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Is it possible to change the chosen answer?

Is it possible to give users with sufficiently high scores the possibility to "un-accept" answers that were accepted by question owners?

Here is a real-life scenario. A user asks a question about. Another user supplies an answer that is correct at the time of writing. The question owner accepts the answer, but then the reality changes and the answer isn't correct anymore. Another user leaves a comment to the originally accepted answer and also supplies an up-to-date answer, which gains many upvotes. However, question owner does not bother "un-accepting" the outdated answer and "accepting" the correct one.

In that specific case the original question dealt with a missing feature of PyDev (python IDE), the originally accepted answer was "there is no such a feature", but then this feature was added to the program and relevant answer was added.

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    You know, I'm not sure editing the answer to change its meaning and advertise a "competing" answer is the right thing to do here. FWIW, 3 trusted users (20k rep) can sort-of unaccept an accepted answer by deleting it, if it's negatively voted. Moderators could do it too, but they're not supposed to delete incorrect answers.
    – a cat
    Feb 5, 2012 at 12:11

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This is not possible, not directly.

When an asker accepts an answer, only they can directly unaccept it. If it is wrong, and a correct answer has also been posted, it should be upvoted - with enough upvotes this shows the answer as the one the community believes is the correct one rather than the accepted answer.

An accepted answer means that the asker has decided that that answer has resolved his problem - this is not the same as being the best or even correct.

Moderators can choose to merge questions - if both have accepted answers one of the accepted answers must become "unaccepted".

See this Meta question - Is it possible to change the chosen answer?.

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I think you will find your answer here:

Only the OP has the ability to do it. We've received flags on old questions in the past indicating that the accepted answer is now completely wrong and better answers exist, however there's nothing we can do about it.

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No, not directly, because the person who asked (the owner) found that answer good, and suits his problem the best.

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  • Moderators can't change it either.
    – Kyle Trauberman
    Feb 5, 2012 at 4:09
  • @Kyle much better :)
    – ddacot
    Feb 5, 2012 at 4:10

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