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Hello Everyone,

I have been noticing that there are many people who either do not understand the question or give the wrong answers. By wrong I mean absolutely wrong answers that shows that they haven't understood the question. I am sure others must have noted this too.

So how to deal with those wrong answers? Should we downvote them? Or comment on the answer explaining them the question. I personally think that all the possible answers that solves or try to solve that particular issue should be listed under the question. But wrong answers should be removed. But this is just my personal opinion.

But since I have been active on WPSE, I am noticing that most of the time those wrong answers go un-noticed and are ignored. Very rarely they are downvoted or commented by others.

Just an example that I recently noticed.

And I don't mean answers on just the questions I have asked, but on all the questions.

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  • Do you have some examples?
    – fuxia Mod
    Commented May 26, 2011 at 19:17
  • updated the question.
    – Hameedullah Khan
    Commented May 26, 2011 at 19:19

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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Downvote is appropriate and meant exactly for such. Some people easily take offense from downvotes, but that absolutely shouldn't prevent you from following intended site's mechanics. You can always reverse your vote later if answer is revised.

To comment or not is up to you.

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    I second this. The entire point of downvoting is to say "this is not a good answer to the question." It's nothing personal, just helps users sort through good answers and not-so-good answers.
    – EAMann Mod
    Commented May 26, 2011 at 20:03
  • Thanks Rarst. I agree with both of you and I was thinking that this is what downvotes are for, but the thing that confused me was those wrong answers were ignored. The above example was not the only one. I am still little hesitant to downvote such answer, I think it will take sometime until I get more familiar with the community here.
    – Hameedullah Khan
    Commented May 26, 2011 at 21:23
  • @Hameedullah Khan ignored is also somewhat fine. It's more satisfying to upvote good answers and make them raise then hover around looking for and downvoting bad stuff. :) Well, as for me at least.
    – Rarst Mod
    Commented May 26, 2011 at 21:56
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    Personally I must admit that I seldom give downvotes (six until now). I probably should do this more, but when the question is somewhat vague I usually give the answerer the "benefit of the doubt" - maybe they interpreted the question in a different way? Also, it feels a bit weird to "slap" a downvote on the effort of a new user (although this has no effect: if your rep is 1, a downvote will keep it at 1). So I think most of my downvotes were given to higher rep users who "should have known better".
    – Jan Fabry
    Commented May 27, 2011 at 6:56
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You can flag the answer as Not an answer to notice moderators. They have too much free time anyway. ;)

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    Mods usually seems to have a lot of free time until you become mod one day. ;) But I like the people here on WPSE. Most of them are very nice and friendly. Oh and yes they do answer my stupid questions on meta WPSE. :)
    – Hameedullah Khan
    Commented May 26, 2011 at 21:20
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We don't get many answer down votes here. I usually only use them on answers if they really suck and the user didn't put any effort into it.

If someone genuinely tried to help but were giving bad or misinformation I think a comment would be in order. I would appreciate being told I was flat out wrong.

You can flag the answer as Not an answer to notice moderators. They have too much free time anyway. ;)

I haven't really been flagging much since I finally got my Deputy badge. I'll leave that to you guys.

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