125

My vote is for Obsolete answer. As you have stated, the sorting would stop the new answer from being on top, which means the obsolete info is what the curious guy with the same question will face. This is a big con of adding a new answer, as I've seen lots of better newer answers not getting more votes than the old answer. Votes on answers marked as ...


85

The proper solution to this problem was suggested 5 years ago and is the #18 overall highest voted answer on all of MSE (higher if you don't include Jon Skeet Facts answers): Score = Lower bound of Wilson score confidence interval for a Bernoulli parameter If we provide this sorting formula, the newer, correct answer can get upvotes, which can make the ...


42

I'm just throwing this idea out there for an alternate solution to consider. I love the "Linked Questions" section. Why not expand that a bit? In most cases if I'm looking for another version to a question, the first thing I check is the "Linked Questions" and "Related Questions" sections. Usually I'll find what I'm looking for, but it would be nice if ...


31

As I have said before, please bring out the stats and/or cases. How many of the answers do you consider obsolete? How much is it a problem, actually? You are encouraging fiddling with the basic mechanism of Stack Exchange without the facts, blindly, as it seems. Would you please: Create a Stack Exchange Data Explorer (SEDE) query or conduct a survey of a ...


30

A moderator post notice could fit the bill nicely. Currently, there are three types of notices: citation needed This post does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this post by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. current event Post is related to a rapidly changing ...


29

As a moderator I would find it very helpful if comment owners could validate obsolete flags on their own comments, but I'm not comfortable with users being able to decline them, for two reasons: Sometimes users misuse flags, consistently. It's all well and good for an upstanding user to decline noisy flags, but this does nothing to let moderators know ...


20

If a question is specifically about change in a technology, it isn't a duplicate. If an answer to a given question has been made obsolete by a new version of a technology or regulation, you can ask and self-answer a new question that's specifically about the new version. In the question: Avoid closure as duplicate by including the version number of the ...


16

When showing answers, take into account the age of the answer when deciding which answer to show first. If there is an answer that is only a few months old, and has 25 votes, compared to an answer 6 years old with 100, I suspect the answer with 25 votes that is newer is likely to be a good answer. At the very least, an option for a newly voted question ...


15

It's a real problem and often comes down to software versioning based on technology change. And as said, the outdated answer to the current software version is still valid for that particular version. Based on this, the SharePoint Stack Exchange site has always included a version-specific tag - just because configuring Search Service is very different in ...


15

I've had some recent experience with this. How to add multiple font files for the same font? The accepted answer was invalidated several years ago by the spec, but no one had corrected it, though a few other answers mentioned buggy behavior. After spending a few hours trying to figure out why my code was broken, I discovered the spec was changed. An ...


14

However, I'm unable to flag my own comments, and I don't want to delete them and break the thread. You can simply use the "other..." comment flag and explain to the moderators that the comment discussion between you and PearsonArtPhoto is now obsolete (and should go the way of the dodo).


10

The basis of the question appears to have been information on Wikipedia that wasn't quite correct, and the answers speak to this. This isn't the first time that's happened. Since the question links to the articles, someone curious enough is going to figure it out pretty quickly. Still, the answers remain the same - so the question is no less valid than it ...


10

Suggestion: emphasis on simplicity, and what's known to work well Encourage use, greater and more widespread use, of existing approaches: bounties chat comments that invite people to chat – and so on. Please, do not lose sight of the essence of Stack Exchange, in particular: no distractions. With that essence in mind, I should view any/all of the ...


10

I would go with Introduce an "Obsolete Answer" vote BUT Recently I came across an issue over this which I later discussed on meta. Here according to the user all other answers were outdated just because another user used a FlexBox solution which was not that well supported even when the user answered the FlexBox solution. In such cases, these users will ...


9

I recommend and practice a simple two step method: edit the existing post to include a version or date qualifier. This is less likely to be seen as changing the intent and preserves the answer for those working with old versions. Adding a flag as suggested by others would complement this as it would allow downsorting obsolete answers. add a new answer ...


