https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/411352/outdated-answers-accepted-answer-is-now-unpinned-on-stack-overflow Stack Overflow [ ] Loading... 1. 2. 0 3. +0 4. + Back to Stack Overflow Return to the main site + Tour Start here for a quick overview of the site + Help Center Detailed answers to any questions you might have + What's Meta? How Meta is different from the main site + About Us Learn more about Stack Overflow the company + Business Learn more about hiring developers or posting ads with us 5. 6. Log in Sign up 7. current community + Stack Overflow help chat + Meta Stack Overflow your communities Sign up or log in to customize your list. more stack exchange communities company blog 1. Home 2. 1. Public 2. Questions 3. Tags 4. Users 3. Teams Stack Overflow for Teams - Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. [teams-illo-free-si] Create a free Team What is Teams? 1. Teams 2. Create free Team Teams Q&A for work Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. Learn more Outdated Answers: accepted answer is now unpinned on Stack Overflow Ask Question Asked 7 days ago Active today Viewed 39k times 308 14 Last week, as part of our Outdated Answers project, we ran a test on Stack Overflow to see what would happen if we stopped pinning the accepted answer to the top of the list of answers. As expected, there were no negative repercussions when we made this change. So, as promised, today we are making this change permanent. By default, answers are now sorted strictly by Votes (descending order by highest score), and the accepted answer's order in the list is based on its score. If you prefer to sort by Active (descending order by answer's created or edited timestamp) or Oldest (ascending order by answer's created timestamp), the accepted answer is also unpinned. Read on if you're interested in details on what we learned from the experiment. How we conducted the test For questions where the highest scored answer was not the accepted answer and the user's preference was the default Votes sort, 50 percent of users saw the accepted answer pinned to the top and the other 50% saw answers sorted by the highest score with the accepted answer unpinned. For both sorts, our success metric was the rate at which users either upvoted or copied. Findings We analyzed the data in a number of ways. * Users copied or voted on any answer. We looked at users who copied all or part of any answer, or users who took any voting action (upvote, downvote, etc.) on any answer. Our hypothesis was that there would be no statistically significant difference between the two sorts, but we found that when the accepted answer was unpinned there was a 4% increase in copying and voting. Success rate was 20.3% when the accepted answer was pinned, and 21.1% when it was unpinned. (In case you are wondering, upvotes far outnumber downvotes, so we weren't terribly concerned that the two types of votes were mixed together in this analysis.) * Users copied the first answer. There was a whopping 61.6% increase in users copying from the top answer when the accepted answer was unpinned and the highest-scoring answer was first in the list of answers. Success rate was 6.9% when the accepted answer was pinned, and 11.2% when it was unpinned. * Users upvoted the first answer. We did not have enough sample size to draw statistically significant conclusions, but there was a 90.5% increase in users upvoting the top answer when the highest-scored answer was shown first. Upvote rate was 0.5% when the accepted answer was pinned, and 1.0% when it was unpinned. * Users copied the accepted answer. There was a 43.6% decrease in users copying from the accepted answer when the highest-scored answer was shown first. Copy rate was 6.9% when the accepted answer was pinned, and 3.9% when it was unpinned. * Users upvoted the accepted answer. We did not have enough sample size to draw statistically significant conclusions, but there was a 39% decrease in users upvoting the accepted answer when the highest-scored answer was shown first. Upvote rate was 0.5% when the accepted answer was pinned, and 0.3% when it was unpinned. * Users copied an answer that was neither the accepted nor highest scored answer. There was an 8% increase in users copying from an answer that was lower down in the list of answers when the highest scored answer was shown first. Copy rate was 5.4% when the accepted answer was pinned, and 5.8% when it was unpinned. * Users upvoted an answer that was neither the accepted nor highest scored answer. We did not have enough sample size to draw statistically significant conclusions, but there was a 3.5% decrease in users upvoting an answer that was lower down in the list of answers when the highest scored answer was shown first. Upvote rate was 0.48% when the accepted answer was pinned, and 0.46% when it was unpinned. Feedback Please leave any bugs related to unpinning the accepted answer as answers below this post. We will monitor this post until Wednesday, September 15. Report any further issues after September 15 as new questions on Meta. discussion featured answers answer-quality announcement Share Follow edited Sep 8 at 16:48 [Y0o] MachavityMod 29.1k3131 gold badges208208 silver badges301301 bronze badges asked Sep 8 at 15:49 [d9c] Anita TaylorStaffModAnita Taylor 3011313 gold badges5151 silver badges4848 bronze badges 57 * 92 "There was a 43.6% decrease in users copying from the accepted answer when the highest-scored answer was shown first." This seems pretty darn promising. I suspect it will have huge ramifications for programming for years to come, even if it is the kind of thing that is a 'between the lines' or 'below the radar' change. - TylerH Sep 8 at 16:05 * 7 I wonder what data could be collected provided the experiment was conducted for longer, but the results look very promising. In about a month from now will be able take it from here with SEDE queries, and if the findings are confirmed, that would mean a great success for the project. - Oleg Valter Sep 8 at 16:08 * 98 I love that this happened. This was one of the first things I attempted