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There is a recent question about an argument concerning veganism.

I wrote a short answer

Well, you started:

"In fact, not all wines are vegan"

Just don't make controversial (that people won't believe) statements if you're not prepared to defend them.

Yes, you're right, wine isn't always (or often not) vegan. But you corrected someone with a statement others found unbelievable and then weren't able to back it up.

“I don't want alcohol“ would have been fine.

asserting that OP had started an argument with a claim others found hard to believe without beeing able to supply arguments backing the claim up.

In my opinion, OP didn't see how their own behaviour contributed to the situation and instead wanted a solution as how to make others believe what they said. The problem beeing, they were just spreading something they believed to be right, without actually knowing it.

Which I pointed out in a short answer, because, again, in my opinion, OP just needed to change their point of view to see the real conflict.

Now, this wouldn't have been a problem if the question hadn't hit HNQ. But it did. 20 minutes later, someone else supplied the same answer with a few more explanations.

Days later, OP edited the question, essentially proving my point (though apparently judging it differently and not agreeing).

The argument wasn't about me being vegan/not drinking wine. It was about them note believing my statement ("not all wines are vegan") which I couldn't backup with precise and complete details (just a vague "animal products are used during the manufacturing process"). Details that they asked for. And since I didn't had enough details, they were laughing in disbelief while not carrying enough to fact-check.

At around the same time, I got comments from 2 mods first telling me to back up my answer with more evidence - which would have made it a complete duplicate of the above linked later answer - and then telling me my answer was a duplicate and would now be deleted.

Apparently, this earlier answer has the same content as my answer. (The other, later answer I linked to above has the same comment but hasn't been deleted yet).

It has the same conclusion

I don't really like alcohol anyway, so it's okay.

but a completely different reasoning.

This emphases your requirement is to check online first before you can accept anything. If they're laughing at you at this stage for wanting to be sure in your beliefs, it might be a form of bullying and not healthy social situation. They wouldn't laugh if a Jewish person wanted to check if something was Kosher, so why would they laugh at you for wanting to check something is vegan?

This answer is telling OP it's okay to "belief" something without having the facts, essentially mixing facts (is wine vegan) with beliefs (veganism). In my opinion, nobody actually cared about wine beeing vegan or not, if I tell someone "the sky is black, not blue" and then supply as proof "well, that's how it is, why don't you look it up?", you're going to have a bad time. Of course, that is my opinion, there is no scientific study that I know of proving this nor is OP obligated to try it out. However the number of upvotes my answer got at least proves others are of the same opinion - a good indicator in social situations.

Yes, the solution - don't mention wine not beeing vegan - is the same as in other answers. The reason however, is a different one. Anyways, my answer, and probably the other answer I linked to, are getting deleted as duplicates.

Which leads me to my question - is an answer with a different reasoning a duplicate and should be deleted? Or was my answer deleted for a different reason?

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    Related: PSA: Please avoid writing duplicate answers
    – A J Mod
    Sep 1, 2018 at 12:32
  • @AJ “same method and same result“
    – DonQuiKong
    Sep 1, 2018 at 12:56
  • FYI: interpersonal.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/13495 I think you may be focusing too much on the possibility of a duplicate, as that comment was not there when 6 users voted "recommended deletion". (I'll let one of the mods who took action on it write a full answer though.)
    – Em C
    Sep 1, 2018 at 13:11
  • @EmC well, that was after the question was edited to exclude these answers. One of the reviewers explicitly states that as the reason, and apparently didn't check the edit history. Might be the same for the others then, looking at the timing.
    – DonQuiKong
    Sep 8, 2018 at 8:26

1 Answer 1

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I think your answer can be broken into two parts. You attempt to explain the situation to OP--the reason things went wrong. This is your whole answer excluding the last paragraph.

Then your actual suggestion for what the OP should do is a single sentence:

“I don't want alcohol“ would have been fine.

Including some background on the situation and trying to show the OP where they went wrong can help lead into what they should've done, but at the end of the day, the meat of your answer is what they should do, not what they shouldn't. The question after all was "How to explain to coworkers that being vegan does not mean I know everything about it?" It's your answer to this question that is the same as the answer Tink linked.

is an answer with a different reasoning a duplicate and should be deleted?

We don't actually know your reasoning, since you didn't give us any! The meat of your answer is, again, just that single final line. I recommended deletion for this answer because I didn't think that it had any explanation for why it was the correct way to handle the situation.

To give you a comparison, the answer Tink linked does go on to explain why "I don't want alcohol" would be a good response:

What you're doing here is changing the playing field to your opinion on the product. [...] Most people will accept the initial mainline reason. And it sidesteps the 'is it vegan?' question.

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    Exactly, I gave the reason things went wrong and my advise (“what op should do“) was to not go down that road in the future. The reason things went south was -imho- that op made a mistake. Nobody else had written that into an answer. Still, mine was deleted as a duplicate. It explicitly says so in the mods comment below my answer.
    – DonQuiKong
    Sep 1, 2018 at 17:30
  • @DonQuiKong take another look at my paragraph after the first quote block. Your reasoning on why things went wrong was good, but it's not actually an answer in and of itself. I guess I view it as more of an introduction to your solution. Your actual solution on the other hand, is the same as other answers but without any reasoning. A different introduction doesn't make your solution any different.
    – scohe001
    Sep 5, 2018 at 3:13
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    my answer is op shouldn't do that mistake again - how could that be a duplicate if nobody else explained what mistake that was? Sure, it's the same answer in the specific situation, but in the next situation, the reasoning makes all the difference.
    – DonQuiKong
    Sep 5, 2018 at 3:18
  • @DonQuiKong but you're answering a different question than the one asked: "How do I convey to my coworkers that: I don't know the details, they can look it up themselves...?" I think your answer would've been fine if you'd explained that OP shouldn't have to explain this to their coworkers and then made it explicitly clear that you were trying to frame challenge this question. You could've instead posed (and answered) a question like "How can I prevent having to explain things to my coworkers?"
    – scohe001
    Sep 5, 2018 at 3:34
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    well when challenged in the comments I called the answer a frame challenge and as a response it was deleted - as a duplicate. Not as unclear or anything.
    – DonQuiKong
    Sep 5, 2018 at 10:00
  • @DonQuiKong again, the way you posed your answer was "here's some background on how this happened, but the answer is just say 'I don't want alcohol.'" In the comment you're talking about you offhandedly mentioned "Take it as a frame challenge if you want," but that's not how frame challenges work. See here for more on what your answer would have to look like to be considered a frame challenge (and what I think it could've looked like to prevent deletion).
    – scohe001
    Sep 5, 2018 at 16:04
  • in my opinion the real question was how to handle similar situations in the future, not what sentence would have prevented this same situation. Yes, that wasn't the question as asked, but it was - I thought - what op wanted. Then op edited the question saying no it's not. Then my answer got 5 downvotes (and delete votes?) And was deleted. It would have been a frame challenge after the edit, not before.
    – DonQuiKong
    Sep 5, 2018 at 16:47
  • In my opinion, the edit should be reverted, not the answer(s) deleted.
    – DonQuiKong
    Sep 5, 2018 at 16:47

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