As a long-time Stackoverflow user, Travel made me think more about upvoting:
Should I only upvote an answer if I would have answered the same thing?
Looking at this question, I was tempted to upvote the answer that appears to be of very high quality. But then I realized that actually I don't even know if it is true.
Did I do well by not upvoting?
Upvote good answers. If you don't know if the answer is good or not, don't upvote it merely because it "looks" good. The goal here is that the highest voted answer should be the one that most people agree is correct.
I'd say, upvote answers that you admire. It might fall into the category of "WoW! I never thought of that," or even "I disagree, but I think the poster makes a really good case."
But you did the right thing not upvoting an answer that you weren't sure of. In that case, better not to upvote than to do so and later find out that it was a mistake.
The guidance indicates upvotes are for answers that are useful. In my opinion the answer you refer to is useful (and I have upvoted it) even though I am not a New Zealand citizen, I have never been to Uzbekistan and have never applied for a Turkmenistan visa. Also, the answer is six years old and I have no idea whether still correct (one of the links is dead) - or indeed whether it ever was.
However, were I to be in the position of the questioner I would find it very helpful to narrow down the possibilities, very considerably. I don't know enough to say anything in the answer is incorrect and am happy, in the first instance, to trust the word of a fellow user of considerable reputation.
The link now broken may have been intended to point to what is now here. It shows as last updated 2008 and appears to be out of date but that is a risk with almost all answers here. It is up to the community as a whole to edit as appropriate.
My vote was a long time ago. If deciding now I would not chose to vote the answer as it stands at present, up or down, but then your question was from a long time ago also.
I do not think it necessary to have first-hand experience of the accuracy and comprehensiveness of an answer before deeming it "useful" and hence upvoting. Even links that are out of date may provide suitable search terms for me to build on. Links that are out of date may also be helpful where other, undated links conflict.
For the particular case, it is certainly possible that Turkmenistan has opened additional consulates in Uzbekistan since 2011 but knowing there was only one at that time would be useful, were I looking for others.
You can expect processing to take between 1-5 working days is useful. I gather in Iran it took slightly longer, but at least not necessarily nearly as long as many other visa issuing bodies.
Even knowing of the possibility of a VOA is useful as an indication of what may be worth searching for.
And there are other details (journalist, vehicle, additional permits etc) that I was unaware of before reading the answer.
