So why was this downvoted 4 times in 12 views?

Question

The way this question is worded is exactly how law.SE would require it: In the hypothetical, with a hypothetical name, typically Bob.

This covers your asses from giving financial advice, so what’s the problem?

Also, I found a case which should have a res judicata effect when you did answer a question substantially identical to the one I posed, here:

What options are there for consolidating a large amount of private student loan debt?

If it is only a named service, then maybe an edit was in due course given this was my first question on this SE.

So what does merit the different treatment of a question substantially identical to another that was neither downvoted (stands at a positive 6 balance, and answered to the satisfaction of the questioner?

Answer 1

First of all, your question includes a link to advertise a service. You may not have intended it in that way, but folks on this forum don't appreciate spam. Marking a question as spam automatically downvotes it.

But even without asking about a specific service, your question calls for opinions:

What are his best options considering he lives in a single household in California, rent, auto loan, and credits used up?

Who decides what's best? How do you measure what's best for you? We don't know. Is your "best" the same as my "best"? We don't know. Is debt consolidation even a good idea? We don't know.

You described a situation which has some unnecessary details (like a sob story about military service and something that wasn't clear to me about Afghanistan), but essentially your question boils down to:

I'm in a pile of debt, who can help me get out of it?

And this is either a product recommendation (that mhoran_psprep already explained we don't want to give), or a solicitation for opinions (which is a standard closing reason on Stack Exchange, on any forum).

Instead, you can frame your question differently.

For example, you can ask:

I'm in a pile of debt, what are the different options available?

Or you can ask:

How to evaluate a debt consolidation service?

or

How to decide whether bankruptcy is appropriate?

or... "What is a financial adviser?" and then go and find one.

Answer 2

I am looking at the three close votes:

Questions seeking product, service recommendations or other off-site resources are off-topic because they tend to become obsolete quickly. Instead, describe your situation and the specific problem you're trying to solve

The question boils down to "is service X a good service." That is the type of question the community has decided we don't want to answer.

each stack exchange site get three close reasons that are picked by the community:

• Questions on economics are off-topic unless they relate directly to personal finance.
• Questions about accounting are off-topic unless they relate directly to personal finance or investing from an individual's perspective.
• Questions seeking product, service recommendations or other off-site resources are off-topic because they tend to become obsolete quickly. Instead, describe your situation and the specific problem you're trying to solve.

Answer 3

The one thing I’d add to the answers is that each stack has its own personality its own description of what fits.

To be sure, there are common rules. The entire site is not a discussion board, it’s meant for Q&A, not a running dialog. This wasn’t the issue with the linked question. There’s also a “be nice” policy. The mods are committed to addressing insults, ad hominem attacks, quickly.

Other than that, the rules you are used to on law.se don’t necessarily apply here. Citing an 11+ year old post as some kind of precedent may get an old post that slipped through the cracks closed or deleted, but no one that I know is actively checking older questions to see if they warrant some action.

I hope you visit again, and gain some knowledge from this site. For what it’s worth, I’ve had similar unpleasant experiences on other stacks, bad enough that I deleted my membership to 2 other particular ones. And had the same feeling, that they were run very differently than we run money.se.