Return to Answer

Ever since accept rate is not shown and it is no longer considered good practice to generically advise people to accept more answers, many problems associated with wrongly accepted answers have become far less severe.

I believe this was one of those problems. That is, now that we are no longer telling people to accept for the sake of accepting (which in hindsight, was the unintended effect of the "your accept rate is low" comments that were once considered good), an answer being accepted actually means something.

Since an acccepted answer these days is actually likely to have helped the OP, it makes sense that it is shown first (even if it didn't make sense before). Therefore, this behavior of the system should not be changed.

As a separate, related point: It makes sense to show the answer the OP thought was right before others. The order answers appear when you sort "by votes" is supposed to be an order of curation. Its purpose is to show you what people other than the people who wrote the answers thought of them. What answer the OP liked best, and what answers the community liked best, are independently useful pieces of information. Putting the accepted answer first when it was written by someone other than the OP (which is the system's actual behavior) ensures both pieces of information are always readily available.

Neither acceptance nor high score actually mean an answer is right. The reader will always have to figure that out from a combination of acceptances, upvotes, and answers' actual contents (and the contents of other answers and comments that may refer to them).

Ever since accept rate is not shown and it is no longer considered good practice to generically advise people to accept more answers, many problems associated with wrongly accepted answers have become far less severe.

I believe this was one of those problems. That is, now that we are no longer telling people to accept for the sake of accepting (which in hindsight, was the unintended effect of the "your accept rate is low" comments that were once considered good), an answer being accepted actually means something.

Since an acccepted answer these days is actually likely to have helped the OP, it makes sense that it is shown first (even if it didn't make sense before). Therefore, this behavior of the system should not be changed.

As a separate, related point: It makes sense to show the answer the OP thought was right before others. The order answers appear when you sort "by votes" is supposed to be an order of curation. Its purpose is to show you what people other than the people who wrote the answers thought of them. What answer the OP liked best, and what answers the community liked best, are independently useful pieces of information. Putting the accepted answer first when it was written by someone other than the OP (which is the system's actual behavior) ensures both pieces of information are always readily available.

Neither acceptance nor high score actually mean an answer is right. The reader will always have to figure that out from a combination of acceptances, upvotes, and answers' actual contents (and the contents of other answers and comments that may refer to them).

Ever since accept rate is not shown and it is no longer considered good practice to generically advise people to accept more answers, many problems associated with wrongly accepted answers have become far less severe.

I believe this was one of those problems. That is, now that we are no longer telling people to accept for the sake of accepting (which in hindsight, was the unintended effect of the "your accept rate is low" comments that were once considered good), an answer being accepted actually means something.

Since an acccepted answer these days is actually likely to have helped the OP, it makes sense that it is shown first (even if it didn't make sense before). Therefore, this behavior of the system should not be changed.

As a separate, related point: It makes sense to show the answer the OP thought was right before others. The order answers appear when you sort "by votes" is supposed to be an order of curation. Its purpose is to show you what people other than the people who wrote the answers thought of them. What answer the OP liked best, and what answers the community liked best, are independently useful pieces of information. Putting the accepted answer first when it was written by someone other than the OP (which is the system's actual behavior) ensures both pieces of information are always readily available.

Neither acceptance nor high score actually mean an answer is right. The reader will always have to figure that out from a combination of acceptances, upvotes, and answers' actual contents (and the contents of other answers and comments that may refer to them).

Ever since accept rate is not shown and it is no longer considered good practice to generically advise people to accept more answers, many problems associated with wrongly accepted answers have become far less severe.

I believe this was one of those problems. That is, now that we are no longer telling people to accept for the sake of accepting (which in hindsight, was the unintended effect of the "your accept rate is low" comments that were once considered good), an answer being accepted actually means something.

Since an acccepted answer these days is actually likely to have helped the OP, it makes sense that it is shown first (even if it didn't make sense before). Therefore, this behavior of the system should not be changed.

As a separate, related point: It makes sense to show the answer the OP thought was right before others. The order answers appear when you sort "by votes" is supposed to be an order of curation. Its purpose is to show you what people other than the people who wrote the answers thought of them. What answer the OP liked best, and what answers the community liked best, are independently useful pieces of information. Putting the accepted answer first when it was written by someone other than the OP (which is the system's actual behavior) ensures both pieces of information are always readily available.

Neither acceptance nor high score actually mean an answer is right. The reader will always have to figure that out from a combination of acceptances, upvotes, and answers' actual contents (and the contents of other answers and comments that may refer to them).

Ever since accept rate is not shown and it is no longer considered good practice to generically advise people to accept more answers, many problems associated with wrongly accepted answers have become far less severe.

I believe this was one of those problems. That is, now that we are no longer telling people to accept for the sake of accepting (which in hindsight, was the unintended effect of the "your accept rate is low" comments that were once considered good), an answer being accepted actually means something.

Since an acccepted answer these days is actually likely to have helped the OP, it makes sense that it is shown first (even if it didn't make sense before). Therefore, this behavior of the system should not be changed.

As a separate, related point: It makes sense to show the answer the OP thought was right before others. The order answers appear when you sort "by votes" is supposed to be an order of curation. Its purpose is to show you what people other than the people who wrote the answers thought of them. What answer the OP liked best, and what answers the community liked best, are independently useful pieces of information. Putting the accepted answer first when it was written by someone other than the OP (which is the system's actual behavior) ensures both pieces of information are always readily available.

Neither acceptance nor high score actually mean an answer is right. The reader will always have to figure that out from a combination of acceptances, upvotes, and answers' actual contents (and the contents of other answers and comments that may refer to them).

Ever since accept rate is not shown and it is no longer considered good practice to generically advise people to accept more answers, many problems associated with wrongly accepted answers have become far less severe.

I believe this was one of those problems. That is, now that we are no longer telling people to accept for the sake of accepting (which in hindsight, was the unintended effect of the "your accept rate is low" comments that were once considered good), an answer being accepted actually means something.

Since an acccepted answer these days is actually likely to have helped the OP, it makes sense that it is shown first (even if it didn't make sense before). Therefore, this behavior of the system should not be changed.

As a separate, related point: It makes sense to show the answer the OP thought was right before others. The order answers appear when you sort "by votes" is supposed to be an order of curation. Its purpose is to show you what people other than the people who wrote the answers thought of them. What answer the OP liked best, and what answers the community liked best, are independently useful pieces of information. Putting the accepted answer first when it was written by someone other than the OP (which is the system's actual behavior) ensures both pieces of information are always readily available.

Neither acceptance nor high score actually mean an answer is right. The reader will always have to figure that out from a combination of acceptances, upvotes, and answers' actual contents (and the contents of other answers and comments that may refer to them).