this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
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imo it's not that correcting feels better than helping but rather it's easier to correct someone than draft an answer of your own.
Sometimes that's part of the issue (or the whole deal), but sometimes it's not even that.
Sometimes it's that someone asked something difficult and elaborate to answer, which has been answered a ton of times, and it's tedious to answer again and again. But if someone answers with misinformation or even straight FUD, then one needs to feel the urge to correct that to prevent misinformation.
I suffered that with questions in r/QtFramework. Tons of licensing questions, repeated over and over, from people who have not bothered to read a bit about such a well known and popular license as LGPL. Then someone who cares little for the nuance answers something heavy handed, and paints a wrong picture. Then I can't let the question pass. I need to correct the shitty answer. :-(
I would say that if someone asks a difficult question it's often difficult because it's very general, so you don't have any specific point to answer that you know will satisfy the person asking.
On the other hand, if someone is writing misinformation then they provide specific statements which still may be difficult to correct but you have those anchor points you can refer to.
So I guess the thing here is that if someone, after asking a question, writes a BS answer they actually refine their question and narrow its scope, thus making it easier to answer.
I usually see broad questions about rather simple things unanswered, but very specific yet difficult questions answered