"some of our highest voted answers from some of our highest rep users are completely un-cited opinion" -- looks like well based opinion (clear, inspired, thoughtful) is also a good format for this site, after all. Otherwise, it would mean we're only parrots, without the ability to think for ourselves, and that would be a shame.

In regards to the question you linked that I answered, that question is a basic question about game theory, which really makes it off topic for this site as it has nothing to do with philosophy and my answer is entirely composed of saying basic facts about arithmetic and telling the OP their question didn't make sense. I answered it because Conifold suggested that my comments served as an answer to the op as the question was currently written. In no part of it was I doing philosophy, the question isn't even about philosophy and it kind of strikes me as weird that people haven't voted to close.

(1) there is no difference, asking and answering philosophical questions definitely is doing philosophy. Maybe or maybe not. A lot hinges on what the adjective "philosophical" is doing here. There's a clear cut distinction between asking questions about "art" and making pieces of "art," and the same distinction is meant to apply here.

(2) I agree with you on the good subjective / bad subjective thing. I've never really understood that. (one problem is that the word "subjective" has at least three distinct meanings).

(3) the example of world-building.SE highlights the problem rather than undermines it. A good answer on world-building is one that would help a person designing their own fictional world. That feature of answering and voting on answers is hopefully not arbitrary. Here, the same guiding criterion should be whether it answers the users question about philosophy. The problem here vs. there is that often people do not have a question about philosophy. They have a position in philosophy they want to validate and that makes the voting arbitrary and breaks the point of an SE.

@Not_Here The point is your answer has been both accepted and now has 5 votes, given the generally low voting activity on this site, that's enough to put it in the top 10-15% of answers recently, plus the question itself has four. It's the inconsistency I think people find hard to follow, if you think it's not philosophy, then vote to close, don't answer it. Personally, I think it's a perfectly good answer to a perfectly reasonable question (I'm one of the five votes), but then I think that answers pointing out reasonably argued logical flaws are acceptable in general.

@Virmaior Who doesn't have a position in philosophy they want to validate? Some are more ingenious than others in how to go about advancing that agenda, but most do, that's just human nature. What we see stand out are just the cruder approaches, the more subtle ones cannot be flagged so easily, but build up a certain amount of resentment over time. That academic philosophy in it's entirety (existentialism included) is saying something that mere musings in the pub is not, is just such a position, and questions (and answers) often reflect that.

@Virmaior The difference between philosophy and art in your example is that at no point does asking the question about art ever become art. At some point asking the question "what did X really mean by ..." (an acceptable question here) actually becomes philosophy, in the academic sense when it is answered by a professional philosopher. Many of the best modern philosophical works are answering exactly those kind of questions. So if one has little faith in the differentiating value of professional employment (as many do), the distinction becomes entirely arbitrary.

@Isaacson I can see how one can argue that this about having positions in philosophy that people want to validate and different degrees of ingenuity in supporting that... (ala power in Foucault's work) but if that's the point, then this SE should be shut down / The point of SE is to harness somehow something in human nature for productive purposes. So what we're trying to do here is harness volunteer attitudes into useful answer to questions about philosophy rather than have a war in which both questions and answers are just pushing personal philosophies.

I'm not understanding your after At some point... As a "professional philosopher" (assuming the degree and publications are what would make one), I definitely see a difference between answering someone's question about Sartre or Descartes as distinct from anything within the professional purview of "doing philosophy". Maybe it becomes "philosophy" since it's my interpretation, but for many of the questions (logic, many Descartes, many Kant), other than subtle differences in wording, most philosophers would give the answer. I think that's the sweet spot where a philosophy.SE shines.

@Virmaior Take for example the work of Henry Allison or Gerold Prauss on Kant, there is definitely in both works, the author's answer to the question "what did Kant mean by...", and both works are considered works of philosophy. To my knowledge, however, the work of an art critic, no matter how highly regarded, has never been thought of as a work of art. Thus in philosophy we are (uniquely, I think) considering a matter of degree differentiating study from process, rather than a matter of binomial category.

This lack of clear distinction, I think, answers your first comment, insofar as any attempt to answer a question about philosophy that is any more than a simple reference request, will entail the promotion of a personal position. The community's clear statement that it prefers answers from within the published material means that when such attempts coincide with a popularly held position, such promotion is considered acceptable, when they do not, it is raised as an issue.

Sure, granted that a Prauss or Allison book on "what does Kant mean by ..." is also philosophy in its own right, but answers on an SE shouldn't delve into that level of precision (at a minimum due to length). At which point the degree to which it represents the answers' personal take on things is rather minimized and we're much closer to the base SE model.

