.
It was a bad idea to try to keep the thread on topic? OK.
That or your imagination again.
This thread has nothing to do with the other one - in case you’re interested, this thread arose in my mind when I observed that sometimes, in a GQ thread, people post something counterfactual, then never return to the thread - this being the case, it’s likely that at least some of those people continue in their error - the question I was posing here is: Given that the prevailing ethic of this board could be interpreted as wishing to correct that predicament, is there a way to do it?
As a middling guest who has committed several booboos with regard to facts, I think GQ is moderated enough. Rules on jokes and off-topic posts are clear enough to people. Putting in asides and light humor often broadens the discussion so people end up getting more than they asked. I’m not too hot with a one-question-one-correct-answer environment. If you’re going to post a question you should have researched yourself, people might as well have fun.
Maybe the community itself could fulfill this task.
If a certain person is educated in, say, biology and notices that one specific person often drops a biological falsehood and abandons the thread, maybe they could send that person a private message akin to what you’re saying. If the person truly was mistaken and joined the board to have their ignorance fought, then I’m sure they’d be receptive to being corrected. If they are the sort of person who tends to ignore evidence contrary to what they already believe, then I doubt any moderator action would be able to correct that.
That would actually work - I’m just wary of doing it unless it had some sort of recognition as the right and proper thing - that is - if someone complained that another member chased them down by PM, just to correct a fact, the official response would be “Yeah, that’s what we do” or some such.
As I understand it, your proposal would (in theory) be of most potential use to people who parachute egregiously incorrect answers into GQ and don’t come back to the thread to have their misconception corrected. I would be very sceptical about whether the type of person who does this is the type of person who is capable of absorbing correction.
You say this, but I expect a lot of them do return to read subsequent answers, or read them as advisory e-mails, see they’re wrong and quietly slope off to another thread. They don’t reply because it’s easier than having to admit they were wrong.
One of the assumptions is that every reader reads the entire thread … and then monitors the thread for further information.
Certainly there are cases where a reader stops at an answer that happens to be wrong and then goes on his merry way more ignorant than when he started. That’s not good. Isn’t there any official interest in making that situation better?
If there were some kind of consequence (I’m not suggesting banning or even immediate suspension) the wrong answers in GQ would be reduced. Wrong answer givers would be deterred. Threads with wrong answers would get more activity during the correcting process and the reader I mentioned above would be more likely to come back to see what was going on.
Moderators need not get involved until or unless a wrong answer giver failed to acknowledge a mistake or explain himself… and then only if someone else thought the whole thing was egregious enough to ask for mod action.
Addressed in para 4 of the OP of this thread. In many cases, they do agree (for example, the matter of whether or not proteins are digested by gut flora or our own digestive enzymes, is not at all controversial)
So yes, there would be cases where agreement could not be reached (and this would be apparent by means of an ongoing debate or disagreement in the GQ thread), but there would be cases where facts are not in dispute, except for those who are simply ignorant of them.
Very possibly I suppose - although I’m pretty sure I’ve seen cases where the same unfact was repeatedly posted by the same person in serial threads on the same topic.
But since there’s no definitive authority to appeal to that can determine which case we are in the whole thing falls apart. Your basic assumption is that there really is a right answer to questions that people on an anonymous message board can agree on, and I think that is too high a standard. The best we can hope for is consensus or preponderance of evidence, and that takes place by discussion not by decree.
We might as well close the GQ forum, if that were true. There are such things as hard facts - and they are not always beyond our grasp - the example thread I linked on the previous page is in fact a great example - the thread arrived at the absolutely 100% right answer, but several contributors posted counterfactual claims.
That would be fine. I’m not suggesting the assignment of a team of boffins who know all the answers - just exploring if there could ever be a mechanism by which the right answer, in cases where it clearly is reached, could be distributed remedially to those who got it wrong, and maybe still don’t know.
The people applying the remedy don’t need to know all the answers - the GQ thread often supplies this, but only to those who remain engaged in the discussion until such time.
