How do we encourage edits to obsolete/out of date answers?

Question

As the network ages and we have answers that are 7+ years old, we run into situations where changes in technology, etc. result in a once great answer becoming out-of-date, obsolete, or somewhat problematic. We don’t want to lose or delete these answers, due to legacy applications that still need the code but we need to figure out the right way to handle them.

This has been brought up and discussed many, many, many times over the years, and the community seems to suggest the following steps to update these answers:

• Comment to the OP suggesting that their answer is out-of date and needs to be updated
• Post a new answer with the updated information
• Edit or suggest an edit (if you don’t have privileges) to correct the answer

There are pros and cons to each one of these, and I’m going to outline a few of them here:

Adding a Comment:

What if the user is no longer active on the site? They won’t get the notification to update and then it’s up to someone else to potentially edit the answer.

What if the user gets notification and disagrees that the answer is wrong, so they don’t edit it. Now we have a conflict between the original author and another user on the validity of an answer, how do we proceed?

Posting a New Answer:

This is a great solution to the above problem when the original author doesn’t want to edit their obsolete answer, but we run into the “sorting problem” where the highly-upvoted, accepted answer appears above an up-to-date answer. The hope is that eventually this new answer will gain enough upvotes to move up the list and will be easily visible to people with the same question.

Editing or Suggesting an Edit

This is where we have the biggest issue when it comes to improving out-of-date or obsolete answers. Editing posts is encouraged on all sites and it’s even a privilege that is earned. The help center explicitly states

When should I edit posts?

.... to correct minor mistakes or add addendums / updates as the post ages

Users are advised to make these edits, yet this seems to be a stumbling block.

Why, you ask, do I see it as a stumbling block?

Several reasons...

First, when a user doesn’t have full edit privileges it goes to the review queue where these edits can be rejected. If the edit is substantial enough, there is even a rejection reason provided:

This edit deviates from the original intent of the post. Even edits that must make drastic changes should strive to preserve the goals of the post's owner.

With the rejection we lose the proposed fix and are back at the start, with an answer that needs a bit of tending to.

If a user has full edit privileges, they can make a sizable edit without review to bring it up-to-date but if there are code changes users are told not to touch the code.

As you see, we have a disconnect. Users are told to edit and we have posts that need to be edited. But no one wants or is able to edit them, because they might alter code which is a big no-no when the answer is not a community-wiki.

What do we do? What can we do to fix this?

We’re taking a good hard look at how we should handle answers that were once great but need some gardening to keep them that way. Lots of things have been suggested over the years, but so far nothing has been implemented:

• Introduce an "Obsolete Answer" vote

• Implement a vote-based warning system for potentially dangerous answers

• Can we exempt downvoted accepted answers from getting the top spot?

• Deemphasise the accept mark if there's an answer the community strongly prefers?

Before we do anything we want some feedback and a discussion from the community on how we can encourage these edits to these answers (we disagree internally as well).

Would you be more likely to edit them into something no longer obsolete, if they were made community wikis? Should we add a post notice that it’s obsolete or out-of-date? Figure out some way to give rep to the user who makes a substantial edit? Something else that we haven’t thought of?

Answer 1

1. (to start with) Only worry about questions with >= 3 views per day, older than 1 year, and has accepted answer.
2. Let anyone with >= 5000 rep cast an obsolete vote on the question which will mean that all the answers are obsolete now. Be clear that this vote is not for "not enough good answers on this question, or this question could use a better answer". That it's only for questions where the accepted answer is obsolete and there are no other answers that provide the new correct way of solving the issue.

3. Create an obsolete answer review queue. You need at least a bronze badge in the most popular tag of the question to be able to review it. Action choices in the queue:

   • not obsolete
   • answer
   • skip

   Keep the review active in the queue until 2 people provide an answer, gets enough not obsolete votes (3-5?), or until 30 days (or so) has passed. Make a post history entry on the question with the review link, so easy to search SEDE for questions that were voted as obsolete but didn't get any new answers for that 30 days. So a second chance for people to find and answer even after it exits the queue.

