Comment by MrZander | Hacker News Reader

Comment by MrZander | Hacker News Reader

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I ran into this yesterday. I got an upvote on an answer I posted 7 years ago that was marked accepted. There was a much better answer with 3x the upvotes at the bottom of the list and the OP account was no longer active.

Wondering if there was a protocol for changing the accepted answer, I searched meta. I found the consensus is: 'Accepted' is at the sole discretion of the OP and shouldn't be mean it's correct, just that it answered the OP's question. Which I think is BS as it elevates the answer to the top of the list and gives it credibility.

Why is the OP the czar that chooses the correct solution just because they asked the question first? Honestly, the OP is often the _least_ qualified person to validate an answers correctness.

Sort of think there should be two systems, and OP selected answer, and a community selected answer. This is already what happens to some extent, it’s just a matter of UX I think to clearly mark the answers the community thinks are good with something akin to the green check you get (and I guess more importantly move these to the top)

I’m not sure this matters too much for experienced devs, it’s really just a noobie trap to only look at a low upvote but chosen answer right?

I like the two system approach, that is a good idea.

Perhaps it is just a matter of properly ordering the answers, maybe giving community votes precedence over the accepted answer?

For example, here is the question I was talking about: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11970586/apl-removing-el...

My answer should not be accepted, I was brand new to APL when I answered it. The "correct" answer not accepted and buried below two 0 vote questions.

The thing is, my answer _works_, just not well. I can easily see myself overlooking a better solution in a case like this. Maybe I'm just lazy though haha.

SO sometimes puts the highest-voted answer at the top when the accepted answer has fewer votes.

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