[JamesianP]

The etiquette is if someone catches you in a real mistake, you should thank them (yes it can be hard, etiquette isn't always the same as reacting naturally). After all they could have ignored your existence but bothered to read your work.

If you think they are wrong you are expected and encouraged to respond publicly with why. Perhaps many people misread your work just same as that person so would benefit from the debate.

EDIT: and by the way, if you think they are wrong you should thank them for the same reason.

[kenjackson]

Mistakes are common in doing any non-trivial work. On HN coding is a great example. We have code reviews and it is standard practice to have issues raised there. It’s less common for someone to find and issue at CR and send it to the CEO to call an all hands to have him point out your bug to the company. In fact it would seem absurd to even raise this as a hypothetical. That is more the equivalent of what we’re discussing here.

Would you thank your colleague for raising your bug to the CEO or posting a LinkedIn article about your bug before talking to you about it?

[JamesianP]

Coding is not a great example. It can be fixed silently and the error disappears, unlike published claims. And I'd say you're making an analogy that is extreme. The corrections we are talking about are shared in the same forum the error was shared. If you had presented the mistake to the CEO or on linkedin then it would be appropriate for the error to be pointed out there too. Otherwise the audience will remain misled.

If it's some minor code bug from a typo or something, your embarrassment should be correspondingly tiny. And still the right thing to do is say "thanks" or "nice catch".