Unpinning the accepted answer from the top of the list of answers

status-completed

If the accepted post has score equal to another post please show the accepted post upper.

Suppose there are 3 answers for a post say A, B and C. Let A score be 1, B and C score be 0. Let C be the accepted answer.

Like you can see then if votes order is choosen then the post will be in order A>B>C. But I guess it should be made A>C>B. If 2 or most post have same score out of which one answer has been accepted then that accepted answer should be upper than the remaining answer because since OP accepted it, the accepted answer might be more helpful than the other answers at same score.

This is a modified copy of my answer to the related question on Meta Stack Overflow.

status-deferred

Unpinning the accepted answer is a good change for the majority of SE sites I imagine.

However, I would still very much like a clear indication (near the top of the question) that an answer has been accepted and offer a link to jump to it. As it is now, when viewing the question, there is no indication that an answer has been accepted unless you scroll through the answers (if there are other answers that have more votes).

(Something similar has already been suggested in comments by @ColleenV and @V2Blast.)

Perhaps a link next to the sorting buttons, something like:

Stack Overflow is probably the site where the concept of accepted answers makes the most sense, and even there I think pinning the accepted answer is overall harmful in the end. For non-technical sites the accepted answer concept is often less meaningful simply because it is harder for the asker to evaluate answers, especially when the questions aren't about fixing a problem. On SO many questions can be objectively evaluated even if you have less knowledge than the answerers, e.g. now the code compiles or now I get the correct result. For more "fuzzy" subjects the asker might just accept the answer that best fits their preconceived notions, or simply the one that sounds and looks the most impressive.

For this reason I would argue that the default should be not to pin the accepted answer to the top. And any site that likes to do that different can request changing this back. If you are convinced that this is the right choice for Stack Overflow, unpinning by default is the right choice for the network as well. This is not one of the cases where SO is the outlier that needs special handling.

I agree with the change, thanks for doing this.

For users who want to keep the old behaviour, I've written a small userscript, Accepted Answer Pinner (direct installation link – Stack Apps post). It pins the accepted answer back on top, unless it's a self-answer that wouldn't qualify for pinning in the old situation.

Not every moderator or high-rep user participates on Stack Exchange Meta, and not every hi-rep or engaged user participates on their child site.

Nevertheless, I think the option to unstick the accepted answer from its pole position should be discussed by each individual meta site. Please feature this post and communicate this proposal to all the moderators across the network. I think it's possible that many moderators, especially on smaller sites, might be oblivious to this announcement.

status-completed

Keep the accepted answer pinned on meta sites

Oftentimes, on meta sites, the behavior of pinning the accepted answer to the top is preferred:

• Answers can be different opinions in a discussion, and accepting the one that is eventually the community's consensus or is the one that eventually gets implemented will make that fact clear to others reading the question, especially if that one isn't the one with the highest number of votes.

• A question may receive an official response from the team, which may not be the highest-voted answer, usually simply because other community answers were posted first, but in some cases may be due to the answer being negatively-received. However, it's still preferred to have it pinned to the top so that others can more easily see the official response.

Please don't unpin the accepted answer on meta sites, at least.

If there are concerns that the wrong answer (not representative of community consensus) would be accepted, then another, separate feature, to allow moderators and staff to change the accepted answer on meta sites, should be implemented. Personally, though, in my experience, that happens a very tiny minority of the time, and in the rare cases where it's a problem, a developer can change the accepted answer so it remains pinned even if it's later voted out.

Please let us know what you think will work best for your site! If you can discuss this question with your community it would be awesome.

We've already discussed this on Mi Yodeya. As of this writing, the question there is +12/−0 and the only answer is +10/−0; both ask for the accepted answer to be unpinned. So Mi Yodeya wants the accepted answer unpinned. Thanks!

status-declined

I'll throw in what I suggested on Politics SE: A hybrid model. Acceptance indicates that "this answer is what the asker was looking for." On Politics, that can range from "I feel informed" to "This confirms my political beliefs so I like it."

