I read this today in a comment on someone else's question-answer:
'Stack Exchange is not a network for exchanging opinions, but rather factual information. This answer essentially isn't more than stating your opinion. Please improve this question by providing references to philosophers supporting your theory (or delete your answer).'
I am curious how quoting others' opinions supports one owns opinions and does the sheer number of opinions one quotes eventually result in facts?
Generally, renowned philosophers do not give opinions but produce arguments. Citing a philosopher is not supporting one's opinion with someone else's, it's refering to an argument in the literature.
I agree with quen_tin's answer, but since this is my comment I will also answer.
First of all, you didn't quote the whole comment. I also added:
For more information, see this meta post.
And that link actually gives a very good overview. But anyway, I'll clarify myself:
The reason I write comments like this is that some questions, like this, are not a good fit for the SE format:
Because we don't do philosophy here. We discuss philosophy. Questions that do fit are:
The problem is that the first type of questions should be closed because they don't fit in the Q&A system (there's no one right answer), but they don't get closed quickly enough. We get many answers to these questions - mainly by new users who don't know that this type of answer is actually not the idea here.
For example, one may answer:
The purpose of life is to live for others. If you don't help others, what do you get satisfaction from? Humans are social beings, so it's very natural for us to live together with others and be there for them.
This does not help anyone in his personal study of philosophy. It is the statement of an opinion, but frankly we're not concerned with the opinion of every random person.
Sometimes, answers like this can be fixed in a way similar to this:
According to philosopher X, the purpose of life is to live for others (see this article he wrote). He writes:
If you don't help others, what do you get satisfaction from? Humans are social beings, so it's very natural for us to live together with others and be there for them.
– Philosopher X, book Y, Section A.B.C
However, often the person who wrote this answer actually doesn't know a philosopher with the same view - the answer is unsalvegable. This is why I so rigorously comment "(or delete your answer)".
I wrote more or less the same in this question: What can be done to get less rubbish answers?
does the sheer number of opinions one quotes eventually result in facts?
The number of quotes someone marshals in favour of a view has nothing to do with the truth or falsity of that view. It may have something to do with the persuasiveness of your argument, but that has little to do with truth or falsity.
One thing you might have in mind is that if a sufficient number of people agree about a particular view, then that view is true (i.e. the view is a fact). But that would be a poor theory of truth or facthood - there are plenty of cases in which the majority opinion about some view is not correct.
Sometimes philosophers will quote others to show that their position has historical antecedents, or is common (or uncommon!) in the literature. The most common use of quotes, however, is when discussing another philosopher's work (notice that this is what I did above!). This allows the audience to see directly the view that the author is talking about, and this gives the audience some meas reasons to think that the philosopher doing the quoting isn't misrepresenting the view in question. And there are other possibilities too (e.g. exegesis).
In your quote the author was reminding a user that their post didn't meet the standards the community requires of good posts. It's not that the author was making something a fact, rather they were pointing out that by posting on SE we accept certain norms regarding content of our posts, and that if we violate those norms we are subject to penalties, such as our posts being edited, removed, or otherwise moderated.
