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This happens a lot less on Stack Overflow than on reddit. The asker isn't supposed to accept the most popular answer, either. They're asking a question becaus

This happens a lot less on Stack Overflow than on reddit. The asker isn't supposed to accept the most popular answer, either. They're asking a question because they have a problem to solve. They should be testing solutions and accepting the one that works. I often see accepted answers with fewer upvotes than the most popular ones. The fact that both the most popular and the accepted answer are at the top of the screen is a nice feature of the site.

pak 16y ago
The asker may be testing out some of the answers, but in reality most of the problems to be solved during software development are about balancing tradeoffs, e.g. security vs. performance. The reason the best solution is the best may not become apparent for years, when the project needs to scale, changes hands, needs to upgrade, gets hacked, etc. In such a case, how is the asker, lacking such experience, able to pick out the right answer except by number of upvotes? Same goes for anybody reading the page. I'm just saying a popularity-driven Q&A site has its drawbacks.
- cruise02 16y ago
  You're assuming that both the asker and the crowd are incompetent. No kind of Q&A site is going to produce good results under those conditions.
  - pak 16y ago
    I'm not assuming that. I'm suggesting that certain answers may become more popular and rise to the top for reasons that have nothing to do with correctness. These include but are not limited to: the style in which the answer is written, the assertiveness/aggressiveness of the answer, the decision to include or not include sample code, the karma or reputation of the answerer, and the current vote count and visibility of the answer. I think it is safe to assume that there is a gradient in experience among SO users and that for those on the lower end, votes may be more influenced by the issues I just listed than any standard of correctness. It's simple crowd psychology, and already well established at other voting sites like digg and reddit.
    - cruise02 16y ago
      Digg and reddit aggregate links across a wide variety of topics and have a very diverse user base. Stack Overflow's focus is more narrow (much like that of Hacker News). The crowd is a lot more focused as a result. People are a lot less easily influenced by writing style than by correctness. (Try posting code that won't compile and see what happens.) Yes, people are influenced by reputation and good writing on subjective questions, but those are discouraged on SO, and they don't really have one right answer anyway.

pak 16y ago

The asker may be testing out some of the answers, but in reality most of the problems to be solved during software development are about balancing tradeoffs, e.g. security vs. performance. The reason the best solution is the best may not become apparent for years, when the project needs to scale, changes hands, needs to upgrade, gets hacked, etc. In such a case, how is the asker, lacking such experience, able to pick out the right answer except by number of upvotes? Same goes for anybody reading the page. I'm just saying a popularity-driven Q&A site has its drawbacks.

cruise02 16y ago
You're assuming that both the asker and the crowd are incompetent. No kind of Q&A site is going to produce good results under those conditions.
- pak 16y ago
  I'm not assuming that. I'm suggesting that certain answers may become more popular and rise to the top for reasons that have nothing to do with correctness. These include but are not limited to: the style in which the answer is written, the assertiveness/aggressiveness of the answer, the decision to include or not include sample code, the karma or reputation of the answerer, and the current vote count and visibility of the answer. I think it is safe to assume that there is a gradient in experience among SO users and that for those on the lower end, votes may be more influenced by the issues I just listed than any standard of correctness. It's simple crowd psychology, and already well established at other voting sites like digg and reddit.
  - cruise02 16y ago
    Digg and reddit aggregate links across a wide variety of topics and have a very diverse user base. Stack Overflow's focus is more narrow (much like that of Hacker News). The crowd is a lot more focused as a result. People are a lot less easily influenced by writing style than by correctness. (Try posting code that won't compile and see what happens.) Yes, people are influenced by reputation and good writing on subjective questions, but those are discouraged on SO, and they don't really have one right answer anyway.