Even so, I think acceptance still has value, but shouldn't be the end-all of the matter.

Adding a site-configurable weight to the acceptance is probably a good compromise feature. Accepted answers can enjoy top billing until an answer outscores them by a significant margin (e.g. 125%+). For low-scoring answers this could get distorted but I think that, overall, it lets an asker indicate "this had particular value for me" but allows majorities of presumably knowledgeable people indicate that such an answer may not actually be superior.

status-declined

We've had some discussion over on Puzzling, where there is a definite consensus on keeping accepted answers at the top (i.e., not unpinning).

One person looked at some concrete examples, which suggest to me that actually "keep the accepted answer at the top, unless its score is actually negative in which case don't" might be a better option (for us) than either "unpin completely" or "leave exactly as is".

status-completed

To aid sites in deciding what impact this might have, is there some SEDE magic query that would list and/or count questions where this change would alter the answer order? It would be nice to have local data about the scale of the change.

I think choosing between "pinned" and "unpinned" is not good enough. I think "pinning" should be replaced network-wide with something that accomplishes the original goal of pinning the accepted answer with fewer negative side effects and possibly even a slightly improved user experience, instead of either taking away something that some of the community find useful or leaving something in place that causes a negative user experience for some of the community.

According to What does it mean to accept an answer?

Accepting an answer is important as it rewards posters for correctly answering your question, informs others that your issue is resolved, and pins the answer to the top so others reading your question read that answer first.

I interpret that to mean the goal of pinning the accepted answer is to make it more visible to future readers. There are ways to accomplish that without forcing readers to see the answer that personally worked best for the question's author before they see the best answer as voted by the community.

I would prefer an easily noticed (but not intrusive) button to bring up the answer the author chose. If there is no accepted answer, the button should not be visible. The checkmark should continue to exist so the accepted answer is still highlighted as I scroll through the answers.

Not only does this put the decision on whether to read the accepted answer first in the hands of the reader, I think it improves the accessibility experience because someone using a screen reader will be able to tell immediately if there is an accepted answer by the presence of the button. If "pinning" can change according to the site, it would be difficult for someone using a screen reader to get directly to the accepted answer (or know whether one exists) on sites that choose not to pin it. I don't have a lot of experience using a screen reader, so I'm just speculating.

I don't know if this solution is the best one, and I would support more elegant alternatives, but it's better than forcing each site to come to a consensus about whether to pin or not to pin.

Sports SE will use voting on a meta post to make the decision, or failing sufficient engagement, we can discuss it as a mod team with CMs.

If other sites need a template for this discussion, they are free to use this question and its answers.

status-declined

Can a setting be included in the user profile to keep the accepted answer pinned to the top? My preference is to have the accepted answer shown first.

Ollie said:

(...) because it'll work for more people.

Sonic the Hedgehog said:

(...) this should be a per-site setting, because I'd want to see the accepted answer on the top on some sites but not on others.

We've discussed this on CGCC and have come to the conclusion that we'd absolutely like the accepted answer to be unpinned on our site.

A problem I see with this is the new better answers to an old question, e.g. once the Hot Network stampede has subsided. This leaves better or even the correct answers buried.

What I thought about before is vote normalization based on Q age. Of course some may want to game such system by answering later, but here's the cool thing: it works the same for downvotes. Call it the anti-necroing device (i.e. be sure to add to the topic).

Just food for thought. I'm not really familiar with posting answers on MSE, so let me know if I shouldn't have posted this tangential viewpoint.

status-completed

A point raised in the comments by ColleenV is that Google displays the accepted answer in the snippet. My understanding is that this is automatially done by getting the answer with acceptedAnswer set on it (see docs). Will this change for this experiment to be the top answer, or is that outside of the scope?

In Stack Overflow in Portuguese we opened a Meta post discussing the matter.

Devemos mudar a ordenação das respostas, não afixando a resposta aceita antes das demais?

Votes up are "Unpin", down are "Keep pinning".