to do when I was hired at Stack and wasn't able to get buy-in to get it done. I thank the team for tackling the problem and making the change. - Taryn StaffMod Sep 8 at 16:10 * 7 This is great, especially in cases where an answer was accepted that either (a) wasn't the best answer at the time (but the asker just accepted due to first answer, or easiest answer, or peer pressure from the answerer or from the accept rate scenario) or (b) is no longer the best solution to the original problem because better techniques or features have come along. (b) is the target here I presume, but (a) is very real. - Aaron Bertrand Sep 8 at 16:21 * 3 Note for people having trouble understanding "decrease/increase" terminology: it means that compared to the control group (pinned answer), the treatment group (unpinned answer) did some action less/more. - Braiam Sep 8 at 16:49 * 4 Perhaps this suggests that we need to call the accepted answer something other than accepted? I am not suggesting a community answer, attempting to get the mob to select high-quality content, will be harder than trying to herd an entire fleet of flying wet cats in airplanes. Forget about the snakes on the planes you have to worry about those wet cats. - Security Hound Sep 8 at 16:50 * 5 @Pureferret "Wrong/harmful" is highly subjective and hard to quantify. We tried a flagging exercise to try to quantify this, but the results weren't conclusive. - Anita Taylor StaffMod Sep 8 at 16:59 * 3 @Pureferret well, it is mostly the precise reason for unpinning the accepted answer. The OP is unlikely to know whether the answer is harmful/insecure, etc. The community, however, is far more likely to know that and express that by downvoting and/or commenting on such an answer. I am not sure about the hard numbers, but if you want to, it's possible to quantify via SEDE on the SQL tag since a lot of people use the Auto Review Comments userscript to point out that an answer is vulnerable to SQL injection (as an example) - Oleg Valter Sep 8 at 17:19 * 2 While an improvement, it sometimes leads to deviant cases like this where the most upvoted answer is, for some reason, extremely popular even though it's not right. - user4581301 Sep 8 at 17:19 * 2 See announcement on MSE. - bad_coder Sep 8 at 17:23 * 3 @user4581301 well, those are far rarer than the opposite. And there are tools that the community can use to fix those, unlike the accepted answer. - Braiam Sep 8 at 17:39 * 3 @user4581301 That question seems like one (of many) that simply has been relegated to the dustbin of history. Might be worth asking in the C++ chatroom or somewhere if folks can clean up that question and the answers (there's a NAA there that has lasted over a decade), or maybe create a canonical answer, since it has that issue and seems fairly popular still today (with 34k views). - TylerH Sep 8 at 19:41 * 3 It does make one wonder what the value of a "selected answer" is. If anything it seems to deter further answers, even though as this experiment shows non-selected answers can be the most valuable ones. - Mark Sep 8 at 20:26 * 4 eh, at least for most questions, marking something as "accepted" indicates that it actually solved the problem the op had. There is some intrinsic value in that information, even if it turns out to not actually be the one the majority prefers to go with it over the long-term. - Kevin B Sep 8 at 20:30 * 3 @nick012000 why wouldn't it be visible? The browser is an application like any other. It can detect copies and pastes. You can even add stuff in the clipboard via JS. There is a copy event as well as a paste event which can be listened for. You can only listen for them on the page, not in other applications, but still. - VLAZ 2 days ago | Show 42 more comments 15 Answers 15 Active Oldest Votes 62 As an almost exclusively necro-poster, this change removes the only potential foothold that was available when I post something valuable on an old page with hugely upvoted answers. If a question from 2010 has 15 answers, and I post a modern, superior answer AND the OP accepts it, then researchers didn't have to journey to the next page/tab to find it because it was pinned to the top of the first page. Should the green tick at least ensure that the accepted answer is always on the first page? While I am generally in favor of this new feature, it is bad when there is a provably incorrect answer with loads of upvotes. On the other hand, it is super good when the accepted answer is significantly downvoted. Share Follow edited Sep 9 at 21:06 answered Sep 9 at 5:22 [RDz] mickmackusamickmackusa 34.8k1616 silver badges3030 bronze badges 19 * 58 They are already working on this: "To start chipping away at this larger issue, we are in the early stages of developing a Trending sort that will give newer answers a better chance of gaining traction." - Outdated Answers: unpinning the accepted answer A/B test - Abdul Aziz Barkat Sep 9 at 5:26 * 35 "AND the OP accepts it" Does that actually happen significantly often? - MisterMiyagi Sep 9 at 6:28 * 28 Not enough, if you ask me. :) ...but it has happened. - mickmackusa Sep 9 at 6:29 * 2 Needs some system so recent votes are worth more in the sorting then very old votes. Eg an answer on page 3 that gets more votes then answers are expected to get on page 3 should move up. - Ian Ringrose Sep 9 at 9:11 * 4 I don't have a magic bullet solution for weighting votes, but I think the votes that are cast in the first hour are the least authentic votes. These votes come from people who are unlikely to be personally benefitting from the answer. Early votes come from users who (I have given an unsavory name to and will curb the urge to use it here) think they are encouraging contributors -- but they are mostly encouraging FGITW contributors. - mickmackusa Sep 9 at 9:15 * 4 A counterpoint: This new system allows your new answers to old questions to be displayed above old accepted answers with no action from the OP required. - Ryan M Sep 9 at 13:27 * 3 @mickmackusa I often vote on answers to new questions based on the content, judged with my expertise. I'm often following questions