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I more and more often get some answers marked as solution that maybe (or surely) not the solution for the problem. This happens to appear mostly on older answers.

My current guess: It's users trying to "fix" their low acceptance rate. They - in most cases - didn't follow the progress of the Q/A, didn't provide any more details or answered Qs. Then they come back, "fix" the accept rate to prepare asking further Qs.

How to handle that? Flag? Close vote? Comment (already tried that several times without any satisfying result or even any answer)?

EDIT

To make it more simple & clear: It's about Qs where I was the only answerer. Here's an example Q/A, where my answer got accepted as solution today. The A is a) far from best practice and b) not completely addressing the issue. It's maybe not the absolutely best example, but I'd have to search for too long inside my answers and hope that you got the point anyway.

I can't downvote my own answer. Plus: I can't mark it as "not the (full) solution"

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  • One option, which I've heard bounced around here (but don't necessarily agree with) is to edit the accepted solution such that is is the correct solution. We can debate the merits of this option below ...
    – EAMann Mod
    Commented Mar 19, 2012 at 17:48
  • I would be against rewriting answers to something different. Comment and downvote are appropriate and sufficient.
    – Rarst Mod
    Commented Mar 19, 2012 at 17:55
  • 1
    @kaiser it's more than just that, though. Users blindly accepting answers simply to improve accept rate is one aspect of the issue. Another aspect is users who insist on using a bad-form practice to resolve their specific issue. Here's a perfect example, involving jQuery enqueueing conflicts.
    – Chip Bennett
    Commented Mar 20, 2012 at 15:00

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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Often times, there's not much you can do. Remember, an answer we think is insufficient might actual answer the question the original poster intended to ask.

So while I'd be tempted to close them to prevent confusion, the best course of action is to up-vote answers that fit, down-vote bad answers, and leave comments when a "wrong" answer is accepted as a solution.

It's not perfect fix, but short of taking complete editorial control away from the original posters, it's the best fix that comes to mind.

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  • I'm referring to answer I gave myself, which sometimes are only side-advices for parts of the problem or don't even target the problem itself, but major mistakes in the provided code. That means that downvoting isn't possible as it's my own answer :P
    – kaiser
    Commented Mar 19, 2012 at 18:19
  • If it's your own answer, then, I'd recommend revising it to include the "right" answer to help other users. You have complete control over you own content in that case.
    – EAMann Mod
    Commented Mar 19, 2012 at 19:21
  • 3
    +1 This is the essence of "crowd-sourcing". The "accepted" answer simply means that the question asker found the solution most suitable. The up/down voting mechanism is the tool that the community uses to indicate the relative correctness/benefits of answers. So: downvote/comment a wrong/accepted answer, and upvote the correct answer (if one exists).
    – Chip Bennett
    Commented Mar 19, 2012 at 19:40
-3

Another solution: edit the accepted answer, to correct it so that it becomes a correct answer.

(Note: I think this is the wrong approach, but am putting it here so others can corroborate, with downvotes. So, please: somebody downvote for me.)

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    I don't think its the right way to address this issue because in some cases even if it doesn't look like the right solution, It is.
    – Bainternet Mod
    Commented Mar 19, 2012 at 21:30

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