2

This question already has an answer here:

I recently answered this post. After answering the question with what I believed to be the right answer, I was thanked and it was selected to be correct.

After this, rmaddy called me out on giving a messy solution. He gave, what I immediately recognized as, the true correct solution to the problem. I upvoted his post and went to delete my own.

I then realized that I could not delete my answer from stack overflow. I immediately started receiving down votes placing me under the 1k reputation I had just achieved and was excited about hitting.

So, I copied his answer, put it in my post and gave him credit. I then explained the scenario and tried my best to do, what I believe to be, the right thing.

What should I have done? Why can't I delete my answer after it is accepted in such a scenario (like when it is receiving votes below 0)?

Response to duplicate:

I believe this answer gives a completely different perspective on the question than this post, and could be found useful to someone trying to better understand why the system works the way it does.

marked as duplicate by Alexei Levenkov, Stephen Rauch, Michael Gaskill, HaveNoDisplayName, Toto Mar 31 '17 at 19:22

This question has been asked before and already has an answer. If those answers do not fully address your question, please ask a new question.

  • So... I assume this got fixed in the meantime, because I don't see your answer. Long story short, you can't delete an answer that is accepted. You can't, because the accept mark means the OP found this useful, which means the site will likely want to keep that valuable content. You should flag your post in such situations – Patrice Mar 31 '17 at 18:25
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    @Patrice You can delete your own upvoted answer. – Servy Mar 31 '17 at 18:28
  • @Servy Really? I was under the impression that you can't, just like you can't delete a question with an upvoted answer on it. Thx for the clarification, edited my comment to what is the truth – Patrice Mar 31 '17 at 18:29
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    "Accepted" does not mean "selected to be correct". – user663031 Mar 31 '17 at 18:30
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    There are multiple discussions on meta.stackoverflow.com/search?q=delete+accepted+answer. Please make sure to clarify why you took such strange steps even this approach is never recommended to my knowledge and how this request is different from existing once. – Alexei Levenkov Mar 31 '17 at 18:38
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    @Sethmr While you're correct that your question provides perspective, it's not fundamentally different, which is why it's closed as a duplicate; that's the practice here on SO, MSO, and the whole network. The good thing is that you're not punished in any way for having a closed question - it's still kept around, and now it's linked to the other question for the other perspective, so that people get all of the information. – Michael Gaskill Mar 31 '17 at 20:47
  • Thank you for the feedback. @MichaelGaskill Should I not edit the post in such a manner if it is marked to be closed for future reference? – Sethmr Mar 31 '17 at 20:53
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    @Sethmr In such cases, no. I believe that there are reference questions that ask that very thing, somewhere here on MSO or on MSE. If your question has been misunderstood and closed in appropriately, then by all means, do exactly what you did. Splitting hairs on question specifics will almost always be resolved by closing as a duplicate, rarely by leaving both questions open, and typically only then for specific types of questions. You've done no harm, only sent the question back for review. Not a big deal, just not necessary in this case. – Michael Gaskill Mar 31 '17 at 21:10
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It's not appropriate to just copy someone else's answer in entirety, without adding your own original content, even if you cite them. That's plagiarism.

If you have an accepted answer that you feel is bad, and should be deleted, simply flag the post and inform a mod that you have since realized that the answer has major problems and that you want to delete it, but can't because it's accepted; the mod can delete the post for you.

You can't delete it yourself to prevent people from vandalizing their own useful content.

  • Preventing deletion of the post in such a scenario until that point is guaranteeing that my reputation takes more of a hit than it deserves being that I desired to give credit to the person with the real "correct answer". – Sethmr Mar 31 '17 at 18:30
  • @Sethmr The post would need to attract 8 downvotes just to end up costing you more rep than the acceptance alone would have given you. And of course it's irrelevant anyway because the rep changes will be reversed when the post is deleted anyway. – Servy Mar 31 '17 at 18:32
  • I did add my own content in that I wrote an apology for my misinformation and explained why I copied his answer. I don't want the answer with the green check to misinform users prior to the deletion of the post. – Sethmr Mar 31 '17 at 18:33
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    @Sethmr That's meta commentary, and also doesn't belong in an answer at all. And no, that's not original content contributing to the answer. It's just noise that should be removed. – Servy Mar 31 '17 at 18:34
  • You do realize that I obviously "vandalized" my post more by trying to give him credit than if I had been able to delete the post. Being able to edit the entirety of an accepted answer provided far more vandalism tools than the ability to delete an accepted answer. – Sethmr Mar 31 '17 at 18:35
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    @Sethmr The difference is that you editing your post to vandalize it draws attention to it, putting it to the top of the active list, and allowing other people to roll back that vandalism. Deleting is both much harder to reverse (you need 3 20k rep users (or a mod) rather than literally anyone in the world being able to reverse it) and doesn't draw attention to itself, so the people that could fix the problem aren't likely to see it. – Servy Mar 31 '17 at 18:38

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