This (my above comment, we have got out of sync) is an entirely reasonable practice, but it becomes less so when the site seems to accept any answer following a popular position (cited or otherwise), and condemn any answer failing to do so (even in the case where the simple addition of citations by edit would make the answer acceptable).

so I think my first comment still stands... and the goal isn't just idle preference.

@Virmaior I agree, the goal of "objectivity through citation of published works" is a workable one. I'm not sure I would go as far as to say it was much more than idle preference, but I don't actually think that matters, a community site is perfectly entitled to idle preferences, so long as they're clearly stated, which I think they are here. What I think matters is that such a goal is so inconsistently applied. The examples I've given (all highly voted answers) simply push a personal philosophy, it just happens to be a popular one and so (one presumes) is not flagged.

Other answers presenting far less popular positions could easily be edited to fit the goal by the addition of references (to somewhat less popular philosophers), but instead are dismissed. It just doesn't look very welcoming to unconventional ideas.

Regarding the last comment: It is possible to find supporting references for almost every claim, yes. But a) It is the author's task, not the community's, to provide it. Downvotes and deletion for people failing to do so are therefore perfectly justified. and b) There is a subtle difference between writing an unpopular position in a tone of "there are people saying this" or in a tone of "this is the [only] truth [and only idiots are not getting it]. It is the latter (admittedly, stereotyped) that has been problematic again and again, leading to downvotes and discussions, since it's wrong.

Regarding the highly voted questions and answers: Yes, it is a recurring pattern that questions and answers that are not really fitting the needs of SE are skyrocketing. It is a problem fore moderation as well, speaking of user retention. But I have the feeling that we are pretty good I'm distinguishing between answers that are wrong/misleading/insufficient, and answers that are correct (or at least reasonable) in content and simply lack references. The latter are normally commented on, but they are not deleted. Meta questions on harder moderation were not received too well.

@PhilipKlocking With regards to a) If the community may edit a post to improve meaning, clarity, even accuracy, why not add references. I've always put references in comments where I notice the post lacks them entirely because it doesn't seem to be the done thing, but I can't think of a good reason why it isn't. As to b) I entirely agree, it's not these posts I'm talking about (which I think should be treated with even less grace), it's posts like this one, which I think might have been better received in comments.

As to your last point perhaps you might revisit the posts I've provided as examples, as far as I can see absolutely none of them have any comments suggesting some references might help, I find it hard to believe any regular user can't honestly think of dozens of further examples, but If you are having trouble I'm happy to link more. The fact is that high rep users quite often provide answers which are either their own logical analysis, or personal opinion, without any comment, and yet receive a high vote, indicating that the community is entirely happy with this.

I agree with you that the less popular opinions are very much dominated by the rants of the self-righteous, but there are still a number which are down-voted ostensibly for their lack of citation. It can rather give the impression of a gentlemen's club where members are welcomed to share their astute observations, but in which those of the the non-members are tolerated only to the extent they are sufficiently well supported, and this just feeds the fury of the kind of posts we're all trying to avoid.

In regards to the five posts you linked when talking about some of the highest voted answers, I think that there is a lot more nuance to the situation than just looking at those questions. One of the questions was from 2011 and the most recent one was from January 2016, well over a year ago. As I said in my comments above, I am talking about how the site has been recently moderated. Those questions are very old and were written/accepted/voted on under a different team of moderators and during, I'm sure, a very different meta narrative about what was acceptable and what wasn't.

@Not_Here If you're genuinely struggling to see this recently try this one, this one, this one or this one.

As for the strange assumption that the idea the site should be about fully referenced answers from within the philosophical canon is somehow new, here is a Meta posts discussing the issue from around the time of the posts I originally linked. There are a number of others if you'd care to look.

Exactly, the one's you just linked have vote totals of 6, 3, 14, and 6, compared to the 33, 18, 16, 66, and 18. Besides the 14, they are not even close to the same community acceptance that the other ones have. But even more so, the 14 one is on a post that blew up because it was put on the side bar and an abnormally large amount of people saw and voted on the question. And yeah did you read Joseph's answer to the post you just linked? Here's one from around the time you posted your answers from as well

@Not_Here If you want higher voted answers, try this, this or this, but I get the feeling you'll just move the goalposts again. What score do you think signifies community acceptance? Only a handful of posts have scored above 6 in the last year anyway, if that's our new measure of community acceptance then we've got a massive problem.

Furthermore, the whole reason why I think this is an issue, as I've made clear, is that it gives an impression to new users that leads either to them leaving (our new user retention problem) or them becoming resentful and causing our overworked moderators more hassle (our "moderator retention" problem), which, if you remember, is how this discussion stated. If there are no modern Meta posts about the "new" approach you're espousing and the only posts that exist are old ones supporting a different scope, then that is a feature of the problem, not an indication that it doesn't exist.