Currently we have:

• 12 + 1 votes to unpin ¹

• 1 to keep pinned

¹ The "+ 1" vote to "unpin" is per the last post line (OP can't vote, but stated he wants the change too).

The "unpin" is active now, and the score had no recent changes.

status-declined

Right now, we are discussing this issue on Math.SE. I posted an answer there, but I think it is relevant here also.

I think the best solution would be to allow users to choose between sorting strictly by the number of votes, and putting the accepted answer at the top. Right now, there are three ways of sorting the answers: active, oldest, and votes. I would like to add a fourth option that ignores whether an answer has been accepted or not. (What this option should be called is another question.) As before, the site should "remember" the option that you used last time.

status-declined

Accepted post is pinned second, if it's not the top-scoring answer.

My thought process:

1. Sometimes accepted answers are underrated in terms of voting, especially in relation to Fastest Gun in the West, Hot Network Questions, and answers to old questions (slow, but well-thought-out answers => fewer upvotes).

2. However, sometimes the most upvoted answer is indeed far better than the accepted answer (or perhaps the accepted answer is flat-out wrong).

I like this approach because it's so simple, and it has the property that "accepted answer" + "most upvoted answer" remain the top two answers (in some order).

(This was originally a comment since I didn't put much thought into it at the time, but Mari-Lou A proposed making it an answer. There's still some boundary cases that need ironing out, e.g. two equal-score top-scoring answers vs. accepted answer.)

The Mathematics SE community is in favor of unpinning accepted answers (judging by the response to the statement "I am in favor of ordering answers by number of votes only.")

We've discussed this on Chemistry Stack Exchange. The only answer is by one of the highest-rep members and a moderator, with a score of +10. The general consensus is to unpin the accepted answer i.e. we support this proposed change.

Some of the reasons given there, which I think would apply equally well to some other sites too -

1. The OP may not be the best judge of answers. This can happen if they themselves have a limited knowledge of the subject (as in the case of many students who frequent the Science sites, me included), and some of them hastily accept the first answer and never come back.

2. The number of votes is an indicator of which answer the community, as a whole, believes to be the most useful. The opinion of the whole community is certainly more likely to be a better judge of answers than a single person's accept-tick.

Our vote at rpg.se What is our stance on "Unpinning the accepted answer from the top of the list of answers"? features a great variety of answers.

Until we reached the first cutoff period on September 19th, our position expressed in Doppelgreener's answer was by a significant margin in favour of unpinning the accepted answer.

Until September 24th, the voting remained in favour of unpinning accepted answers. On that day, Doppelgreener declared in an edit to align her position with the opposing views while keeping her initial answer intact. This edit was the first edit to her answer after September 9th.

In particular, her views aligned thereafter with KRyan's answer, first posted on September 14th, that steadily gained support at the same time. After that, the voting trend changed to have an influx of negative votes on Doppelgreener's answer - as of now, KRyan's answer sits at an only slightly lower score than hers.

The first answer, posted by Screamline, is against unpinning the accepted answer. As of now, it is the answer with the fourth-highest score. Our, as of now, second highest-scoring answer, posted by Thomas Markov, gives insight into various statistics.

We feature our discussion on meta until October 14th. We first featured it shortly after KRyan added their answer.

The top scores are currently about 50/50. Doppelgreener's answer has the highest participation of currently 48 votes, KRyan's answer has 35 votes (this answer had six fewer days to accumulate initial votes available to the other two), and Screamline's answer has 31 votes.

We concluded our vote with a slight majority of votes in favour of unpinning accepted answers, at 36 votes, which, however, also includes 15 downvotes bringing it to the score of 21. The minority vote in favour of pinning accepted answers ends at 31 upvotes and only 9 downvotes, scoring 22. In conclusion, we remain at a 50/50 score with no clear consensus. So we continue with the status quo, which is the old default of pinning accepted answers until we decide to revote.