and answers. Most of the time, two to four answers get posted and I read most of them and vote accordingly. An additional, very late answer is not needed most of the time. Even if a late answer comes along, maybe even one that is necessary due to deprecation of older technology or similar, I'll be notified anyway and vote accordingly. I don't vote to "encourage" contributors. I vote for the benefit of other readers, particularly future readers. - Sebastian Simon Sep 9 at 17:04 * 4 As another necroposter, I really don't care. I've had answers that were posted several years (with +10 answers) after and still got pretty near the top. It takes time, but it does work. - Braiam Sep 9 at 17:42 * 3 And as another [semi-]necroposter, can only sign off on the above. Good content does surface with time, accepted or not. It's actually the acceptance mark that prevented a lot of good content to surface, and I am so glad SE found the balls to do it. - Oleg Valter Sep 9 at 17:52 * 2 Unpinning accepted answers is generally good if the highly upvoted answers are equally good or better. However, IMHO, in most so-called "canonical" posts, accepted answers should not be unpinned. So, looking forward to "Trending sort" feature. - Wiktor Stribizew Sep 10 at 8:37 * For very wrong answers, then I'd add a comment or edit the answer to add a disclaimer. Thankfully, that seems much more rare than the opposite... - rogerdpack Sep 10 at 15:37 * 2 @rog it is rare, but it is a problem. Adding a comment and downvoting is not a solution when the poster of an incorrect answer does nothing. The bad content should never have earned any upvotes. Editing the answer to become correct is a disservice to other correct answers which have rightly earned whatever votes they've earned. The only good outcome in my opinion is for the community to delete the bad content which is damaging the "researcher experience". - mickmackusa Sep 10 at 20:17 * I agree with this, but it would also require that op can change their selected answer which is only possible if an edit has been made to the anwer after it has been accepted afailk. - The Fool yesterday * 1 For outdated answers, I think the onus now lies on the necroposter to edit popular answers to include version numbers. This doesn't help in the case of provably incorrect answers, but it can help when popular answers are made incorrect by some version change. - Daly yesterday * @TheFool the OP can flip their accepted answer anywhere around the page (or remove it entirely) as much as they like, as many times as they like, regardless of editing times. It is different from reversing an up/down vote. - mickmackusa yesterday | Show 4 more comments 60 Thank you for the team for doing this! I think it's a very positive step for the community. status-completed We'll need to remember to make appropriate updates in the Help Center, such as the help answer on What does it mean when an answer is "accepted"? (emphasis changed): If you accept: + someone else's answer: You gain +2 reputation and the author of the accepted answer earns +15 reputation. + your own answer: No reputation is awarded, and the answer does not float to the top of the list. You must wait 48 hours to accept your own answer. + a community-wiki answer: No reputation is awarded. It looks like most of the other references to "float" or "pin" are gone, so that's probably just a single missing reference. There are a few other CW answers on meta (like this one and this one) that might need updates too, though those might depend on whether the unpinning will happen across other SE sites as well. Speaking of that, as this becomes the norm across the site, I am very curious if it has any effect on the acceptance rate on answers, particularly among new users. If there is any motivation in acceptance of "this answer was most useful to me and I'd like to pin it to the top", that motivation may disappear. I don't think that's a likely outcome--the checkmark stays, the +2 rep stays, and the social grace of "my question has been answered" stays as well--but I could see that as a long-term effect based on the wide variety of motivations to accept an answer. Share Follow edited Sep 8 at 20:36 [651] Ryan M 13k22 gold badges3939 silver badges6767 bronze badges answered Sep 8 at 19:10 [hS2] Jeff BowmanJeff Bowman 77.1k1111 silver badges1515 bronze badges 4 * 12 Updated the Help Center article and the first Meta post you referenced. Did not update the second as it was from 2009. - Anita Taylor StaffMod Sep 8 at 20:31 * @Anita Thank you! Yeah, the second one has already been duped against other questions anyway. - Jeff Bowman Sep 8 at 20:33 * 3 And to the set of FAQs (ongoing). - Peter Mortensen Sep 8 at 20:58 * 13 If there are meta posts that contain mentions of pinning, please feel free to update them! - Catija StaffMod Sep 8 at 21:30 Add a comment | 37 This is an excellent change. No more scrolling way down the page to see someone crying out that the accepted answer is bad/broken/ misleading (I hope)! Share Follow answered Sep 8 at 18:58 [660] c-x-bergerc-x-berger 75666 silver badges99 bronze badges 7 * 16 Does not change that as a new answer with recent up votes will still be below an old answer that got many upvotes years ago. - Ian Ringrose Sep 9 at 9:08 * 1 You can always sort by newest if that's preferred - Steven Sep 9 at 13:25 * 2 I'd need sorting by most upvotes in recent time. Difficult to define, what that exactly means. - usr1234567 Sep 10 at 7:52 * 5 @Steven I'd never use sort by newest, because the newest posts are often by people too clueless to realize they're not adding anything new. - Mark Ransom Sep 10 at 14:48 * 3 @usr1234567 Would need some sort of reddit-style "vote weighting" system, where recent votes count more than older votes, for that to really work. - Joe Sep 10 at 15:14 * 8 See also: "To start chipping away at this larger issue, we are in the early stages of developing a Trending sort that will give newer answers a better chance of gaining traction. We are looking for an effective way to give more weight to recent upvotes over older ones." - c-x-berger Sep 10 at 15:55 * For me the win is that passersby can now see a "gooder" answer first instead of the "accepted answer first" (ex: when accepted has 10 votes and the next has 300 I tend to examine the first answer ["it has votes"] before realizing it's junk, outdated, or should be ignored relative to the one below it). Less cognitive overhead for consumers :) - rogerdpack yesterday Add a comment | 23 I agree with the change, thanks for doing this. For users who want to keep the old behaviour, I've written a small userscript, Accepted Answer Pinner (direct installation link - Stack Apps post). It pins the accepted answer back on top, unless it's a self-answer that wouldn't qualify for pinning in the old situation. Share Follow answered Sep 8 at 21:11 [Haz] GlorfindelGlorfindel 20k3030 gold badges324324 silver badges338338 bronze badges Add a comment | 17 When the accepted answer has the same number of votes as other answers, I would expect the accepted answer to be listed first (e.g. here: How to convert string to float in Python? Why is it a float when directly assigned but a string when a user inputs it?) However in the link above, the accepted answer is (currently, for me at least) third in the list (presumably some other secondary sort criteria is applied? It doesn't appear to be timestamp or user rep, but I could be wrong) I am interested if this was a conscious decision (in which case, fine, although I'd be interested in the reasoning); or just an artefact of unpinning the accepted answer (in which case, should we consider adjusting the sort order for this scenario?) Share Follow answered Sep 9 at 8:13 [807] simonalexander2005simonalexander2005 3,7241414 silver badges1515 bronze badges 9 * 13 No other sorting criteria is being used, answers with same number of votes are sorted randomly (refresh the page to see). - Abdul Aziz Barkat Sep 9 at 8:15 * 6 Ah, yes, I see that now. Still, if we have an accepted answer do we want to consider including that in the sort criterion and randomise the rest then? Or not? - simonalexander2005 Sep 9 at 8:16 * 4 This is similar to this feature request. - Peter Mortensen Sep 9 at 9:01 * 3 I think newer answers with same vote count should come 1st as to get same vote in less time they must be better. - Ian Ringrose Sep 9 at 9:14 * 4 @IanRingrose "must" might be a bit strong, but generally I'd agree... unless the vote count is 0... - simonalexander2005 Sep 9 at 10:24 * @simonalexander2005 is your condition on low vote count to discourage making a direct copy of an existing answer, which would appear above it and be more likely to be upvoted? For similar content, the older/original answer should be preferred, but of course unless it's an identical copy that is hard to automate. - craq Sep 11 at 1:08 * 1 @craq yes, for similar content I agree, but where you have a collection of disparate answers with 0 votes "to get same vote in less time they must be better" isn't necessarily true - 0 is the default, it means no-one's bothered to interact with it yet, so you can't say that the vote count really means something in my opinion - simonalexander2005 2 days ago * I came to report this as well. The green tick went from having infinite weight to having zero weight. It should at least be used as a secondary sort criteria. - user3386109 yesterday * Maybe an accepted answer should have it's votes boosted by 1.5x or something. - rjmunro 6 hours ago Add a comment | 16 feature-request Unpinning the accepted answer is a good change. However, I would still very much like a clear indication (near the top of the question) that an answer has been accepted and offer a link to jump to it. As it is now, when viewing the question, there is no indication that an answer has been accepted unless you scroll through the answers (if there are other answers that have more votes). Perhaps a link next to the sorting buttons, something like: Suggested link to jump to the accepted answer Share Follow edited 11 hours ago answered yesterday [e85] MrWhiteMrWhite 24.4k1212 silver badges1313 bronze badges 1 * 2 There's an older comment where this has been suggested. - Sebastian Simon 17 hours ago Add a comment | 10 I'm loving this change! There's just one small point of feedback I have: Can we also have this on Meta? In the past, there have been heavily downvoted answers that got accepted because they basically tell the OP exactly what they want to hear. I think it'd be better not to pin those. Share Follow answered Sep 9 at 10:20 [i63] CerbrusCerbrus 62.2k5959 gold badges308308 silver badges420420 bronze badges 4 * 4 I mentioned that same concern back in the old feature request. There would be some false positives, because the voting culture on Meta is a bit twisted, but overall I agree that we are better off bringing this change here as well. - E_net4 the voter Sep 9 at 10:24 * 5 It has been useful to be able to pin an answer for burnination requests though because usually the initial "Yes, this is a good idea" answer has more upvotes than the eventual "OK, we're officially doing this" answer. IIRC, there are also answers from employees that are both the answer and are wildly downvoted. Would we want an alternative in either of those cases? - BSMP Sep 9 at 11:21 * 11 @BSMP there's a feature request already for this: Add an option for mods and staff to pin a certain answer to the top on meta sites - Andrew T. Sep 9 at 11:34 * 3 @BSMP Reliance on accepted answers for pinning answers was a spotty idea at best, since it requires the asker to actively monitor the question. For burnination, it's a nice-to-have but there are plenty of old good burnination requests by users that are no longer active, so we can't rely on it already. - Erik A Sep 10 at 13:25 Add a comment | 3 How to counter the "Early Bird Effect"? The change could be a way to cater for the outdated solutions but the change also applies to all posts, new or old. Would this change also makes it difficult to find a solution that gone through very detailed consideration by the answerer and that really fit the requirement of OP but just answered it later than the other people who post answers quicker