Why did the mods downvote my answer

Question

I provided this answer to the question How do NFL players know a fair catch has been called?

It was downvoted by 2 of the moderators since

it's just your supposition, and not something from either your personal expertise nor documented in the rules or official commentary

I do agree that I hadn't originally provided a reference, and so it was not complete. Though I don't see how one self declaring they have expertise on a field is relevant or can be verified!

Anyway, I do agree the answer was not originally sublime due to lack of resources. What I'm trying to understand is why was it downvoted by mods? I've been around for a long time here, and our practice has been to downvote bad/wrong answers; otherwise if an answer is not up to expectations we leave it.

So have we set a precedent to downvote answers that don't have a reference? I was off for a month, so maybe I missed that. Doing so is harsh, specially for a site that doesn't get that many posts and is gonna nip activity of any new users in the bud immediately. Also users will pick up this kind of behaviour when it's clearly declared by the mods in the comments. Unless we wanna downvote any answer that lacks a resource moving forward, I don't think we should be downvoting posts just due to lack of resource.

Answer 1

I think I was the first to downvote, and I'll share a few reasons, but, first: mods are not "special" in their voting. We have a relatively high mod to user ratio, unfortunately, so it makes more of a difference in the score, but my vote is the same as anyone else; and I try to not comment in ways that suggest "I'm a mod, listen to me", although the diamond makes that impossible. "I" statements are the best way a mod can do that ("I have to downvote..." etc.). A mod downvote doesn't have any special meaning beyond that. If this stack were to change to be more strict (like many stacks are), we'd use mod tools to add a post notice. I didn't do that (and won't, as it doesn't seem like that's wanted here).

My reasoning as to why comes from a few places.

First, the answer did not, and still does not, really provide an answer to the question at the level I would expect of an answer to a technical question. I'll be honest here; we probably don't have anyone who can give a good answer to a technical question like this anymore, and that's unfortunate, but nonetheless; if there is no written referee guidelines or such that provide for referee instructions, odds are we won't get an answer to this question - and that's okay. Hopefully that will change. The problem with answers that provide a "guess" is that they end up discouraging other answers, and they end up reinforcing "common knowledge" that's often incorrect. You added some rules links, but they're actually not helpful: they're explaining the players' penalties, but that doesn't mean there isn't a ref signal.

Second, I'm not sure I agree! I only played (American) Football very briefly in middle school, so I'm not super familiar with the little things that you'd notice as a player or a coach and not as a viewer; but I am not sure there isn't a ref's signal. Unfortunately, you nearly never see the back judge on television, so it's hard to see what they're doing (or to hear). You might be right, but I'm not sure - and that's why I didn't answer this question when it was first asked, even though honestly I'd default to roughly what you did say.

Either way, a mod vote is just a vote - don't worry about it beyond that. If you agree with the comment, change it, if you don't, ignore it. We'll use more official methods if it's a violation of a rule.