I think the core of this issue is a different question altogether. If you peel this back to its bone, the real question is:

What are the qualifications required to post an answer on Gaming.SE?

In my mind, there are two major ones:

• A reasonable belief that what you are posting is correct and complete
• A willingness to accept the consequences if you are incorrect.

There are probably some others that are secondarily important:

• A willingness to revisit answers over time so that they don't become stale.
• A willingness to accept that a better answer may come along later.

Plagiarism or copyright violations are a different topic. I don't condone copyright violations in any form, and I encourage everyone to be extra careful about this sort of thing.

We seem to be discussing adding yet another qualification:

Your knowledge or expertise should (must?) contain some (or all?) of the following:

• Come from first hand sources or original research
• Be acquired by experiencing the same problem or question the asker has
• You must be active in experiencing the latest changes that might effect the answer

I find this problematic. How do we evaluate this?

• Should each answerer be asked to prove that they've played the game in question?
• How long ago should they have played it?
• What if they played it for a while, but don't anymore?
• What if they haven't bought all the DLC, and maybe one of the DLC packs makes a difference?
• What if they just played the demo, or read a review that covered this topic?
• Is watching a 2-hour Let's Play or a Speedrun enough?
• What if they played the game, but had to look this particular question up?
• What if they've played a bunch of games in the series, but not this one, is that enough to form a basis to provide an answer?
• What did they know before they read the question, versus what they had to go and do research to determine?

In short, how are we to evaluate this person's qualifications to answer, if we're going to filter 'good answers' from 'bad answers' and vote based on what we believe their level of personal expertise is?

What I see happening now is, if a post cites sources, especially multiple sources, or it answers the question but doesn't provide tons of specific/irrelevant details, people are assuming a lack of personal experience, and they're downvoting answers and taking the answerer to task over this.

The problem is, citing references should be a way to improve an answer. Giving as much information as the asker needs should form the basis for a "good" answer. There is certainly a continuum of answers possible to a question, and some are better than others. The core systems of the SE network are designed to handle this situation.

I think the core of this issue is a different question altogether. If you peel this back to its bone, the real question is:

What are the qualifications required to post an answer on Gaming.SE?

In my mind, there are two major ones:

• A reasonable belief that what you are posting is correct and complete
• A willingness to accept the consequences if you are incorrect.

There are probably some others that are secondarily important:

• A willingness to revisit answers over time so that they don't become stale.
• A willingness to accept that a better answer may come along later.

These are important - no doubt. But I feel like if we made them "primary" we'd exclude many "drive-by answerers" with little to no rep from the site. However, as "power contributors" we acknowledge these things are part of our responsibility.

Plagiarism or copyright violations are a different topic. I don't condone copyright violations in any form, and I encourage everyone to be extra careful about this sort of thing.

We seem to be discussing adding yet another qualification:

Your knowledge or expertise should (must?) contain some (or all?) of the following:

• Come from first hand sources or original research
• Be acquired by experiencing the same problem or question the asker has
• You must be active in experiencing the latest changes that might effect the answer

Don't get me wrong - these things can improve answers. They are not guaranteed to, but in most cases they do. However, as a criteria for judging answers, I find this problematic. How do we evaluate this?

• Should each answerer be asked to prove that they've played the game in question?
• How long ago should they have played it?
• What if they played it for a while, but don't anymore?
• What if they haven't bought all the DLC, and maybe one of the DLC packs makes a difference?
• What if they just played the demo, or read a review that covered this topic?
• Is watching a 2-hour Let's Play or a Speedrun enough?
• What if they played the game, but had to look this particular question up?
• What if they've played a bunch of games in the series, but not this one, is that enough to form a basis to provide an answer?
• What did they know before they read the question, versus what they had to go and do research to determine?

In short, how are we to evaluate this person's qualifications to answer, if we're going to filter 'good answers' from 'bad answers' and vote based on what we believe their level of personal expertise is?

What I see happening now is, if a post cites sources, especially multiple sources, or it answers the question but doesn't provide tons of specific/irrelevant details, people are assuming a lack of personal experience, and they're downvoting answers and taking the answerer to task over this.

The problem is, citing references should be a way to improve an answer. Giving as much information as the asker needs should form the basis for a "good" answer. There is certainly a continuum of answers possible to a question, and some are better than others. The core systems of the SE network are designed to handle this situation.