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I made two questions in the site about equivalent expressions in English and Portuguese. See here and here.

Analyzing the answers, I can see that we have a lot of similar expressions, so, a lot of correct answers. Which one should be chosen as correct? I'm trying to choose the answer with apparently more research and more references, but I'm not sure about this approach.

Other example is this question with two answers (one of them is mine and I believe is right), but each one is "correct" for one region (European and Brazilian portuguese).

  • It makes me think about. How others SE language sites deal with it?
  • Exists some standard approach?
  • This type of questions (with more than one possibility of correct answers like my examples of equivalent expressions) are not good for SE sites?
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    Similar question I asked at Philosophy.SE a while ago
    – JNat StaffMod
    Commented Jul 15, 2015 at 19:27
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    We've also mentioned the matter in chat. The short answer is "accept the one that helped you the most and let the votes choose which answers are more useful to the rest". ;)
    – E_net4
    Commented Jul 15, 2015 at 19:52

1 Answer 1

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Although we do have the peculiar difference of cultural diversity when compared with other sites in SE, the usual guidelines to accepting an answer can still be followed:

  • First of all, note that an accepted answer means that "the author received an answer that worked for him or her personally", which may not always reflect to be the most correct answer, or the most useful to the community.

  • But hopefully it will, and your attempts of choosing the best one is worthy of praise. If you think the answer helps you and will help the community, it meets enough requirements to be accepted. I like the sentence in large bold letters "Don't overthink it." in an answer to the question @ Philosophy.SE (mentioned by @JNat in the comments).

  • The cultural differences among the community may cluster the answers in the question, but the voting system will take care of rewarding each cluster. Regarding the "anilha"/"anel" question, it simply happened that the OP preferred the European Portuguese answer. This is not to be taken seriously, and both answers will be rewarded, given that both are correct. The OP may also try, in particular cases, to narrow the domain by adding a regional tag. This of course, is not always desirable.

  • If all else feels not right to you, leaving it open for a day, two days, or indefinitely, are still reasonable solutions. As also said by @JNat in chat, "There is no problem with open questions", followed by "The OP might in fact accept one, but that does not make it the most correct one. It will only show the community that that answer solves the OP's own problem better. And the votes will show which answer the community considered the most useful. They don't necessarily have to be the same."

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