I had an exchange with a user regarding an answer they posted, specifically this one. It's one of my first such discussions and I don't feel it went well. I'm wondering how I could respond differently in future.
The answer does touch on the problem faced by the asker, but the specifics of the code are incorrect. As stated it would cause a similar exception in the asker's code to the one they had asked about, and because of this I down-voted the answer. Was this harsh?
From that point a discussion developed - I tried to point out what (in my opinion) was wrong with the answer, while the answerer responded with their own opinions on why it didn't matter. Should I have walked away from that discussion earlier?
With hindsight I realise I could have edited the answer to correct the error once I saw it, but at that point it would have already been a duplicate of existing answers so I didn't see the point. Obvious conflict of interest: one of the answers was mine.
Summary of questions:
- Was my initial downvote too harsh?
- Should I have walked away from the resulting discussion earlier?
- Should I have edited the answer, even if it created a duplicate of other answers?
- What else could I have done to help the answerer create better answers in future?
[discussion]
tag before you use it against me. *starts.retagging.questions*