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Some time ago I found an answer which I had found useful and upvoted.

Recently I bumped into the same issue again and, trying to apply the steps from the answer, I found that the solution is now deprecated, as pointed out in a comment (which I upvoted).

After some searching I found an answer on StackOverflow that is up-to date and working for me, so I upvoted that as well.

Now what to do about the original answer?

  • I tried removing my upvote, but it says it's locked (see here for an explanation).
  • The comment is over a year old, so I'm assuming the original author didn't know what to do about it or doesn't care to update the answer.
  • I could add another comment, pointing to the newer answer I found.
  • I could edit the answer but that doesn't feel right since it's not mine. Options are
    • adding an obvious warning at the top, potentially including a link to the new answer,
    • updating it to show the new solution or
    • both.
  • I could flag the answer, but that doesn't seem right to me either.

What is one supposed to do in such a case?

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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In these cases, I edit the answer to add a note like

This answer was valid for Ubuntu 20.04 and previous versions. For Ubuntu 20.10 and later versions, see this answer (link).

In case the new solution is short, I add it to the existing answer (instead of just posting the link), so that it is relatively easy to discover.

I personally refrain from downvoting an existing answer which worked when the answer was written.

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  • Sounds like a good solution. Note that I didn't say I wanted to downvote the answer but to remove my upvote which I'd find less offensive but rather reflective of the value the answer contributes to any future readers.
    – FriendFX
    Commented Nov 30, 2023 at 1:22
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    Editing the answer seems better than changing the upvote. The result is more useful to future readers. And more useful to marking future duplicates.
    – user535733
    Commented Nov 30, 2023 at 18:49
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    No need to use such a large font.
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Commented Dec 2, 2023 at 21:32
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    Voting is determined by the quality of the answer, or at least in my opinion it should. Removing an upvote from an answer indicates that the question quality for the relevant version has decreased - but is it the case? Think about it like this - will a person using Ubuntu 20.04 find this answer useful? For this user, does the answer adhere to your quality standards? If the answer to both are yes, then there is no need to "deduct" upvotes, because objectively the quality of the answer for that specific version did not deteriorate. Cont'
    – kishkovert
    Commented Dec 3, 2023 at 12:19
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    This is especially correct if the question explicitly states some specific Ubuntu version (e.g. "Can not disable hibernation in Ubuntu 20.04"), since a correct high quality answer for that version is the only thing that can get an upvote - an answer for a more recent version would be incorrect in that context.
    – kishkovert
    Commented Dec 3, 2023 at 12:38

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