Should the answer that appears on "top" be the OP's "accepted answer" or the answer with most votes?

Question

UPDATE:

Having gotten mixed feedback on this change across the network, SE has decided as a default to keep the "old way", but sites can have a discussion like this one to request the "new way":

Unpinning the accepted answer from the top of the list of answers

Thanks to everyone for the feedback. Seeing that some sites do not want to unpin the accepted answer, we decided to move forward with the status quo and not to change the default behaviour on existing sites. If you think unpinning the accepted answer on your site makes sense, please do the following:

(meta discussion, share with SE staff via status-review, log decision)

It doesn't seem like there's going to be consensus here in favor of a change, so it seems we'll stick with the default option of how things were. We can re-start the conversation in the future.

I updated Academia.SE's consensus to be "50/50" since the voting is quite even between the two options.

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On Academia.SE, all other StackExchange sites, and until recently Stack Overflow, the answer that appears first is the accepted answer (if there is one), the one that the OP decides is to be marked "correct". It is followed by all the others in order of votes by default (users can also change to sort by Active or Oldest).

As a result of user feedback, especially about "accepted answers" that have become outdated, and a test that suggests users on Stack Overflow benefit from the top answer being the one with most votes rather than the one that is accepted, this behavior has now changed on Stack Overflow.

Also quoted from that Meta announcement:

We can change the way the engine sorts answers in site settings. We would like to hear from you all if it is something you want to see on your site. (Please let me acknowledge in advance that we will not be able to run a test on each site.)

Currently we are planning to move forward with one of two scenarios, based on your feedback:

1. Unpin the accepted answer on all SE sites by default and pin it back on a few sites that ask us to do so.

2. Keep the accepted answer pinned on all SE sites by default and unpin it on a few sites that ask us to do so.

Please let us know what you think will work best for your site! If you can discuss this question with your community it would be awesome. We are going to collect feedback before the end of September 19th.

So, what do y'all think? Whichever way the default ends up going, how would you like things to behave on this site?

Answer 1

The top-voted answer should appear on top, even if a different answer has been accepted (this is the new behavior on Stack Overflow).

Answer 2

The accepted answer should appear on top (this is the status quo).

Answer 3

I urge readers to vote to pin the accepted answer at the top of the page. This feature does a lot of silent good work whilst the very few annoying instances where an OP picks a (seemingly) obviously wrong answer are very scarce indeed, however memorable these are (see Cag51's post and the information therein).

Despite the terms voting and upvoted, there is a severe problem in terms of how democratic the voting system is. Early posts get voted on a lot, later posts much, much less so. Around 48+ hours after a question is first posted, the number of views by active voting members drops off significantly.

Pinning the accepted answer allows relatively 'late'-arriving but excellent and helpful answers to be recognised and pinned to the top of the page where they currently benefit readers. Without this feature some of the best and most helpful information on the site will languish unseen underneath a list of earlier mediocre answer posts. This current system still retains the benefit of having the highest-voted answer directly beneath the selected one. The new one will see many existing good posts vanish into obscurity.

Another benefit of the current system is that the Original Poster is the only member who is routinely alerted to new answers, especially those that arrive weeks, months or years after the question is originally posted. Because of this, they are in by far the best position to curate their own question page, and, if appropriate, accept a late answer. Certainly, the slew of voters on the original few answers will not be notified and will not get the chance to vote anew on the full range of answers.

Lastly, the current system affords some respect and agency to people who ask questions on the site. Whilst there are always vaguely annoying members in every aspect of the daily life of every SE site, we don't allow this to destroy or make us abandon useful and helpful features of the site. Where the odd muddle-headed OP might select the wrong answer, this is rarely anything more than an annoyance, and a rare one. In contrast if we in essence lose the selected answer feature, users will lose the benefit of many excellent posts and the helpful information that they provide. The vast majority of people asking questions here are sensible adults fully capable of making appropriate decisions regarding selected answers.

Some SE sites, for instance SO, get thousands and thousands of views by active voting members. So, for example, the highest voted answer on SO has over 33,000 votes. On these sites a very high number of votes over a quite sustained period may be the best indicator of the accuracy and helpfulness of an answer. Here, however, this is not the case.

The voting system on Academia SE is a good thing. However, it is not perfect for many reasons, including those detailed above. The 'accepted answer' feature helps provide checks and balances within the system. In particular it defends against the unintended and unwelcome tyranny of the early upvoted answer. Just like a healthy democracy, where second chambers and the separation of the legislature, the judiciary and the police provide safety in the form of checks and balances, the same is true of the accepted answer feature in its current form. Vote to keep it!

Answer 4

Accepted answer should come first, because it is the one that answered the question. The person asking the question knows what kind of answer they need better than anyone else, so they should make that judgment call.

Here's an example of a question I asked on the Politics.SE where the top-voted answer turned out to answer something that I didn't mean to ask. I edited the question to clarify that, but the top-voted answer remains the top-voted answer, and it should logically not appear at the top.

Answer 5

Among the choices given, I like pinning the accepted answer best. But my far preferred solution would be a change in the UI so that the individual reader can choose, either per-site or overall in their profile.

I note that it is currently possible to order the answers various ways, of which "by votes" is the default. But a checkbox to pin (or unpin) the accepted answer (or not) along with choice on the ordering would be simple enough to implement.

Note that with pinning the accepted answer, the top voted answer comes next by default, so it is trivial to find.

Answer 6

This post does not express a view either way, but provides some data (using queries from this Politics.SE post, which I reran for Academia with various modifications).

Findings:

• We have 10.0K posts with 2+ answers and an accepted answer
• Of these, there are 1,080 posts (10.8%) where the accepted answer has 3+ fewer votes than the top answer (on most questions, a clear difference).
• For 93 of these 1,080 posts (8.6%), the accepted answer was written at least 3 days after the top answer (and so the discrepency could be attributed to an excellent late answer)
• 89 of these 1,080 questions (8.2%) are closed
• 19 of these 1,080 accepted answers (1.8%) have a negative score (and there is at least one answer with a nonnegative score).

Answer 7

I think the change is a mistake for Stack Overflow, because there answers are more clearly objectively right or wrong. I've seen many posts where an answer that simply doesn't work gets most votes, and the asker - who, unlike most voters, has actually tried the proposed solutions - has picked the answer that actually solves the problem.

Since Academia is a more subjective Stack, where answers more often represent cultural norms or personal experience, I think this is less of an issue. None-the-less, the asker is usually the one who is best placed to judge the answers and most invested in whether they are suitable or not.

It is natural to be irritated by those cases where a good quality, highly voted, answer appears below a low quality answer that is accepted, usually because it is the answer the OP was looking for from the start. However, these are - in my impression, at least - rare exceptions and it would be a mistake to change the system to account for the uncommon case rather than the common one.

(As an aside: my preferred system would be to show the top voted answer first if it beats the accepted one by some margin of votes, say 50% more or 100% more, and a minimum of 10 votes or something. I don't think that can be implemented by individual stacks though so it's by-the-by)

Answer 8

My answer to this question has gathered a ton of down votes and is accepted. It is currently hovering in negative space. Perhaps it is a case study for the question here.

I stand by my answer there.

I answered late as I explained in the first sentence. My prediction seems to have been correct.