and earlier? From my observation, at least in the tag that I focus mostly in, people who post answers early are more often to get more upvotes than an answer who post later. I would call this Early Bird Effect because new posts are more readily attracting people viewing the posts and more people to vote if an answer is good (but not necessarily the best respective to OP's requirements). People answers late may take extended time in crafting a comprehensive solution that fit well the requirements but then also got the penality? that there are less people to see their answers and thus got less chance for upvotes. Pinning the accepted solution at the top could reduce this kind of Early Bird Effect. Ultimately, it is the OP that have chosen this solution that at least the OP think is best for their requirement. Should we respect their choice that the solution they picked is the best? Understand that sometimes for some OP new to the field, they may not be able to pick the best solution. But I more often see other people who upvote really don't go into the very details of the requirements and think clearly enough for them to judge what's the best solution. So, any remedy for this situation after we unpin the accepted solution permanently? One last comment is that in the old days, even the accepted solution is not the best and/or is outdated, people can still easily check the highest vote answer by scrolling a little bit down to the second answer listed. Now, we are more difficult to find the accepted solution (that's the best at least according to OP) somewhere down in the list of answers. Share Follow edited Sep 9 at 12:51 [rHd] yivi 27.2k2727 gold badges193193 silver badges255255 bronze badges answered Sep 9 at 12:42 [954] SeaBeanSeaBean 16.1k44 bronze badges New contributor SeaBean is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering. Check out our Code of Conduct. 11 * 2 "So, any remedy for this situation after we unpin the accepted solution permanently?" yes - go and vote on all answers. Which is not much different to before. After all, the recent change changed the order of the results in some cases, thus proving that the top answer is not necessarily the most voted one in all cases. And I'm talking about answers that are years old, not something from today. Thus it's not the early bird advantage, either. - VLAZ Sep 9 at 16:17 * 3 "Should we respect their choice that the solution they picked is the best?" it's the one that worked for them. That doesn't mean "best". In many cases OP isn't fit to judge "best". After all, if they did, they might not have asked a question seeking a solution. I don't mean that all question authors are not fit to judge the answers but to highlight that not all question authors are fit to judge the answers. An acceptance shouldn't have that much of an impact. - VLAZ Sep 9 at 16:19 * "Now, we are more difficult to find the accepted solution (that's the best at least according to OP) somewhere down in the list of answers." doesn't that just involve "scrolling a little bit down"? - VLAZ Sep 9 at 16:20 * @VLAZ Agree with what you mentioned about that not ALL OP's are fit to give a good judgement to the best solution. That's why I also mentioned this in my post above. For the old days, the highest votes one, even not accepted will be the SECOND one. Now, the accepted answer could be several positions down the list and could even be buried down at the bottom. - SeaBean Sep 9 at 16:24 * 1 @VLAZ If we are to question whether OP's are qualified to judge an answer, have you even think of those giving the votes could also be even less qualified in judging the answer based on the question ? A very pretty solution but not fitting the requirement could attract quite some votes, but then is it fit for the question ? We can't assume the qualification of OP's but we even can't assume wise judgement from all those upvote is giving a right vote to match the real requirement of the question or not. - SeaBean Sep 9 at 16:31 * 1 A unilateral decision has more impact if it's wrong than one voted on by many. If the accepted answer is further down, you don't need to do anything much different. Look at all the answers, evaluate them, vote on them. If the accepted answer is good, it's going to rise to the top. The "early bird" bonus is definitely not insurmonable. It's just a matter of more people voting. Most early answers I see get something like 3-4 votes tops for being first. If that. While the green checkmark has been a joke for years - VLAZ Sep 9 at 16:35 * @VLAZ I do think voting system is good and avoid the unilateral decision situation. But, we also need to aware that OP's is the real one that faces the problem. He may had been working hours and hours on the problem and thus know much more than other bystanders that only spend less than 1 minute reading the question. That's why I think we better give some more respects and also more proportion of votes to OP's regarding their decisions of picking the answers. I did suggest giving OP's certain number of votes more to counter other votes, or certain % more but seems nothing done on this - SeaBean Sep 9 at 16:50 * 2 You seem to be under the assumption that answers are for the question asker. That's not the case. The question asker is in the extreme minority of people who would benefit from the answers. The question asker is literally one user. The rest of the beneficiaries are everybody else who visits the question. - VLAZ Sep 9 at 16:53 * @VLAZ If the answers were voted only by the question asker or people who visits the question and faces similar problem, I would totally agree with what you say. But the truth is there are a lot of bystanders who may not really know well the problem and even not reading the question in every details but giving votes. Sometimes pretty answers would already attracts a lot of upvotes but without really facing the problem, are they really giving the right votes? Of course, there may be some experts also giving the votes, but chances are non-experts giving incorrect votes could be even higher. - SeaBean Sep 9 at 17:04 * 2 If what you say