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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. T

by 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.