Attacking an answer

Question

Is it acceptable to attack another person's answer? Shouldn't their own answer speak for itself? Since the attack, I have received a lot of downvotes. The meaning of my answer has been twisted.

Answer 1

Yes, if you disagree with an answer, it is acceptable to downvote the answer as well as leave a comment explaining what you think is wrong with it. If you call that “attacking,” so be it.

On your answer, I think you’ve done a good job of responding to the criticism and further explaining your answer. At this point, don’t take the downvotes personally. Everybody, even long time, high rep users, gets downvotes occasionally. Your answer currently stands at +20 and -5 votes, which means it has netted you +190 rep points. That’s certainly an above average answer from a rep yield point of view.

If you get criticism about an answer you have written, consider it. Sometimes it will be constructive criticism, and you can edit your answer and learn something new. Other times, you will disagree with the criticism. At that point, it is best to stand by your answer and just let the up/down votes fall where they may.

Welcome to Personal Finance & Money. I hope to see a lot more posts from you in the future.

Answer 2

I have experienced it as well. I have a concern that there may be a person on here who has multiple accounts who downvotes, I think for spite.

I have a doctorate in financial and monetary economics. I have been a registered principal in a securities firm. I have been a financial planner and investment advisor. I also, at one point, worked in regulatory compliance.

In terms of research, my work includes proposing a new branch of stochastic calculus, which is currently in peer review. The work I am doing should fundamentally rewrite the rules of economic modeling in finance and parts of macroeconomics. It will also rewrite the rules of econometrics. That, in turn, will rewrite many standard well-known "truths" of personal finance.

It has however been commented that I am a liar. No real criticism, just "you are a liar," followed by a bunch of downvotes. Other attacks have been factually incorrect or misleading.

Although I have created answers that have been incorrect as I had misread the post, or in one case the regulation had changed and I was unaware, it seems that there is either a person or a small group that knows each other that seems to target people.

I am not certain if that person or group believes they are being helpful or if they are just angry at the world.

This forum is a bit more vulnerable than others because many of the questions here are highly specific, applied questions. On other forums, questions have results where either it is easy to write a general mathematical proof or to cite a body of literature.

Here, however, questions may be subject to different answers in different jurisdictions, may change as law changes, may face conflicting laws, or may require the application of general principles to highly specific cases. Whereas on a different type of forum, it is possible to cite based on empirical results, that is often not the case here.

For example, if someone asks about insurance law, it is inadequate to cite a statute. Court cases also matter as the language of a statute only matters up to the point the courts say it does. Citing relevant court cases requires access to costly resources. Similar problems can exist for people wanting to discuss regulations in finance because there is a disharmony of law and regulation in quite a few cases.

Rules that apply in states that use grant deeds are very different from states that use traditional fee simple deeds with standard chains of title. Because of that, it is easy for someone who doesn't know that states vary substantially to give an incorrect answer because they provided a correct answer for their jurisdiction but not another.

That makes this forum vulnerable to overgeneralization or overly specific answers. The problem is that some individuals here seem to have strong feelings about answers. I have seen it in others' answers as well. The problem, for someone without content knowledge, is that if the best technical answer is voted down low enough, they may believe the best answer is actually wrong.

I would suggest just keep answering. If your answer is helpful to the original asker, the votes don't matter.

Answer 3

I think the issue you raise with this question is the problem with this format for this topic. You could make a strong case that the question you answered is offtopic. It seems to me this is a question about car insurance and privacy laws, not personal finance.

The comment prompting this question is not constructive and includes a personal attack.

Auto insurance in the US is regulated at the state level. Different states require and allow different things of auto insurers. There aren't federal realities to this question, so "That's just wrong" is wrong. What we have here is an anecdotal disagreement, likely referring to two different regulatory environments, where the person offering their disagreement calls the person answering the question a liar who is brainwashed.

The answer offered by the person disagreeing is nothing but a series of anecdotes without naming a jurisdiction, but the answer uses harsh language and an authoritative tone so it got a lot of internet points. So this must be the right answer, right?

To top it all off, it's not clear at all if either person here is referring to the realities of auto insurance regulation in California, which is the state indicated in the question.

It is beyond my comprehension why that comment remains there.