is true, shouldn't we discard all downvotes because most of them are wrong anyway? Why is this a problem now - your claims make it apparent that it would have been an issue all the time over the last dozen years SO has been active? Why haven't you raised awareness before? Can you provide proof that SO has been using the wrong model all this time and question authors should been the makers or breakers of answers? - VLAZ Sep 9 at 17:10 * 3 "Early Bird Effect" AKA Fastest Gun in the West (FGITW)(?) - Peter Mortensen Sep 10 at 8:24 Add a comment | 1 feature-request If the rationale is that the best answers "rise to the top" so there's no need to pin an accepted answer, please re-pin it on the views where that doesn't happen: "Active" and "Oldest". The "Votes" view is the only one where the most upvoted one appears first. It happens I use the "Oldest" view a lot. Often, the oldest answer is not the best by whatever measure you want to apply, whether it's votes or the question poster's opinion (accepted answer), or objective reality. ;-) Share Follow answered Sep 11 at 12:59 [4Ho] T.J. CrowderT.J. Crowder 902k1717 gold badges9898 silver badges132132 bronze badges 8 * 4 Well, pinning the accepted answer is also wrong on those views: it isn't the oldest nor the active one (which was something that bothered me to no end when I used those). - Braiam Sep 11 at 14:24 * 2 @Braiam - I can see that point of view, but disagree with it. I don't need intellectual purity. I need utility. This would be the most useful thing (to me). - T.J. Crowder Sep 11 at 14:30 * Yeah, that's the thing, the accepted answer is just the one that OP thought that solved their issue (even if it literally doesn't solve the issue, or solves something else). It's not the "best". - Braiam Sep 11 at 15:38 * @Braiam - Yes, but it's a better indicator than oldest or most-recently-active, both of which are usually even more wrong. In fact, I'd say it's a much better indicator. Off the cuff I'd say of questions I've seen with accepted ansewrs, easily 30-70% of them [yes, wide range] are good answers. (Maybe not the best, but good.) - T.J. Crowder Sep 11 at 15:45 * "better indicator" of what? If you want quality... why the heck would you order by anything other than score? - Braiam Sep 11 at 16:49 * @Braiam - I contribute on SO a lot. I find that ordering the most useful for doing that. But I also seek information on SO often as well. I've generally found the pinned accepted answer thing to work quite well for that -- until it went away. (I know enough to scroll around if the accepted one doesn't seem right for what I need, but I've found it's often -- usually -- entirely sufficient.) It's clear that you're not going to talk me out of wanting it back, nor am I going to talk you into it being good to bring it back, so let's just leave it there. :-) - T.J. Crowder Sep 11 at 16:57 * @T.J.Crowder The you can switch between the two modes "searching for answers" and "contributing" by changing the search setting. That is one of the reasons it exist. When you want to get an answer, sort by votes. - MegaIng Sep 12 at 13:41 * @MegaIng - Of course I can, and I will. It's just a pain, and easy to forget, and the change (for those two views) is just pointless. - T.J. Crowder Sep 12 at 14:06 Add a comment | 0 Finally! This pinning of accepted answer gives OP way too much power, and I stopped accepting answers for that single reason. Now I will consider going back to accept answers, even if I still think it's a weird feature. What if there are two or three answers that I think are equally good? What if it comes a better answer later? It serves virtually no point, since the only thing it says is that "OP thought this was the best answer". That has absolutely no use for me when I'm reading a question later. What's even weirder is the culture that it's rude to not single out one answer to accept. But anyway, I'm happy that it finally had its most fatal flaw corrected. Share Follow edited Sep 10 at 8:13 [RIZ] Peter Mortensen 28.9k44 gold badges1919 silver badges1414 bronze badges answered Sep 10 at 2:07 [1mO] kluttklutt 26.8k22 gold badges2929 silver badges6363 bronze badges 4 * 4 If a better answer comes later, the accepted answer can be changed. It does happen. - Peter Mortensen Sep 10 at 8:19 * 3 I don't agree with your stance on accepting answers. In most cases it's very helpful to direct future readers to the most helpful answer and in most cases it's very clear which answer is best. And you as OP are the one who has the best judgement. Also it acts as a brake, somewhat, on later users to keep adding new answers, which I find a very annoying phenomenon on Stack Overflow, because it hardly ever improves a Q&A as a whole. Usually it only adds noise. If there's no clear-cut "winner", well, then don't accept. - Gert Arnold Sep 12 at 9:51 * 2 @GertArnold When it's very clear what the best answer is, that answer typically get upvoted most too. I don't see what an accepted answer adds to that. - klutt Sep 12 at 11:03 * 4 @GertArnold I would possibly agree if questions asked by firsttimers were a clear minority. In the typical case here, OP is NOT qualified enough to have that power. - klutt Sep 12 at 11:05 Add a comment | 0 Are there plans to carry this over to other Stack Exchange network sites? This is probably also useful on non-coding based posts. Share Follow answered Sep 10 at 19:20 [Azl] Alex BealsAlex Beals 1,42577 silver badges22 bronze badges New contributor Alex Beals is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering. Check out our Code of Conduct. 