Reliability???

[tcp]

 How reliable are the answers to the questions we ask. How can you be sure that you are receiving correct answers to your questions???

[Quizmonster]

You can't be sure any given answer is correct. The vast majority of people who provide answers on this site genuinely make an effort to be accurate, but - like all human endeavours - they are susceptible to error. Personally, I would always try to check the truth of an answer elsewhere, if I could. Doing a Google search, for instance, might help, though there is no guarantee that what you find on the WWW is true either!

Many people who offer answers - including myself - rely on what they "have always believed", but that belief might just be a longstanding urban myth. For example, lots of people still believe the word 'posh' is an acronym for 'port out, starboard home'. It isn't.

Check...that's my advice.

[andy hughes]

As always, QM is succinct, to the point, and honest, but errors are made in all good faith. I was convinced for about twenty years that 'freezing the balls off a brass monkey' referred to a brass ring on a sialing ship deck which held a pyramid of canon balls. In cold weather the brass contracts, and if it's cold enough, the ring shrinks sufficiently for the balls to roll off - hence the phrase. Feasible and interesting? Of course, but it's apparently not true, although i have answered several Questions on this Site in all good faith. So, as QM says, an answer given honestly does not mean it is correct, just what people believe to be the truth.

[LeMarchand]

In the case of the questions you have been asking, I suspect that the best course of action would be to do your own homework.