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This answer is a load of rubbish. Not only is it technically incorrect but there are no sources and yet it has a lot of upvotes. It is very difficult to disprove something that is so vague, the differences in firmware strategy, etc. happen over time, they arn't neccesarily apparent in benchmarks/noise tests.

How do we deal with people upvoting what they want to hear rather than what is correct?

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    So far there's only one downvote. If people don't want to downvote incorrect information, or believe whatever's being said is true, there's not much anyone can do here except provide a better answer.
    – slhck
    Mar 6, 2014 at 12:10
  • Better answer sounds good to me. There are rescent MTBF papers out that conflict with the information provided. Some of it might get lost in the "Translation" though :-0
    – Psycogeek
    Mar 6, 2014 at 12:49
  • 3
    I've added a post notice to encourage citation of sources. Mar 6, 2014 at 14:12
  • I noticed that the vote count is decreasing.
    – gparyani
    Mar 8, 2014 at 23:39

2 Answers 2

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People will always vote however they want, you can't apply any control to this - if the post is helpful to the person reading it, it is their prerogative whether they upvote it or not. With this in mind, your actual question should be:

How do we deal with highly voted but incorrect answers?

Well, there are multiple ways to deal with a highly voted but incorrect answer!

  • Downvote it for being incorrect
  • Post your own, correct, answer
  • Edit the current highly voted answer

A couple of things to note:

  • Radically changing an answer is frowned upon, if the answer is really that wrong and it's because of a misunderstanding of some kind rather than a patch that changed the way functionality works, then downvote it and post a new answer
  • If a post has been outdated as a result of changes in the industry, methodologies, software patches, firmware updates, etc etc etc - you can either edit the existing post and clearly state #Out of date as of <date>/<patch>/<cake> before putting the updated information at the top of the answer, or you can post your own answer clearly stating that your information is valid as of <date>/<patch>/<cake>
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    I think it's OK to edit a highly-voted answer and change the flavor/meaning of the answer, as long as you provide authoritative citations for your changes (links to articles, studies, experts in the field, etc.). But instead of deleting what's already there, you might leave what's there as a "Some people might think that X", and follow it up with a "...but this evidence suggests Y". This is kind of how Wikipedia works, and it seems to work well for them. However, if the answerer was providing a subjective answer, and it's backed by personal experience, don't change that. Mar 6, 2014 at 21:42
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    I guess, to distill it down: if an answerer makes a factual statement or objective claim that a certain thing is true, and you have strong evidence that it's false, edit the answer and provide your correction and the source. If the answerer makes an opinionated claim and justifies it based on personal experience, and the vast majority of their answer is just a bunch of these personal opinions rather than factual claims, then respecting the post author by not editing it is the best choice; downvote and post your own perspective in kind. Mar 6, 2014 at 21:44
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This has already been discussed extensively on Meta.StackOverflow.

Downvoting may not achieve much, because of a very simple reason: users who are most likely to arrive at that question's page are those less familiar with the topic (hence them seeking an answer). They're therefore quite likely to just upvote the top answer and run with it. Here's an example, an answer that has been wrong for 2+ years until I bugged a moderator enough, who in turn bugged the OP, who finally edited their answer.

I would contact the OP and ask them to edit the answer. If they don't, and there is solid agreement that the answer is wrong - be bold and edit it yourself. I cannot find any rule (such as not "drastically" changing the meaning) to ethically justify spreading factually incorrect knowledge.

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