Why are members voting on answers that are not correct? == Updated==
I refer to the recent post - Translate "She is five years younger than my Mother" At the time of writing 2 answers have been given using Ser - es cinco años menor que mi madre. I have always been taught that Tener goes with age - tiene cinco años menor que me madre. Both the answers with Ser have been voted up. I really think the voting system needs looking into as this is destroying my confidence in using SD as a learning site - which so far has been excellent. What to other members think? I followed a recent post by Eddie remarking on marking up the "best answer". This follows the same kind of thing.
I am editing this thread so that everybody gets to read this: **the upvoted answers were the correct ones!** Es cinco años menor que mi madre. She is 5 years younger than my mom. Tiene cinco años *menos* que mi madre. She has 5 years less than my mom (literally) I know the voting system is not perfect, but in this case doubts or a destroyed confidence in the site simply do not apply, as the answers were correct, actually the answer with tener would have been wrong.
13 Answers
I don't think it should destroy your confidence in a learning site, but just realize we're in the imperfect environment of our peers, much like a family, with many members who use horrible grammar, or like a school, with other kids on the playground that aren't all that smart.
You have to know who to listen to. And you have to give it time for the community to correct the mistakes others make.
I hope you did your part and said something in the comments, correcting their errors. 
If they had not made the incorrect guesses, would we have not missed an opportunity to discuss why such a usage was incorrect and explain the correct usage? As for why the answers are voted up....to the person ignorant of the correct answer, they seemed like good replies. It's a system with advantages and disadvantages. If someone comes along and points out the errors the system works fine and learning is enhanced. If no one comes along to make corrections, errors are reinforced. As mentioned by others, you have to learn to take the explanations with a grain of salt, not letting what is said prevent you from investigating any future conflicting answers. Many of the beginning rules that we learn are correct in general, but as we progress, we learn of esoteric exceptions and reasons why the general rule is not always correct. A first year student learns that the feminine definite article is used with feminine nouns (la casa). The more advanced students learns of exceptions to that rule. (el agua). When someone offers the simplistic rule as an answer it provides an opportunity to teach the exception or the more complex rule. So my advice is to learn to keep an open mind and don't accept answers as dogma. They are someone's best answer at their level of understanding. Realize that the answer may be correct or incorrect. Accept the answer until you hear contradictory answers and then verify the correct answer by your own research or further parole evidence. I find our present system acceptable, because there are so many members who read these replies with such varied backgrounds that the majority of times the correct answer eventually surfaces (even if it is in a subsequent thread at a much later date). Remember that the owner of this site didn't choose to hire linguistic experts to field questions asked on this site. For the most we are a collection of students trying to struggle to understand the language by collective investigation and pooling our respective experience and knowledge. It's only natural that we are going to have to filter out incorrect information, but that doesn't prevent one from arriving at the truth, or even from using incorrect information as a path.
Ok, now I read the post that started this thread.
While it is true that there is an issue with the choosing of wrong answers, and all the comments thus far are valid, the fact remains that the answers given thus far on that thread are indeed correct. So in this particular case, the complaint does not apply.
My point being, by the way, that as far as that thread goes, the Forum is still doing its job well! 
I am in agreement with the concept of learning from mistakes. When I have been corrected, which is often. That particular correction has fast tracked my learning on the language issue in question! As to voting up! The person who posted incorrectly, may very well be the catalyst for learning something correctly which may have otherwise gone unnoticed. The linguists on this site do not let many "incorrect," posts get by. So, to vote up, is an individuals way of saying, "I appreciate your attempt at learning and teaching, now let's see what others have to say!" It is a voluntary act. If one wishes to apply stricter standards to voting, do it on an individual basis.
I completely agree with Goyo on this.
Also:
I hope you did your part and said something in the comments, correcting their errors.
This is the best we can do.
Tranqui, tranqui...
It's a forum. When you're in the pub and somebody starts "explaining" something, you suspend judgement and, when it becomes obvious it's rubbish you either move on or contest the argument. Better to point out the problem(as you have) but realise as well that human interaction will always throw up errors
To paraphrase Oscar Wilde -"Experience" is the name everyone gives to their mistakes !
Sometimes before voting on an answer (if I think might have an error) I wait to see if there are any corrections and check to see if the "poster" edits their post accordingly. (I haven't the confidence, yet ,to correct other peoples errors!)
A simple rule might be -
Don't accept the first answer, wait for some others.
Vote for a good effort, but don't "accept" until you're reasonably sure.
I used to get frustrated when I saw an incorrect answer get voted up, or when an answer that is iffy gets voted up. I notice that long answers get voted up even when they are superfluous, redundant, or lacking in any real information. Then real, good answers get ignored. I think that's OK though. The voting system is fine. The correct answer system needs work though, I feel that a new system for selecting the correct answer should be implemented. A newbie can't know what answer is correct and even an experienced person gets answers wrong once in a while. I would love to see a system where a group vote by experienced members decides the correct answer. Like if three members with more than 15K rep agree on an answer then it is selected as best answer. Something like that. That way we can avoid some of the issues with the wrong answers.
This was discussed at length not too long ago: why do people guess answers I know that it's a bit frustrating but don't let it destroy your confidence in the site. As Goyo said, "You have to know who to listen to." and more often than not someone will eventually correct incorrect answers.
I am editing this thread so that everybody gets to read this: the upvoted answers were the correct ones!
Es cinco años menor que mi madre. She is 5 years younger than my mom.
Tiene cinco años menos que mi madre. She has 5 years less than my mom (literally)
I know the voting system is not perfect, but in this case doubts or a destroyed confidence in the site simply do not apply, as the answers were correct, actually the answer with tener would have been wrong.
Well I have to admit that I was wrong but I have always been taught that age and years go with tener and not ser - I did´nt know anything about tener not being used with menor. Maybe my sentence construction was incorrect but using ser in this instance has not been covered in class . It has been interesting reading through all the comments - many thanks.
I usually accept answers that are not identical to google's translator service as so often it's terribly wrong.. jeje
