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I'm thinking about "What does “lo” in “(no) lo es” refer to?" 1 in particular, but it goes for any.

It's clear that some early answers despite being heavily voted up are actually wrong, but they've been accepted and likely the original questioner no longer uses the site.

Later, correct answers don't seem to ever get the level of upvoting which actually makes the question worse than not useful, it makes it a hazard for learners.

What is the best way to deal with these types of questions? Make a new question with a correct answer that's accepted, despite in effect falling afoul of the duplicate question issue?

1- asked 6 years, 4 months ago (at the time of writing this post)

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  • Related, but perhaps not very useful: meta.stackexchange.com/q/7572/287826. Perhaps a bit more useful: stackoverflow.com/a/493703/445686.
    – aparente001
    Commented Apr 18, 2018 at 3:49
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    Interesante. Supongo que los el problema empieza detectando estas situaciones. Quizá necesitemos un meta-post con una lista de preguntas sobre las que queremos actuar. Otro problema es que no se puede "desaceptar" esa respuesta, ya que posiblemente el OP ya no está con nosotros... Quizá podamos llamar la atención de la comunidad para subir artificialmente los votos de las otras respuestas (no es una solución ideal) o cerrarlas como duplicados de una nueva, (que hacemos wiki?) donde poner las respuestas "correctas" (injusto para las respuestas correctas pero con menos votos?)
    – Diego Mod
    Commented Apr 18, 2018 at 11:55
  • @Diego - "Quizá necesitemos un meta-post con una lista de preguntas sobre las que queremos actuar" - I like this idea and would like to see a brief question and a long wiki answer that people can be adding to and crossing out, similar to a to-do list. A possible slightly different option might be to create a tag for problematic pages. // I don't like the seesaw voting idea because some of those old problematic answers have a lot of upvotes and currently we don't have a huge flock of regular voters.
    – aparente001
    Commented Apr 19, 2018 at 0:09
  • @guifa, gracias! Llevaba tiempo con esta misma inquietud, y no sabía cómo preguntarla. Pasa que, incluso hoy, hay gente que responde desde la intuición, sin fuentes, y llega a respuestas equivocadas. A un hablante no nativo que pregunta le parece razonable y acepta apurado... y ahí quedó.
    – Rafael
    Commented Apr 19, 2018 at 19:34

2 Answers 2

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In general, just placing a bounty won't help much, since the amount of comments and the pinned answer will make it difficult for most readers to get into the "good" one. I think we have to do some social engineering first, in order to have this new answer "shine" better.

There are many options:

  • If the OP is still active, warn them about the accepted answer not being correct and suggest to unaccept it and suggest another one. (In this specific case, it seems to be the case... more or less, since the OP accessed the site few days ago).
  • If the author of the accepted answer is still active, warn them about their answer not being correct and pointing how to improve it.

  • Leave constructive comments on what is wrong and what should be improved.

  • If the author of the accepted answer is no longer active and the question has quite a lof of views, votes... you can consider editing much of the answer (rewriting it) to make it correct.

  • You have to upvote correct answers and downvote incorrect answers.

  • Since an accepted answer gets pinned to the top, it is quite difficult to defeat the effect with another good answer: people won't probably see the new one. For this, I also find it important to write comments to the new readers. In bold, you can specify what is wrong and address readers to another one.

  • Since there are already many comments, you can flag them for removal, so their space is taken by new, juicy information. (Note: for the example question, I already deleted some that were obsolete.)

  • Post a new answer that addresses the question, with the aim of making it a really good answer, or place a bounty to challenge others to do so. Once you have it, that answer will be the one to mention in the comments to the question and accepted answer, saying: Hey, new users, check that other answer: it is the good one.

Make a new question with a correct answer that's accepted, despite in effect falling afoul of the duplicate question issue?

This seems to me to be somewhat of a last resort approach, but I think it would be a very good one: a curated question that can be expressly designed to be canonical. This way, you will be able to write it from scratch and focus in the examples you find that are relevant and useful. After it is posted I would find it normal and natural to make the original one as duplicate of the other: all in all, we want the best questions and answers to stand out. Also, if the original question has some good, unaccepted answers, you can ask to have a merge of the questions so they will all be in the same question thread and the former accepted answer will no longer be and will gently go down in the list of answers.

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Great question. We have many such situations on this site. Brainstorming:

  1. We could be mavericks, take the law into our own hands, and start deleting whole threads because they're so full on nonsense it's too messy to fix.

  2. We could be mavericks, take the law into our own hands, and start deleting accepted but incorrect answers, after some Meta discussion to avoid the appearance of being a police state.

  3. The moderators could post a pink warning banner at the top of the question, e.g. "Warning, the accepted answer is problematic."

  4. The moderators could post a pink warning banner at the top of the accepted but incorrect answer, e.g. "Warning, this accepted answer is problematic."

  5. Delete the bad answer.

  6. Post a new, extremely similar question and draw at least one solid answer to it. Accept the solid answer. Close the question with the incorrect accepted answer as duplicate.

  7. Set a bounty on the question. That is what I did to address the problem at the example question cited. I got the idea from something I remembered asking somewhere, don't remember where. There was an ancient question with an accepted answer, but I was pretty sure the answer was out of date. I wasn't allowed to ask a new, equivalent question, because it would have been a duplicate. So I asked in the site Meta what to do to get an updated answer. I was told to set a bounty on the question.

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    I cannot agree with your first five ideas. Deleting other's questions or answers must be done only if it is really problematic (does not attempt to answer, is spam, and other reasons). But in that case the answer does attempt to solve the problem, even though it is wrong. And I am afraid moderators cannot post a pink warning with custom messages. Nonetheless, your last two ideas are good options. I would add a third one: write a new answer and state in it why you think the accepted answer is wrong. That has been stated in comments but not in other answers.
    – Charlie
    Commented Apr 18, 2018 at 6:00
  • Your last suggestion is the way to go in my opinion
    – Jose Luis Mod
    Commented Apr 18, 2018 at 17:34
  • @Joze - Some people seem to be interested in the second to last too, but you didn't mention that one. Do you have an opinion about that one?
    – aparente001
    Commented Apr 19, 2018 at 0:05
  • @Charlie - I switched to numbering, sorry, should have done this in the first place. Do you want to edit my answer and add a number 8?
    – aparente001
    Commented Apr 19, 2018 at 0:12
  • @Charlie - Me again. I just saw something funny at spanish.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2505/9385. Your username there is still the old one. A blast from the past, as they say. I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that it's a community wiki answer.
    – aparente001
    Commented Apr 19, 2018 at 0:17
  • Funny thing, it seems that old CW answers keep the username as it was in the moment the answer was created. About adding a new point in your answer, I think @fedorqui already included my point in his answer (see last bullet).
    – Charlie
    Commented Apr 19, 2018 at 5:25
  • I think that duplicating questions is not the way to go. It is not in the spirit of the stackexchange platform. Doing a bounty is exactly one of the reasons the bounties can and should be used. Being a community driven website the upvotes for an incorrect answer are bound to happen sometimes but it is exceptional in the grand scheme of things. Doing duplicates will confuse our user base.
    – Jose Luis Mod
    Commented Apr 20, 2018 at 14:21

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