1

Is that even possible?

Question here with my answer the accepted one and the one below that a better one!

Yeah, I've looked here already but I'm not going to plagiarise the better one; that would feel totally wrong!

Yeah, I tried deleting my own answer, but as it's the accepted one, I cannot... :-(

  • 1
    P.S. No, I don't care losing 15 rep... :-) – Fabby Jul 10 '17 at 20:04
  • As I am informed, accepting an answer is 100% the OP's personal subjective selection. It is not possible for the community or even moderators to change acceptance on behalf of another user. The only chance I see here is that you delete your answer yourself (although it could be that the accept mark blocks you from deleting it yourself, not sure - in that case a mod could probably delete it for you). – Byte Commander♦ Jul 10 '17 at 20:20
  • Yup, tried deleting before I posted the question... Will add that to the Q. – Fabby Jul 10 '17 at 20:26
6

Accepting answers is 100% the original question poster's opinion. We don't mess with that. We also can't unaccept an answer or force answer acceptance. The community can't really, either. (Evidence: my answer on "Easiest way to setup Ubuntu as a VPN server, the +500 bounty I was awarded on it by posting a working answer long after an accepted answer was there, and the fact the 'accepted' answer has been flagged to be removed multiple times with all of those times being declined, from what I can tell)

We also tend to try and avoid deleting accepted answers, whether they're wrong or not. I'd add a blurb to your post as an edit that "Note: the other answer here is better, consider using that one instead" and link to it. I've had to do this at times myself in the past.

Sorry, but I'm not comfortable sniping an answer simply because one is 'better' whether yours or not. Especially when it's already accepted - we try and leave that to the 'community'. (There's only a few cases where I'd torch an answer that's already accepted, and that's usually only if the now-accepted answer is going to cause seriously horrible things or now links to malware or something)

  • Done! Stop editing your answer and pussyfooting around the fact that your hammer is just a rubber one! >:-) :D :D :D ;-) – Fabby Jul 10 '17 at 20:56
  • Surely we should try to remove an accepted answer if it really is completely wrong – Zanna Jul 11 '17 at 9:19
  • @Zanna flat out wrong? Probably. But "okay but inferior to another answer" while still being fairly "right"? Yeah that's usually the grey area and is case-by-case. However I don't think that Fabby's answer actually is wrong so... – Thomas Ward♦ Jul 11 '17 at 12:43
  • @ThomasWard I thought OP can change the accepted answer. Isn't that the case? – Pilot6 Jul 11 '17 at 14:27
  • Sure, I wasn't referring to Fabby's answer, just wanting to be sure about the general comment :) – Zanna Jul 11 '17 at 14:49
  • @Zanna True. But if it's wrong only because of the age of the question (say a Chrubuntu question for example) then it's not just going to be 'removed', just because it is now incorrect - at the time it helped, but age changed things. – Thomas Ward♦ Jul 11 '17 at 17:42
  • Sure, that makes sense – Zanna Jul 11 '17 at 18:24
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AFAIK, mods cannot change accepted answers. See this Meta SE post, as well as this one and this one too

So yeah, I don't believe they can do that. Unless, of course, @ThomasWard infuses his hammer of power with some TNT or C4 :D

  • Let's wait and see if Thomas can delete an accepted answer if I ask for it myself! (Now we'll know how heavy his hammer really is...) Moohahahaha! – Fabby Jul 10 '17 at 20:30

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