Would you please post a link to a Data Explorer Query, which would list the Q&As (on a given site) where the accepted answer is not also the top-voted answer?

I think it would be helpful, when deciding, to see examples of which topics are affected by this decision.

Ask Ubuntu

We discussed on our meta whether to have the accepted answer unpinned or not.

Most people voted in favour of unpinning the accepted answer from the top, it seems.

A relevant concern that was strongly expressed was about obsolete answers appearing ahead of newer ones. A very popular answer proposed a solution to that instead of directly addressing the question of whether to unpin. One answer said that an advantage of pinning the accepted answer to the top was that the OP could change the accept if the old answer became obsolete. (I upvoted the answer even though I do very much want accepted answers to be unpinned). My opinion is that this rarely happens; another answer argued that it's more likely that an obsolete answer is pinned at the top while more up to date answers, often with more votes, are stuck below, and I feel the same, but it's hard to be sure (on our site, more than 9000 questions have an answer that outscores the accepted one, but I do not know, for example, how many of them are newer than the accepted answer by a margin of years).

I completely share the concern with the problem of obsolete answers, but I think that accept pinning, to the extent that it might mitigate that problem rather than exacerbating it, is a very weak mechanism, and I hear that better solutions are in the pipeline somewhere. If that is the case and we are going to have some way to deal with obsolete answers more effectively than we can with current tools, then I think all concerns about unpinning can be considered addressed and we can go ahead with it.

Ask Ubuntu Meta

We separately discussed whether or not to unpin accepted answers on meta and nobody disagreed with my opinion that we should leave them pinned. Some folks even upvoted my answer about it, so I guess they agree.

TL;DR

Unpin on main and keep pin on meta, please, and thanks a lot for asking <3

The issue with the Accepted Answer is about what Stack Overflow is and how it is intended to be used.

There are 2 possible ways to think about Stack Overflow:

1. A help-desk where someone asks a question and gets help from the community. Accepted Answer makes a lot of sense here because you let people that OP has found a solution and no longer needs help.
2. Wikipedia in Q/A format, of user-generated question. That is what SO is in practice. Here an Accepted Answer doesn't make sense because answers are not truly meant to help the OP in particular. The fact that OP does get help is tangential to the site's purposes and is merely useful because it entices people to generate content by asking questions for others to answer. The real goal is to help visitors who come from Google or other search engines.

When SO was new and little-known, and didn't have a critical mass of existing solutions and accumulated upvotes, it was 1) and Accepted Answer made sense, but it eventually became 2) and Accepted Answer was no longer needed.

Literature Stack Exchange

As one of the moderators on Literature Stack Exchange, I created a meta question asking whether the community wants accepted answers to be unpinned. Several people indicated in the chatroom that they have no opinion about the issue. The votes on the meta question suggest a slight preference for keeping accepted answers pinned at the top.

It is worth noting that answers on Literature SE don't get outdated over time, unlike answers on Stack Overflow, where validity or relevance can be influenced by technological evolution.

Language Learning Stack Exchange

As one of the moderators on Language Learning Stack Exchange, I created a meta question asking whether the community wants accepted answers to be unpinned. The votes on the meta question suggest a slight preference for keeping accepted answers pinned at the top.

It is worth noting that answers on Language Learning SE would rarely get outdated over time, unlike answers on Stack Overflow, where validity or relevance can be influenced by technological evolution.

Computational Science SE

via voting on Meta decided that we support unpinning the accepted answer from the top.

Thus,

• if "by default" the accepted answer is unpinned for all communities, we don't need anything special.
• otherwise, if unpinning requires explicit request, by the means of this message we express one.

French Language Stack Exchange

As one of the moderators on French Language Stack Exchange, I created a meta question asking whether the community wants accepted answers to be unpinned. The votes on the meta question suggest a preference for unpinning accepted answers.

It is worth noting that answers on French Language SE are much less likely to get outdated over time than on Stack Overflow, where validity or relevance can be influenced by technological evolution. Language does evolve, but not nearly as quickly as technology.