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Note: this question is not about chameleon questions and therefore it is not a duplicate of questions asking about that kind of phenomena.

I have asked a question about switching "new" Google Maps to "old" ones permanently about two years ago and I have received a perfectly valid answer in the very same day. This answer has received +67 score so far.

Now, two years laters, after Google has turned off feature mentioned in this answer, it becomes no longer valid and given solution no longer work. However, today, someone has given another answer with solution, that is currently working, but with disclaimer, that it will probably be also invalid soon.

What should I do in this case:

  • leave it as it is, to honor two-years long working / 67+ points receiving answer,
  • leave it as it is, because today's answer is already marked as soon obsolete as well or
  • reaccept = unaccept not anymore valid answer and accept the (shortly) working one?
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  • 2
    This might be very specific to one site. Did you ask this on the site Meta?
    – Patrick Hofman
    Commented May 7, 2015 at 8:03
  • 3
    @PatrickHofman nothing about this question seems specific to one site, except that trejder provided an example (but any example will necessarily be asked on some site, so it hardly seems fair to claim that providing an example makes the question site-specific).
    – David Z
    Commented May 7, 2015 at 9:03
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    @PatrickHofman Agree with David Z. I don't understand, how can you find this question site-specific? Described situation can virtually happen anywhere across SE. Can you bring any site name in SE network, where such situation couldn't happen?
    – trejder
    Commented May 7, 2015 at 11:06
  • Actually, this very same question was discussed on the Web Apps Meta: What do we do with answers that are outdated?
    – Fish Below the Ice
    Commented May 8, 2015 at 18:04

1 Answer 1

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As an asker

You can just do nothing, but if you have an interest in making the site useful for others, it helps further that interest if you ensure that the answer you accept works for you and for as many other people as possible. With that in mind, the best thing to do is to unaccept the previous answer, which is now wrong, and accept the answer which is currently correct.

If you know the new answer will become incorrect in the future, the best thing to do is to make a note to come back to it later and unaccept it once it becomes inaccurate.

As an answerer

(This goes beyond what you asked) You can just do nothing, but again, if you have an interest in making the site useful for others, it helps further that interest if you keep the information in your answer current. With that in mind, you have two options if you find that an answer of yours is out of date:

  • Edit your answer to remove the old, now-incorrect information, and add the new, correct information
  • Delete your now-incorrect answer and post a new, correct answer

If someone else has posted the correct information before you got to do so yourself, don't turn your answer into a duplicate of theirs. (Unless your answer is accepted and you don't think the OP of the question will come back to change the accepted answer; then you can edit your accepted answer to contain the correct information, and cite whoever posted it before you.)

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    A third solution to the answerer situation I've seen employed has been to edit your previous answer with a call-out of when it was applicable, e.g. "Prior to Google removing feature X in version 5.3 on 4/11/2013, the solution was…"
    – M. Justin
    Commented Jan 13, 2021 at 6:34

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