# Questions with “my teacher said (…)”

It has been asked here about questions with "my $X$ said", where $X$ is more general than "teacher". It seems the consensus is that this is irrelevant to the question. The point of the post I linked, I think, was to address the questions themselves: should they stay or not.

My purpose with this post is different. I feel like the case of "my teacher said (...)" very often leads to rudeness and/or a misrepresentation of the work of a teacher (see here for examples in the comments). The teacher being identifiable or not, it is still a disservice to his work, and it is almost always irrelevant to the question itself. We could just delete that part and the question would hold ground by itself.

My question is: what is your take on this? Do you agree?

And more practically: Can I edit away such "context"? Or would this be too intrusive to the post?

• I don't understand the downvotes. Is this a controversial topic, is the answer obvious, has this been discussed before? Could someone please clarify? – Aloizio Macedo Feb 3 '18 at 17:30
• Some might think a downvote means that "no, one should not edit away the context." This is one interpretation of down-votes on meta. (Though I prefer to reserve it for feature requests.) – quid Feb 3 '18 at 17:38
• @quid Thanks for the clarification. I would take a downvote in this kind of question to mean "I disagree with the need to discuss this", but under your interpretation the downvotes are explained. – Aloizio Macedo Feb 3 '18 at 17:45
• Once what my teacher said was actually wrong. – Mr Pie Feb 3 '18 at 22:44

You should not edit away this context. It can be crucial to treat the question properly.

There is no need to "out" a person that said something that was possibly unreasonable but "my teacher" is vague enough, while still being somewhat specific.

The fact that somebody who should know told OP something that did not quite make sense to them is highly relevant.

• It makes clear why OP asks this.

• It makes clear that there may not be that much point in asking OP why they think what they asked is true or engage in other ways in a critical dialogue about the reproduce argument. In is not theirs after all.

• It contextualizes the remark as something that was said and reproduced as opposed to, say, something that was written in a book. Thus one can reasonably interpret the remark more freely.

If people are rude, the solution is to make people stop being rude. To try to remove one motivation for being rude, just will not work.

• Good points, and good remark at the end. Thanks for the answer! – Aloizio Macedo Feb 3 '18 at 17:43
• You are welcome. I am glad that you found it helpful. – quid Feb 3 '18 at 19:13