What is the best practice 'etiquette' to tell an answer is outdated and should be updated?

Question

Due to changes in technologies, many answers were outdated. However, these answers were very good for the past, and they might also be useful for the same cases, but not for most. An example is a depreciated MySQL extension that was replaced with MySQLi, and the older PHP date time function whose use should be replaced by the newer (PHP date time class).

I am putting myself in a scenario: I do all my best to answer a question, my answer will be accepted and upvoted, but after one year, someone might write a comment and say:

This is a bad answer, outdated.

This is ethically right, notifying about an outdated answer is not a bad thing, but I am sure we can do this in another way, that does not destruct the person, considering that the answer was good in the past. My aim in this discussion is: What is the best etiquette for doing that? Is there any systematic procedure to be taken for improving the quality of answers?

Another issue here is someone that is searching for an answer. In case that we post an updated answer to the question, it might not get any upvotes, and then the user will probably chose the one with a high number of upvotes (considering that it's peer reviewed).

Answer 1

There are quite a few ways of handling this and its best to look at this on a case to case basis. There are some general steps you can follow, though.

If you come across a question with outdated answers then you could do either of the following :

• Write a new answer with updated details
• Put a bounty asking for up to date answers
• Comment under the existing answers regarding the same (both as a means of notifying the OPs as well as putting up a sign post for future readers)
• Suggest an edit to an existing answer covering the updated methodology (not recommended, as such edits have a high probability of getting rejected)

If you get a comment on your own answer, suggesting that its outdated, then you could do either of the following :

• Update the existing answer (if its the accepted answer)
• Write a new answer, and edit the previous one to say that its now outdated.
• Put a bounty asking for up-to-date answers

As every edit brings a post back to the front page, your updated answers will not go unnoticed.

Alternatively, if you want to prevent this issue from happening at all, you can commit to maintaining some of your own answers over time. For best utilisation of your time, just look at the questions you answered which have received the maximum number of views (as these are the ones that most probably turn up in search results), and keep updating them at regular intervals. Even though this may appear to be a thankless job, users who frequent the tag will identify you and appreciate your work (and you will be helping out a whole lot of other people too!)

Answer 2

I think the best solution would be either to edit the answer yourself if minor changes need to be made or add a new answer if major changes would need to be made.

If you don't have an updated solution, you could add a bounty if it's important to you. I think one of the options for a bounty is saying that the answers are outdated.