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An idea I've had for a long time is that "the community" can vote to override an accepted answer. There are many times when the accepted answer is incorrect, or

An idea I've had for a long time is that "the community" can vote to override an accepted answer. There are many times when the accepted answer is incorrect, or a newer answer is now more correct, but the only person who can change an accepted answer is the OP. I think community-based changes to the accepted answer would go a long way to solving your problem too, but it requires someone to be reviewing newer answers and identifying when there's another that would be more appropriate. It'd incentivise writing newer answers to older questions. Correcting accepted answers that probably weren't ideal to begin with. A new "role" where users hunt through older questions and answers looking for improvements to make. Stack Overflow answers are supposed to be community-based, but we unfairly prioritise the will of the original questioner *forever*. I don't think that's optimal.

zatkin 5y ago
Or you could just edit the accepted answer if it’s wrong? I’ve seen a few posts where the top contains an “UPDATE” that, in summary, links to another answer.
irrational 5y ago
As a side gig I teach an intro to web development class online. Every semester I get students asking for help about why their code isn’t working. Nine times out of ten, they are trying to use some jQuery code they copied from stackoverflow because it is the accepted answer. They don’t yet know enough to recognize that it isn’t vanilla JavaScript (which they are required to use).
- dotancohen 5y ago
  The best way to address these students is to ask them "Why do you think that this should work?"
- tacticalDonut 5y ago
  What platform do you use to teach the course? I've been teaching an ML from scratch course for junior devs at my company and think it'd be useful for others.
inglor 5y ago
They actually recently added this feature - you have a "this answer is outdated" button you can press. Note sure what the reputation threshold to see it is.
- jsmeaton 5y ago
  I've browsed a few tags and haven't been able to see that button and my reputation is 40k+ so I'd expect to have all features enabled. Are you able to point me to a Meta/Blog post or even just a screenshot please? I'd be keen to see it. Actually it looks like https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/405302/introducing-outdated-answers-project https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/405302/introducing-... is the announcement for wanting to tackle the problem. Not sure if they've implemented it yet though.
weinzierl 5y ago
"An idea I've had for a long time is that "the community" can vote to override an accepted answer." I don't know if this is still a thing, but for some time in the past when an answer was edited more than a certain amount of times it automatically turned into what was called a "community wiki" answer.
dotancohen 5y ago
> but the only person who can change an accepted answer is the OP. This system makes the person arguably _least qualified_ to understand the situation the single arbitrator as to which answer is accepted. Was it the most efficient? First to answer? Copied-and-pasted right in with no integration work? Written by someone with an Indian username? Got the most upvotes? Made a Simpsons reference? Written by someone with an Anime avatar?
- aweiland 5y ago
  Seems like the answer is to add a community accepted answer that's easier to change over time, while keeping the accepted answer feature as is.
- NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
  >This system makes the person arguably _least qualified_ to understand the situation the single arbitrator as to which answer is accepted. Devil's advocate: If it fixed their problem adequately, it's acceptable. Maybe separate "acceptable" and "ideal" answers would be a nice feature?
  - dotancohen 5y ago
    In the vast majority of cases, OP did not check (or even define) edge cases, race conditions, memory usage, network activity, etc etc etc.
- passivate 5y ago
  >This system makes the person arguably _least qualified_ to understand the situation the single arbitrator as to which answer is accepted. What is the argument for the OP being the least qualified?
  - dotancohen 5y ago
    Of all the people involved, he was the one who _didn't_ know how to resolve a specific issue.
Breza 5y ago
Currently the only incentive to post a new answer to an old question is you get a special badge. That's neat but limited. I've gone through old R questions and posted answers with a more modern syntax and my answers rarely get much attention. I'd be cautious about overriding an accepted answer. Imagine a situation where there's an easy-to-understand algorithm that's O(n^2) and the "Correct" algorithm that's O(n). If OP only has a dozen datapoints, the former might be the best answer for her specific problem, despite it clearly not being the right approach for most people finding the thread via Google in the future.

zatkin 5y ago

Or you could just edit the accepted answer if it’s wrong? I’ve seen a few posts where the top contains an “UPDATE” that, in summary, links to another answer.

irrational 5y ago

As a side gig I teach an intro to web development class online. Every semester I get students asking for help about why their code isn’t working. Nine times out of ten, they are trying to use some jQuery code they copied from stackoverflow because it is the accepted answer. They don’t yet know enough to recognize that it isn’t vanilla JavaScript (which they are required to use).

dotancohen 5y ago
The best way to address these students is to ask them "Why do you think that this should work?"
tacticalDonut 5y ago
What platform do you use to teach the course? I've been teaching an ML from scratch course for junior devs at my company and think it'd be useful for others.

inglor 5y ago

They actually recently added this feature - you have a "this answer is outdated" button you can press. Note sure what the reputation threshold to see it is.

jsmeaton 5y ago
I've browsed a few tags and haven't been able to see that button and my reputation is 40k+ so I'd expect to have all features enabled. Are you able to point me to a Meta/Blog post or even just a screenshot please? I'd be keen to see it. Actually it looks like https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/405302/introducing-outdated-answers-project https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/405302/introducing-... is the announcement for wanting to tackle the problem. Not sure if they've implemented it yet though.

weinzierl 5y ago

"An idea I've had for a long time is that "the community" can vote to override an accepted answer." I don't know if this is still a thing, but for some time in the past when an answer was edited more than a certain amount of times it automatically turned into what was called a "community wiki" answer.

dotancohen 5y ago

> but the only person who can change an accepted answer is the OP. This system makes the person arguably _least qualified_ to understand the situation the single arbitrator as to which answer is accepted. Was it the most efficient? First to answer? Copied-and-pasted right in with no integration work? Written by someone with an Indian username? Got the most upvotes? Made a Simpsons reference? Written by someone with an Anime avatar?

aweiland 5y ago
Seems like the answer is to add a community accepted answer that's easier to change over time, while keeping the accepted answer feature as is.
NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
>This system makes the person arguably _least qualified_ to understand the situation the single arbitrator as to which answer is accepted. Devil's advocate: If it fixed their problem adequately, it's acceptable. Maybe separate "acceptable" and "ideal" answers would be a nice feature?
- dotancohen 5y ago
  In the vast majority of cases, OP did not check (or even define) edge cases, race conditions, memory usage, network activity, etc etc etc.
passivate 5y ago
>This system makes the person arguably _least qualified_ to understand the situation the single arbitrator as to which answer is accepted. What is the argument for the OP being the least qualified?
- dotancohen 5y ago
  Of all the people involved, he was the one who _didn't_ know how to resolve a specific issue.

Breza 5y ago

Currently the only incentive to post a new answer to an old question is you get a special badge. That's neat but limited. I've gone through old R questions and posted answers with a more modern syntax and my answers rarely get much attention. I'd be cautious about overriding an accepted answer. Imagine a situation where there's an easy-to-understand algorithm that's O(n^2) and the "Correct" algorithm that's O(n). If OP only has a dozen datapoints, the former might be the best answer for her specific problem, despite it clearly not being the right approach for most people finding the thread via Google in the future.