(also the question is different in that I specifically ruled out legal advice - although as demonstrated by various responses a lot of people don't understand context (in itself that shows you can't expect them to :P ))

It's still not. Merely that stackexchange has no way to deal with staleness or time sensitivity. That question is 3 years old, the consensus may be the same now but that doesn't make it a waste of time revisiting the issue if only to confirm that that is still the case.

I guess the real problem is we don't have a satisfactory way of identifying experts and the current methods vaguely work because the general user of this site is a bit technical. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why some stack exchange communities do so much worse than others too.

The problem of not mentioning something vital could just as easily come up with a technical question too. And have equally as bad consequences for the OP

Ah so if there is already a mechanism to deal with that type of question then that is no valid reason to exclude a wider field by. :)

Ok this is a good point I guess, but ideally we should be able to pick those experts out regardless of a technical or non technical field. Easier said than done, I have no answer to that :)

And how many answers will I get if I ask which web server or OS is better? Your example is a bit contrived. Ok so some licencing questions may be region specific but if someone states the region they are certified or knowledgable about in much the same way people mention and applicable OS or tech qualifications, how is that any different?

I think the point that people are missing is that ANY question is a legal question in that respect. The subject is irrelevant. Ironically a tech professional is far less legally responsible giving legal advice than tech advice precisely because it is not their claimed area of expertise! But the overall assumption which everyone seems to be making which I don't accept is that everyone is qualified to answer a tech question but noone is qualified to answer a legal question. How do you know that the answerer is not MS certified in licencing for example?

This is true but isn't the whole point of the stackexchange voting system designed to point out what is a good answer? We don't question the voters technical ability, how do we know that an answerer ISN'T a lawyer or for example someone MS certified in licencing?

How do we judge an answerer's professional ability though, score? What if someone has built up answering questions about IIS and then gives bad advice about RAID partitions? What if an answerer IS a lawyer or licencing professional and has built up their reputation on those type of questions? At the end of the day a questioner has to take any answer with a pinch of salt because they don't know the skill or correctness of a given answer.

Well then please realise how uncivil it is to lazily mark a question as a duplicate without bothering to comment or answer. I took the time to think about whether it was a new question or not before I created it. I saw the previous one and am really asking, if it is the case that feeling among people is that this is still a good policy?

So when someone follows your technical advice and breaks something, would they not have been in a better standing if they could show they went directly to the companies own technical support?

likewise you can be held legally responsible for your technical advice, we should close every single question if we apply the same principles!

It damn well isn't a duplicate of that question!