How exactly do you answer questions?

Question

Two of my answers were downvoted recently and the reason was that though they gave quite a bit of information, all of it wasn't entirely accurate and had a few errors. The main cause of this is because I type most of my answers myself without doing a lot of research. I try to explain the answer by using the knowledge that I already have and don't check if what I know is 100% accurate.

So now I feel that I should do some research before posting my answers. I just want to know what you guys do when you answer a question. Do you google the question first and foremost? I've seen some huge answers by high rep users which seem like they've come right out of a textbook. Do you actually type all of that? Or do you open different sources and copy-paste the appropriate information?

Also, it is very frustrating to be voted down after taking so much time in typing an answer. Why don't people just say what the error is so that I can edit the answer and fix it? I don't think you should downvote answers at all unless they are completely bullshit.

Answer 1

Downvotes are an unavoidable effect of having an answer that is not accurate, and they should remain that way. Downvotes are not a criticism on the poster, they are the way to keep good answers on the top and inaccurate answers (duly indicated as such in the comments, ideally) further down; it's what makes this site good.

One strategy to answer questions is what you describe: post what you know and let the community tell you when it's wrong. In that case, you should be prepared for exactly that: the community will tell you it's wrong by downvoting it. If that happens, the onus is on you to figure out why and to fix it. You can politely request explanations for the votes, and if your tone is right then people will stop by and help, but they are not obliged to. Drive-by downvoting hurts but it is necessary and has been gone over a million times in this and the mother meta.

If you want to avoid those downvotes, the answer is simple: don't post inaccurate answers. If you're not 100% sure of the material you're posting, do your homework, investigate, check, and revise whatever needs revising, before you post. This is, I feel, how many of us approach answers, and it has the huge advantage that it lets you learn while you answer. Indeed, it is probably the reason many of us are here: we learn by answering.

Finally, as jinawee pointed out in a comment, lifting text straight out of different sources without proper attribution is straight-up plagiarism and should be removed from the site if present. If you find text that looks 'taken out of a textbook', google it and find out. If you do find such an instance, the correct procedure is to edit the post yourself: include links to the original sources, and indicate whatever text has been copied by the use of inline quotation marks and quote blocks for longer stretches. Do this regardless of the poster's reputation, and particularly so for high-rep users, who should know better.

That said, I do not think anyone does this and have never seen an instance on the site. Most people do type all of that. They either know it already - which is exactly what we want, a site where experts can take fifteen minutes to explain what they know and save you many hours of research - or they find it out, in which case they learned as much as you did in the process.

Answer 2

Downvotes are to let other users know that the answer contains errors or wasn't useful. Once you've edited the answer to correct the errors, users who have downvoted can change their downvote to an upvote (assuming your edits have amended the errors). It should not be used only for answers that are completely bullshit, it should be used for any wrong answer.

Personally, I usually use Wikipedia for references for relevant articles and Google for image searches. Outside of that, I pull things from memory or my textbooks at my desk.

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As an aside, at some point you're going to stop caring about downvotes. You might want to consider stopping caring now.

Answer 3

I'll suggest that comments are a really useful way to help get a question answered if you are unsure you have a good answer yourself. You don't get a lot of rep for that, but I think it improves the site and helps people.

For example, I see a question that I'm fairly sure could be answered by a web search, but its also clear the person asking lacks the critical term (word) needed to find what they are looking for. If I know a good term, I'll share it in a comment, and give the person a chance to do some leg-work themselves to answer or improve their question.

It's not condescending to the person to constructively help in this way, but IMO you should do it in a comment rather than answer - and you should not be marked down for it. If you feel you do have answer, then use the answer functionality and you can also include links to supporting resources.