Following this conversation with much interest and thank you Paulo for triggering it.
While some of this dialogue has occurred in other threads and discussions, there are a number of insights that are unique (or at least IMHO).
Here’s a summary of what I have heard here or understood.
- Being a witness or bystander while faulty advice is given causes frustration. It can be harmful not only to the person implementing the mistake, but can distract and annoy others listening.
- Jumping into a discussion without having followed all previous responses can create often creates noise and more frustration, distraction and annoyance
- Reputation and expertise are nuanced. They are not only gauged by leaderboards and rankings, but are based on trust and personal evaluations.
- Everyone, even a trusted expert, can occasionally err or give misguided answers. (it’s called being human, no?)
And some insights from the advice offered here:
- Be a good community participant. When you believe something is misguided, raise the flag publically and courteously in the thread
- Read through all replies in a discussion before participating, it alleviates the noise and helps reduce confusion and redundancy
- Trust and evaluating expertise are labor intensive activities. It sometimes often takes time to sort and understand who is really an expert and knows their stuff
- Reverse mentoring or guiding is an equal teaching/learning opportunity for newbies, mentors, experts, fossils (?) alike. Being defensive or dismissive of such educating immediately calls to question the level of trust and even expertise.
Also raised here was a reference to what is called the "ad hominem" . Respond to the arguments while refraining from attacking the person.