Answering culturally dependent questions with cultural ignorance [duplicate]

Question

This is now the second time I see an answer here where my first impulse as German was "What the heck?"

The first answer was How to tell a colleague to take care how he looks. It has many answers which I personally find totally off the mark with a high number of upvotes where people admitted that they neither belong or have experience with German culture (doctordonna said that the is the Canadian perspective). What even more irritated me was that people tried to discuss with me from their own cultural viewpoint.

The second answer is How to ask cashier out of date where the most upvoted answer from Tinkeringbell is extremely aggressive and, more serious, shows a lack of cultural knowledge, the answer is as stated not acceptable. According to her profile she is from the Netherlands, but Germans and Dutch people are different (And in fact I am bit surprised because she reacts quite unusual for a Dutch person).

I will tell the reasons and cultural differences in an own answer, but I really want to ask the obvious question:

Shouldn't we people remind that for a good answer for a cultural specific question it is an obvious precondition that the answering person belongs to the culture or has extensive experience with it (spouse, long stay)?

Shouldn't we give some kind of indication in the answer what our actual experience is?

The thing is there are many other Germans with a totally different viewpoint, they may disagree with me, even in different directions (!). But our answers together give a quite good picture what we all find not ok and where there is some interpretation room.

I must also say that distance is also not a good indicator for similarity of cultures. I can drive in less of one hour over to Denmark, but Danish people are in general much more reserved and cautious than Germans.

What in my opinion is not ok is giving advice from cultural ignorance, it brings people in trouble. If such answers are upvoted, many people will see them, hold them for true and likely don't look further down where they may get warned that it the suggested behavior sounds nice, but is culturally not acceptable.

I do not think it needs saying, but this concerns naturally all groups: Italians, Chinese people, Nigerian people, Christians, Jews, LGBT, whatever.

Answer 1

I think these concerns are very legitimate, but I see the proposed solution as causing more problems than it fixes:

• It isn't correct that the only good advice can come from someone with personal experience with a matter, or with the culture or mores in question, as you seem to imply. Sure, it's more likely that someone without personal experience with a matter will get things wrong, but it's not guaranteed. For instance, Barack Obama is generally considered to be more in favor of women's rights than the late Phyllis Schlafly. Your proposed suggestion would eliminate many good answers in the interests of narrow compartmentalization. Answers should be evaluated on their content.

• Expanding on that point, how far do you want to take this? Should we have IPS (Britain) and IPS (USA), where only British or US citizens ask and answer questions, and any other answers, no matter their quality or the questioner's opinions, are deleted?

• How granular should these top-down requirements be? Maybe, if we accept your hypothesis, different regions of Germany have such different mores in this regard that we can't even be sure someone who is German is "qualified."

• Further, we may simply not have any, say, Jewish Indian women to answer the peculiar problems arising in that context. Do we simply leave those questioners to flounder about on their own (seems a little unfair), or do we make a good-faith effort to give them advice (even though we may only be Indian, or women, or Jewish, or even none of those)?

• That said, oftentimes many of the most upvoted answers on this site do come from people who put their personal experiences in the forefront, even if not as polished as other answers. I'd say that such experience is valued.

• You run the risk of forcing people who don't want to reveal their sexual orientation, gender, etc. online to either do so (and be uncomfortable), pretend to be someone they're not (and be dishonest, besides being against your proposal), or simply be excluded (perhaps the worst possible outcome).

• That people are explaining that their solutions may be culturally limited is, I think, a good thing, not a surprising admission of ineptitude. It actually shows some awareness of potential limitations, as well as informing potential voters.

Here's what I think people should do instead:

• For answerers, if they think it's relevant, explain the cultural context behind their answers. They shouldn't be afraid to do so, or to not do so—the questioner knows their own context better than anyone, and can point out flat-out wrong answers. It also might help if they do some research into the cultural context before answering a question from a background they're not familiar with.

• For questioners, be ready to call out answers that are incorrect due to an incorrect context. This can be in the form of a comment advising improvement, a comment explaining lack of applicability. Also, one can use the tool of the accepted answer to ensure that a poorly-voted answer that's correct shows up before an incorrect but well-received answer.

• For everyone else, this is another good opportunity to leave comments. Either point out the flaws in a comment on the question, or bring them to the attention of the answerer. Even better, post an answer! If you really do have a much better understanding of the context, and so does the questioner, they should see that pretty quickly, and your answer is likely to get accepted.

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As a side note, I have some more specific reservations about some of the arguments here:

• You're surprised that Tinkeringbell's answer doesn't seem very "Dutch." Doesn't that indicate that there's perhaps a wide diversity of opinions among Dutch people?

• Similarly, you think there would be Germans who would disagree with you in every which way. If that's the case, I don't see why to treat the same answer differently from a German person or a Dutch person. And, if there's a German person who posted a similar answer, it's still going to be that one that gets all the upvotes. Except then you'll have a harder time getting your answer ahead.

• This argument can very easily be turned around. E.g. maybe a woman should be answering a question about how a woman would respond to something, and not a man (German, Dutch, or otherwise).