9

There are some automatic handling processes in place for comments and it sounds like you've run into one of them. If a comment contains a black-listed word, then a single flag will remove it. The second auto-handling is based on the number of flags on a comment. Once a comment reaches a specific threshold, it automatically deletes the comment and the ...


8

Hierarchy or other fancy Facebook stuff in comments has been refused many, many times. This sentence in your question explains all: Let's have a hierarchy of comments, like some forums do! The Stack Exchange sites aren't forums. You are not here to discuss. Questions and answers should stand on their own. Comments are there to clarify questions and ...


7

I find it helpful to start with a concrete (though hypothetical) situation. There is currently no predefined way to copy all the values in a Lua table. This turns out to be a problem that Lua beginners face fairly often. As a result, my question on the topic became Famous and I got a pleasing variety of answers. What should happen if a deepcopy() function ...


6

Ironically, the developer answer to this question is: Now, we're not going to start tacking on even more new close reasons quite yet. We want to watch and listen for a while first, but we are hearing some pretty reasonable concerns raised. This was two years ago. Recently, I had a conversation in a site specific meta site that was confused by this post: ...


6

Couple of ideas: Mark as a Legacy answer - far more positive than Obsolete Provide badges for many legacy answers to add a positive spin Gamify editing by creating a separate edit rep with separate rules ie. +2 per edit upvote, Max +10 per upvote to post etc. Gamify certain types of clean-up flagging with separate flagging rep and allow voting on raised ...


6

First, read the duplicate and try out the accepted answer (and every other answer you think would work for you). If the answers work for you, great! If they don't, then edit your question to reference the duplicate and clearly explain why its answers didn't work for you. If you do all of the above correctly, your question won't be a duplicate anymore. If ...


6

I think adding a new flag will be a good solution. It will work like this: User finds a question or answer which is out-dated (S)He will flag the question or answer as outdated Moderator or high-reputation user will be able to see such flags Verification If obsolete then the question or answer is marked as obsolete This must be coupled with the ability to ...


6

How to Encourage More Up-to-Date Answers (A Modest Proposal) I see that the topic of aging or obsolete posts has been on the discussion list for quite a while now. And I understand why it is hard. Perhaps looking at the problem from a slightly different angle might help. A suggestion: Instead of trying to purge the aging answers the site should provide a ...


6

Not really I think. This reflects the opinion of a large group of users and is relevant still at this time. It is always possible for a user that didn't vote to close yet to reuse this close reason. Also it says 'Hey, this question was closed because of this and some people found the question useful so voted to reopen. Keep it that way!'. Either way: it is ...


5

Yes, questions like that should be closed with the following off-topic sub-reason: The problem described here can no longer be reproduced. Changes to the system or to the circumstances affecting the asker have rendered it obsolete. If you encounter a similar problem, please post a new question. If you don't have the privilege to close-vote you can flag ...


5

As @Dukeling said: I mainly use obsolete, and, to date, 99% of my comment flags have been approved. You may need to spend some time looking at the comments you're flagging and whether they are truly obsolete, and whether someone who just popped in can easily see that they are. On the one hand, the 5 seconds can be a bother if you have thought about ...


5

I would like to see the simple option to sort by date in both directions. Currently, I can sort by "oldest", but then I have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the posts to be able to see the newest answer - which may not even have any upvotes yet. Sorting by newest would allow people to add posts for updated info without messing up anything related to ...


5

For the specific case of an accepted answer becoming obsolete I've two suggestions that basically boil down to "don't treat the accepted answer as special". As I mentioned in the comments and as has been suggested on MSO - Order highest upvoted answer before accepted answer - it would be helpful to just show the accepted answer in its "natural" vote order. ...


4

You shouldn't edit the question, because like you say it would invalidate the question. Note that the question starts with this (emphasis mine): Wikipedia currently says


Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible

 
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