Giving help or fatwa or advice or what?

Question

السلام عليكم و رحمة الله و بركاته assalmo alaykom

I have some problems here in islam.stackexchange: one of them is my bad English . Even in stackoverflow i tried sometimes to give help but i get downvotes because i can't explain things clearly.. and this happend here also . But it's not important it can be solved by time and training.

The main probleme is how to answer you don't know what the one who ask want from you. Sometimes you give advice and be accepted and sometimes don't and sometimes you give a link or a fatwa and it could be accepted or not!!

I don't know how to help because sometimes i don't have enough information about an issue and i see no answer i say to myself "go on why don't you just help " but my help is not accepted .

Here in the Arabic world i don't answer to religions questions because there are a lot of fiqh and hadith students who can answer and the majority of questions get answers immediately. And the scholars says that a muslim should not speak about something he don't know... so it's not allowed to give fatwa if you didn't learn fiqh and hadith....

But here not everyone get answers so can we help as we can or just leave the space to those who have good knowledge?

Answer 1

First, welcome! I've been pleasantly surprised at the quality of your posts thus far, and encourage you to keep going!

About this site

Anyone can answer regardless of qualifications, so this site cannot be a fatwa site:

It is also important to note that this is not a fatwa site. While questions on the legality of actions (from an Islamic perspective) are welcome, answers may be posted by anybody regardless of training or expertise. It is important to judge the evidences provided by each answer to the best of your own abilities, and accept such answers at your own risk. -- Islam.SE help page

Answers are better if they are backed up:

One of the qualities of the internet, especially for a site like this, is the fact that we're all pretty much equal (some would call that an advantage). You could be Zakir Naik or Bilal Philips, or you could just be Joe Sixpack from Milwaukee, and we really couldn't tell the difference. --

There's nothing to stop people answering at a fatwa level of quality (indeed, we are trying to attract knowledgeable users), but we cannot tell who's answering.

Voting

I'm not sure why, but there seems to be more unjustified, random downvoting here than on other StackExchange sites. I think most of these can be disregarded.

It's also possible that a post is simply ignored, as there's not enough activity on this site.

On other sites, sporadic downvotes are rendered insigificant by a large volume of upvotes. Among other sites I've participated in, particularly math.SE and MathOverflow, there has been a strong push for upvoting. From https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/q/662/91818:

We should encourage everyone to vote positively as often as possible!

Every Stack Exchange site will eventually end up with a different "base level" of voting --- that is, the expected number of upvotes for a question of a given level of excellence. (This effect occurs because people see a good question, but already with a certain number of votes, and think "oh, I would have upvoted this, but it already has enough".)

It's easy for us to affect this "base level" by encouraging high levels of upvoting now. We're setting the standards, and this really will have an effect.

...

In case it's not obvious: the rationale for wanting this base level to be high is that it provides better positive feedback to good contributors."

On other StackExchange sites, users can be confident they will receive some upvotes for effortful contributions, and even more upvotes for especially high quality contributions. In this setting, users are incentivized to post.

Mediocre posts are upvoted. Good posts are upvoted more!

The OP and accepting answers

Keep in mind that the OP (the original author of the question) is just one person. The main audience is the rest of the world who can access your answer through search engines. Questions and answers should be aimed at still being useful in, say, a year's time, beyond the interests of the OP.

Thus, it's not a big deal if the OP doesn't accept your answer. (Also, it just might take some time for the OP to get around to it.)

English

By design, posts are editable on this site. If you're uncomfortable with the English in your posts, you can mention it in the post or in a comment, and someone can edit to fix any problems.

Answer 2

To be honest with you. First of all, I am not sure if that question is well placed here. It is about you trying to help but having the feeling that your help is not accepted. Not a discussion topic for Meta Islam.

I read your question and here is my advice for you:

Learn the English language properly. That is in my eyes the most important, and it should be the first step you take. There are many errors in your English text; people are less likely to read and accept your answers if they are not talking the same language at the same level. Learn to read and understand properly, learn to write correctly and learn to express yourself accurately.

There are many ways you can achieve this.

• English online courses (coursera.org, edX.org, etc.)
• Join an English speaking community in your area and practise
• Travel and practise
• Watch movies in English or with English subtitles
• Read English books
• Take an English course and try to get a certification (TOEFL, Cambridge, ...)
• ... and there are certainly many other options

I might put you off with this, but I think you have to learn English first.

Answer 3

• You may train your English by learning it and by answering and reading answers here. Note I'm not a native speaker, English is my 4th language and after a year on SE I think my English made some improvements. But to be honest one does need to leave the "just translating things" stage while answering to the level of "try to think in English" to get more fluent (this applies for any language)!

• The main problem is how to answer you don't know what the one who ask want from you. Sometimes you give advice and be accepted and sometimes don't and sometimes you give a link or a fatwa and it could be accepted or not!!

  You must understand the Question (this is a language Issue), if you do so and still have some doubts you may ask for further information via comments! If what is asked is fatwa you are asked to answer in your own words that means don't answer a question with a copy-paste from a fatwa-site but try to understand the fatwa and give it back in your own words and link it to show your reference.
  About the voting system: usually good (helpful) answers should be up-voted and good questions too. If answers are marked as not useful or of low quality they may have to pass our review ques, there the community may consider editing, closing or deleting them.

• But here not everyone get answers so can we help as we can or just leave the space to those who have good knowledge?

  If you don't know the answer you shouldn't just copy-paste a fatwa as you might be later asked by the OP about some details, you should answer only a question where you would accept all the responsibility for further inquiries. And note that we as Muslims are asked not just to say what other people say without knowing the reasons they said so.