I just want to tell everyone here that I don't appreciate being told I'm not credible. My answers here where totally reasonable and having a post be in my own words and not just a quote from a law journal is hardly grounds for a down-vote. If people want quotes from some other source they can go to the journals site to get that information, what is the use of regurgitating information from other sources here?
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If people want quotes from some other source they can go to the journals site to get that information, what is the use of regurgitating information from other sources here?
That premise is inaccurate. The average user who posts a question on Law SE typically does not know which legal sources are relevant to the topic at issue. Furthermore, many of us do more than --or do something other than-- regurgitate information: We formulate our rationale about how those legal sources relate to question or issue.
In the answer you posted today you wrote "Have multiples of other insurance is actually considered fraud where I'm from". The problem is that nobody knows where you are from, let alone whether your assertion is relevant to a question for which the jurisdiction is California. You cannot expect the audience to view your SE profile to ascertain where you are from. Even if readers take that extra step, the fact that you mention there a location in South Africa does not necessarily imply that that is where you are from.
The very next statement in your answer is "Insurance is a way in which certain companies insure [...]". Although it is not a critical error, that wording makes the answer sound too circular or careless. Instead of "insurance insures", you might want to say "insurance compensates" or "insurance hedges [against etc]". That carelessness makes the audience lose interest in your answer.
Your assertion that double recovery of an insured interest "is very much insurance fraud" definitely warrants citing sources and/or elaborating your rationale. Not every disallowed act is fraudulent. A finding of fraud would require proof that the policyholder intentionally made misrepresentations despite knowing them to be false, something that is fact-specific.
The last paragraph of your answer reads "So your insurer asking you if you are already insured is just to make sure the old policy gets officially cancelled before the new one goes live". That is quite an unsupported statement. The OP did not even mention that his insurer asked him about other insurance. The OP asked about a clause in an insurance policy, and all the clause does is clarify what the insurer's liability is in the event of a "multi-insured" loss.
Even if/where the insurer asks about other insurance, that is not for purposes of foreclosing scenarios where several policies insure the same object. In fact, double insurance is totally lawful in the OP's jurisdiction and elsewhere (the right place to point out this and the aforementioned aspects would be as comment(s) to your answer, but the mod's deletion prevents us from doing so). Accordingly, that legislative fact renders your unelaborated opinion of what "should be standard practice" even more unpersuasive.
I just want to tell everyone here that I don't appreciate being told I'm not credible.
No one said you weren't credible - if they had, this would be against our "be nice" policy.
What they said was:
Please, back your claims with references to credible sources.
This is good advice for all Stack Exchange sites but particularly this one. Not everyone does it all the time, including yours truly, but its still good advice.
... is hardly grounds for a down-vote
Voting is up to each users discretion. If you don't think the behaviour described warrants a downvote, don't downvote. However, if others feel it does, that's up to them.
... what is the use of regurgitating information from other sources here?
Because it makes answers better. A well-sourced and referenced answer is, all else being equal, a better answer.
This is how to do it.
You are surely free to rephrase, summarize, and combine sources into better worded and more specifically relevant answers. You are also free to go beyond sources, drawing conclusions based on them. But ideally you should cite your sources, even if you do not extensively quote them, so that others know where to go to confirm your answers and see how much it is indeed based on reliable sources. Others should be able to benefit from your research, not have to repeat it.
If others question the accuracy of your answers, or if the answer is not obvious and others cannot quickly and easily confirm its accuracy, it becomes even more important to add a citation so that accuracy need not rest on anyone's unsupported opinion, but on reliable sources.
In any case, others are free to downvote answers they think are of poor quality. I prefer that downvoters indicate their reasons, at least broadly, but no rule or custom requires them to do so.
Edit:
Link:
Several comments and at least one answer are referencing a now-deleted answer on this question
Credibility:
The question here complains about the poster being seen as "not credible". All posters on SE are effectively unknown sources of unknown credibility. Some claim to be lawyers or other experts, and probably are, bur we have no way to verify that, and have explicitly rejected attempting to implement such verification. Moreover some people who are lawyers nevertheless give poor and unfounded responses. Therefore SE's policies are that the answer must stand on its own, not depend on the poster's reputation. On more technical stacks like the original SO, answers are somewhat self-demonstrating, the verification is "try it" in many cases. On ones like Law and History, the reliance is on cited reliable sources. Being asked to provide sources is reasonable, particularly when statements made seem to be incorrect at least for some relevant jurisdictions.
No one is taken to be authoritative enough to demand that their opinion be taken as authoritative on this site. That's part of how the site's content is structured. Even the high reputation, which is enjoyed by some of the users, should only be taken as a high level of dedication to quality of content rather than as an authoritative opinion. This includes the moderators.
Given that the content is in the adversarial field of law, posts should be written in such a way that even anyone who holds an opposing opinion might have a chance to learn something new. Simply stating your opinion (however well-informed it may be) would not achieve that goal. 3rd party sources would.
