Should the best answer continue to be displayed as the first answer?

Question

Hello, community!

As a continuation of our recent discussions concerning the quality of the answers, I'd like to bring up a question about the order of the best answers. Currently, when an answer is selected as the best, it will always be displayed as the first answer, regardless of the votes on the answer. Any subsequent answers are then sorted based on the number of votes. The best answer can only be chosen by the author of the question.

This raises some concerns to users:

• What if the best answer is no longer up-to-date?
• What if the answer is chosen as the best, but the community consensus is that there is a better answer?
• What if the author of the question selects the best answer without verification?

The proposal here is to adjust the "best answer" behavior so that it no longer displays as the first answer. The best answers would still keep their green check mark and frame, but the order of the answers would always be determined by the number of votes. This way, if the best answer becomes outdated, the community has a way to downvote it and escalate another answer to be displayed at the top. At the same time, the "best answer" could be renamed to better indicate that it is an answer that was chosen by the question author (e.g. "chosen answer")

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

Answer 1

• What if the best answer is no longer up-to-date?

Moderators can deselect it for that reason. Or let user flag it.

• What if the answer is chosen as the best, but the community consensus is that there is a better answer?

I think the users need keep their ''power'' to select the best answer. At the end the users are asking for a personal help and no one can say if the best answer satisfying the creator question, just the creator of that.

• What if the author of the question selects the best answer without verification?

Moderators can deselect it for that reason. Or let user flag it.

Comments

im in with what trululu says, this should be task of moderators, lets remember that sometimes the answer with most upvotes could be totally wrong, misleading or so, also could be the best answer? yes, but best answer can be undo, instead u can't erase upvotes from a bad answer. if needed i guess an option to get other answers first (later answers, most votes, etc) i could be in, but by default u should see the answer that *should* be correct, not really  the one most liked.

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I disagree that moderators should be responsible for deselecting the best answers. Keep in mind that moderators also don't have infinite knowledge about Tibia. Their task is to make sure that the posted content is following the TibiaQA guidelines. It would be impossible for them to verify the validity of every single answer.

The advantage of votes is that every user viewing the question can cast a vote to determine an answer is correct/not correct. With the "best answer" we rely on a single person to make a good call.

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Re: "you can't erase upvotes from a bad answer"
Yes - you can remove both an up-vote and a down-vote. Also even if one user up-votes the answer, other users can down-vote it if they believe the answer is incorrect so that the average score is still negative.

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you can erase yours, but as some moderator some time ago said, there have been various answer that were totally wrong and was totally upvoted due lack of knowledge too. (and so far i have seen u can't remove all down/upvotes)

if some better answer appear im agree with a way to remove select best answer, even not only from moderator side but from player side, somehow, but actually, what is the point then into having a best answer, if such best answer wouldn't be the most important/the "best"?  is like tricking the own system.

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My problem with the upvote tactic, is it can be abused or end in a popularity contest where the user who answer influence directly on the upvotes he got.

If I made a good answer (Not the best, but good) there is no reason ask friend on site or not for upvoting my to get the Best Answer. The Best Answer can be select just for a single upvote of diference.

I understand your point about the knowledge of moderators, so the flag part can be an option right?

Long time ago, one of my propose was give a minimum like 0.2 points per upvote with a daily limit (20 upvotes). Probably it can help if this new feature is implemented (More votes, more best answer with the neww system).

Answer 2

I think it should be most upvotes displayed first, even not selected as the best answer. The reason why is your eyes will be drawn to the first answer there is, but if pinned best no matter how many votes it will be displayed first. Our community is very good with upvoting/downvoting. In some cases, no votes at all are seen. In this case, if 2 answers are seen with 0 votes it should remain as the first answer displayed first? Maybe this will encourage others to use votes if they know more votes = first displayed answer.