I understand that this issue has been discussed before (1, 2, 3).
Whenever, I see a question for which there is not a direct answer either from Hadith or Quran (most of the questions fall under this category), I believe that answering such questions require profound and comprehensive knowledge and should only be answered by the scholars.
Now, I can do two (or three) things here,
- I can search for an answer in the expert sites like, Ask Imam or Islam QA, and copy and paste the answer, citing or not citing the sources. This will be a direct plagiarism per se based on other standards.
- I can find the answer from the expert sites and completely rewrite it and put it here. This will be an indirect (clever?) plagiarism.
- I can simply ignore the question. Or direct the OP to the expert site in a comment. But if I simply direct him to an expert site, he may not have the patience to go through the lengthy answers over there. (No disrespect intended.)
Now, I can not fully decide what to do. Sometimes I see questions of serious implications in everyday life which if unanswered may move a muslim to wrong path or enable him to make incorrect decisions.
Perhaps you will agree with me that I myself not being an expert (scholar or Mufti) on issues of Islam, the answer I may provide based on my feelings or partial knowledge may be the popular answers, these even may be up-voted, but these may not be the correct answers. Often the issues should be better answered by the scholars only.
So, when you see a question which has an answer in an expert site, what will be your best course of action?