There is a lot of discussion about how people on E2 prefer opinion or experience to fact. But what is a 'fact'?
According to Webster1913 it is:
1. A doing, making, or preparing.
2. An effect produced or achieved; anything done or that comes to pass; an act; an event; a circumstance.
3. Reality; actuality; truth.
4. The assertion or statement of a thing done or existing.
We can see from this that facts are not, necessarily, objective.
"Charlotte Bronte wrote Jane Eyre" is factual.
But so is "I went to Dillons and bought a copy of Jane Eyre. I was so busy reading it that on the way home I knocked over an old lady. Her shopping went everywhere, and the eggs broke all over the pavement."
And so is "I felt horribly guilty, if only I'd been looking where I was going, it would never have happened. She looked so stricken, I felt as bad as if I'd punched her and I couldn't stop apologising"
And so is "And after all that, when I finished the damn book, I wished I hadn't bothered. I think Jane must be the stupidest character in the whole of English Literature."
Feelings and opinions are factual for the person who experiences them, and an experiential node or a node of opinion is no less factual than a node which tabulates objective information.
As far as I can see, there are only three types of non-factual nodes on E2:
The complaint really, is that people seem to prefer subjective fact to objective. It does seem to be true that a write-up which provokes an emotional response will be more likely to receive chings and upvotes than objective information -- but that is probably because subjective fact is accessible, relevant and interesting to a wider spectrum of noders than, say polynomials or quantum physics -- it is simply more universal. Downvoting experience nodes because 'they aren't factual' is as spurious as downvoting a node on crop rotation because it is 'boring' .
If we accept that our objective nodes will always have a smaller audience and more specialised appeal than our subjective ones, we can at least take pleasure in knowing that each upvote for those nodes will either be an informed vote, or an expression of respect for our knowledge or ability to put the information across. We can also feel satisfaction in providing other noders with knowledge that they wouldn't otherwise have had -- not a bad trade-off for lower XP.
Thanks to Boldra for reminding me of the utter nonsense nodes (At least, thanks in the context of this wu grin)