1 * 5 We have a separate post on Meta Stack Exchange where we are gathering feedback. - Anita Taylor StaffMod Sep 10 at 19:45 Add a comment | 0 Some thought needs to be given into how this interacts with deleted answers. Out of curiosity, I went to check out what this did with my most upvoted answer. What I saw was the question at the top (obviously), then all the deleted junk (mostly comments posted as answers by low-rep users), and finally, all the way below that, my answer. From the perspective of someone looking for answers, this is just horrible UI. From the perspective of the person who spent couple of days putting that answer together... well do the math. --------------------------------------------------------------------- For those that can't see deleted posts, here's an illustration: Enter image description here Share Follow edited Sep 11 at 20:37 [RIZ] Peter Mortensen 28.9k44 gold badges1919 silver badges1414 bronze badges answered Sep 11 at 14:30 [AI0] Dan MasekDan Masek 15.2k11 gold badge1010 silver badges66 bronze badges New contributor Dan Masek is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering. Check out our Code of Conduct. 12 * 5 Hey there. I don't think this is really relevant, deleted answers are non visible to the extremely vast majority of humans that interact with posts. For instance, there is exactly one answer in the question you link. Moreover, the "active" sort button is ... active in your screenshot, which also influences answers order. If you sorted by votes this would not happen. - Felix Adriyel Gagnon-Grenier Sep 11 at 14:49 * ... also why did you remove the actual question from your screenshot? in reality the ratio deleted answers / question / answer is way different than what your cropped screenshot presents. - Felix Adriyel Gagnon-Grenier Sep 11 at 14:59 * 1 @FelixAdriyelGagnon-Grenier Because I don't have a screen big enough to take a screenshot that fits it all. Also not sure what reality you're talking about -- there's 7 answers, 6 of them deleted. - Dan Masek Sep 11 at 15:01 * 4 I talk about the reality where 99.9% of users are under 10k reputation points. Just in case you don't know, anyone who isn't logged in, or have under 10k reputation points, doesn't see this. Moreover, you purposefully order answers in a way that lets the deleted ones be on top of yours. - Felix Adriyel Gagnon-Grenier Sep 11 at 15:03 * 1 As for the screenshot, it's ok not to have a big screen, but the way you present this, is that most of the space on screen is used up by the deleted answers, whereas in reality (as in, what people see) the ratio of question to deleted answers is totally not so bad as what you make it to be. - Felix Adriyel Gagnon-Grenier Sep 11 at 15:06 * For instance, if you want to see what most people see, you can look at the question from an incognito window. no deleted answers. - Felix Adriyel Gagnon-Grenier Sep 11 at 15:08 * 2 "you purposefully order answers in a way that lets the deleted ones be on top of yours." -- What? It's on "Active" sort, and I haven't touched that setting in ages. Amazing how well you can guess my ill intentions. Thank you for putting me in my place. - Dan Masek Sep 11 at 15:23 * 2 I don't know about your intentions. I do presume that when speaking about ordering of answers you would yourself care about ordering of the answers. The point is that the problem you speak of, is 100% made from specifics of your situation, while ignoring that your answer is literally 10 times longer than all deleted answers together, and that almost nobody sees that screen like you show it. It'd be great if you addressed any of that. - Felix Adriyel Gagnon-Grenier Sep 11 at 15:25 * 1 For instance, you could take a full page screen shot from the inspector and replace the image in your answer, that would make it less misleading. instructions on how to take full screen shot from inspector : mbsdirect.com/mbs-blog/... - Felix Adriyel Gagnon-Grenier Sep 11 at 15:34 * 1 In the "Oldest" view, your answer appears first (admittedly few users use this view due to it not being the default). - Peter Mortensen Sep 11 at 20:36 * 2 Deleted answers really could be sorted at the bottom unless the sorting order is by date (newest, oldest). Making life a bit easier for >10k is probably a good thing. - Trilarion Sep 12 at 10:41 * 2 Yes, I certainly find it a bit annoying when deleted answers are shown higher than non-deleted answers (when I see a deleted answer I instinctively think I've gotten to the end of the real answers). However, I'm not sure that overriding the sort order is really the answer to this - since I might want to include deleted answers in that sort. I think a better solution would be the ability to toggle the showing/hiding of deleted answers (for 10K> users). - MrWhite yesterday Add a comment | 0 It's a very good step and will surely improve how SO delivers knowledge and the experiment and conclusion were done quite fast. Full marks on that. However, it took extremely long (6-8 years) to even start an experiment about it. Zero marks on that. I think this delay is really bad in general. It shows that there are still huge gains to win by relatively simple adjustments. My conclusion is that by far not enough experiments are done. I hope that this bottleneck can be overcome in the future, although judging from the past I'm not overly optimistic about that. I could imagine at least 10 such experiments per year would be a good number. You would learn more from them. Need an example? What about a copy button on the corner of code snippets. The metric (number of copies) is already in place, the button itself is fairly standard to implement (and standard on many other sites too, so the idea is not really new). An experiment about that could be conducted at extremely low costs. Maybe it would show that people copy even more if there is a button (or maybe not). And it would even save time for the users. There are probably many similar experiments that would not require much work to implement and are often asked for and could be done right now. Please consider doing them soon. Share Follow answered Sep 12 at 10:39 [cc2] TrilarionTrilarion 9,48377 gold badges5252 silver badges9595 bronze badges Add a comment | -18 I expect the accepted answer should be sorted as if it has at least one more vote than it does. But don't know if it will make any difference. Share Follow edited Sep 8 at 20:27 [agM] Dharman 23k88 gold badges5555 silver badges101101 bronze badges answered Sep 8 at 17:00 [699] Ian RingroseIan Ringrose 49.7k11 gold badge2929 silver badges3636 bronze badges 5 * 17 There is no need to enable "double dipping" there. The OP already has the chance to upvote the answer, when they have 15 reputation points, so what advantage would it bring to give OP two votes to influence the sorting of that post? - Tom Sep 8 at 17:08 * 4 I find it strange how this answer currently has a score of -17 while this answer on meta.SE is the most upvoted one there when it's essentially the same request. I actually believe this request makes perfect sense. Perhaps the author just didn't provide enough details? - 41686d6564 Sep 9 at 0:25 * 6 @41686d6564 No, this request here is a bit different. The linked request wants to favor the accepted when it competes with equally scored posts. This request here wants the accepted answer to compete with post having one additional point on their score. Thus 0 score answer and -1 accepted answer would be "equal" here, but not in the linked request. - Tom Sep 9 at 0:32 * @Tom Hmm, that's fair. - 41686d6564 Sep 9 at 0:51 * 1 I think it's the same proposal but worded more "how to implement it" than the desired effect ("equal voted answers, where one is accepted, let's show the accepted above the rest"... I assume? - rogerdpack yesterday Add a comment | -45 Locked for 5 days. Comments on this answer have been disabled, but it is still accepting other interactions. Learn more. Maybe you could sort the answers by the rep what the OP got with them. So: accept equals 1.5 upvote, a downvote equals -0.2 upvote, and bounties as their rep/10. It would be also a way to use bounties to move forward the exceptionally useful answers. The rationale: the indicator of how useful are our posts on the site, is the reputation we got for them. There is no obvious reason to use a different indicator (like the difference of the ups/downs) to determine the default answer order. Share Follow edited Sep 11 at 20:20 answered Sep 8 at 17:11 [BfU] peterhpeterh 1 18 * 22 So an answer with 4 upvotes and 10 downvotes (net 20 points, score -6) , ranks higher than an answer with 2 upvotes and 1 downvote (net 10 points, score 1)? What would be gained by that? Why would you want to make downvotes so much less important in ranking answers? - yivi Sep 8 at 17:25 * 4 I would be on board with this suggestion, if we also set upvotes and downvotes to be worth the same amount of rep - Kevin B Sep 8 at 17:30 * 1 @yivi Upvotes are 5 times more important to us than the downs, this is why they worth 5 times more. It is pretty logical to mirror the same worth also in the default answer order. - peterh Sep 8 at 17:30 * @KevinB Ok, but then the current suggestion to give an explanation of the down should be made a requirement. It is easy to say, if something is bad, saying what would be then good, is much more hard. - peterh Sep 8 at 17:38 * 14 I would suggest Downvotes are not worth 5 times less than an upvote to almost everyone, @peterh . It makes literally no sense that an answer with a score of -15 (+10/-25) is ranked higher than one with a score of 4 (+4/-0) . - Larnu Sep 8 at 17:38 * 1 @peterh That's already a requirement, you can't downvote without giving a reason. Every downvote comes with a reason. It's not our fault Stack hasn't moved on making that reason more visible. - Kevin B Sep 8 at 17:39 * @Larnu No - the usefulness of a post is more important than its unusability. If you are looking for a solution on the internet, you read always bad solutions or no-solutions, until the first good solution. That is an asymmetry, this is why is there are also an asymmetry in the up/down worths. - peterh Sep 8 at 17:40 * 1 "until the first good solution." Yep, so we make sure the good solution is first; glad you agree now. Highest score first. - Larnu Sep 8 at 17:41 * @KevinB There is no such requirement. Only a suggestion appears and we are free to vote down anything. - peterh Sep 8 at 17:41 * 4 You appear to be confused, @peterh , rep and score aren't the same things. Perhaps that's why you think that those with the highest net rep earned should go first. - Larnu Sep 8 at 17:42 * 2 @peterh it's not a requirement, it happens automagically when you click the vote arrow. Every time, with or without your consent - Kevin B Sep 8 at 17:46 * 5 A bountied answer that sits at -19 score with a single upvote would be, more often than not, pinned to the top. How is that useful for users searching for answers? Does this proposal even attempt to make a finding quality content easier for users looking to solve a problem? I see no attempt on reasoning what would be good with this proposed change. With its lack of substance, it looks almost like trolling. - yivi Sep 8 at 17:52 * 3 Bounties motivate good answers. They don't necessarily indicate them; the community does that by voting. - Jeff Bowman Sep 8 at 18:50 * 3 "then the current suggestion to give an explanation of the down should be made a requirement" does this mean that upvotes should come with a A4 page essay on why it was useful, as they are "worth 5 times more"? - Larnu Sep 8 at 19:31 * 4 If it's so easy to explain the downvote, it must be even easier to explain the upvote then, @peterh . Of upvote is worth 5 more times more (as you keep claiming) than a downvote, so the effort to explain the upvote should to be 5 times more, or 5 times easier, no? Otherwise why is a lesser class citizen, according to you, needing to be justified? That sounds like very medieval prejudice to me... - Larnu Sep 8 at 19:48 Comments disabled on deleted / locked posts / reviews | Show 3 more comments You must log in to answer this question. Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged discussion featured answers answer-quality announcement . Welcome! This site is intended for bugs, features, and discussion of Stack Overflow and the software that powers it. You must have an account on Stack Overflow to participate. Help The Overflow Blog * This AI-assisted bug bash is offering serious prizes for squashing nasty code * Podcast 375: Managing Kubernetes entirely in Git? Meet GitOps Featured on Meta * Outdated Answers: accepted answer is now unpinned on Stack Overflow * Congrats to Bhargav Rao on 500k handled flags! 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