Why no edit option? Because reputation is the fuel that drives good content. You don't get reputation for editing (except for measly +2 for suggested edits, but anyone with a bronze badge likely has over 2k anyway). I really don't think encouraging edits is the way to go since I think it will definitely be not as successful as encouraging new up-to-date answers where users can post under their name as their answer and reap the benefits.

But why not allow people who know the new correct way to answer in the review? Because this is a privilege queue where you need at least 1 bronze badge to be able to enter. After the review is completed provide a way for people to search through SEDE and regular search to find questions that made it to the obsolete queue and weren't completed as "not obsolete".

In conclusion, I really don't think encouraging edits in this manner is the way to go. Since really, reviewers of the suggested edits queue have long been advised to be wary of approving edits that change/add/remove code. I'd rather a new answer be placed than all the content-specific edits going on and the haywire it has the possibility of causing. Also, reputation incentive is needed to keep the ship sailing. Not sure about a similar review badge for this queue, I think if there is a badge for this queue it should be different, but any badge(s) can be sorted out later.

Answer 2

Add Template by Edit

A Markdown-like (or any simple syntax like HTML, LaTeX, etc.) code template that any editor can add to an answer, or question.

• In its empty form it adds a standard message, and could change the appearance of the post, like a different background color, or border.
• Or it can contain a custom explanation of why the template was added.
• It should add a tag that doesn't count against the tag count for the post.
• I think a good review queue for users to have shows posts they were involved in, and asking if the template should be added to them. Maybe reward them with something like a badge for doing this every once in a while.
• This review adds the template, but probably should fill the parameters in an automated way as well rather than having the user use Markdown. It'd be nice to let this area use the supported formatters.
• A way for questions to be nominated for this type of review could be helpful for reviewing users who don't want to do this.

Usage

I use a couple of symbols, but this are all just examples, and I haven't really thought it through. Indicate answer was true

Until date: [≼][precedes or equal-to]201312

This answer was valid until December 2013.
[blank row]

Everything following the main keyword is optional
≼[YYYY[MM][DD]]
≼[YYYY[MM]]

Add a message and bounty: ≼2014 "There were breaking changes in NewJIT." $50

This answer was true until 2014.
There were breaking changes in NewJIT.
A bounty of 50 has been offered for an update.

Marking answer as questionable sends it to a review queue:
≟

Edit the question to put template in the question and answer: 
≟(https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/380974/163536)
≟(380974)"Customized message."

Adding a bounty skips the queue:
≟$50
≟20220804 "There's a [CVE](https://example.com/cve/20220803/ohno.js) about this package and it's no longer maintained." $50

≼YYYYMMDD(https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/380974/163536)"There's a [CVE](https://example.com/cve/20220803/ohno.js) about this package and it's no longer maintained."$25

Answer 3

Has anything like this been considered?

I think making the update its own question page circumvents all the problems aforementioned.

I think you could have some mechanism where you have an obsolete button. You'd need some high rep and badge to use said button.

When this is clicked, a new question is created, except that the new question and old question have links at the top to one another.

The new page could have a special area for commenting on why this is an obsolete question update.

Then, discussion of the non-obsolete question can continue unabated on its own, indepedent page.

And, at the top of each page (or somewhere appropriate)... "This question and answer may be out of date, click here to see updated question." "This question was created to be an updated question of the popular question found here."

A potential problem is that you could have multiple "not-obsolete" question variants. Perhaps starting with allowing 1 obsolete update per question would be good.

Answer 4

I would do it this way:

1. All answers which are old, say a few years, will automatically be presented with a message warning that the answer is few years old.
2. People would be able to suppress the warning if they think the answer is still valid and not outdated.
3. If enough people votes that the answer is not outdated, the warning will be again hidden for a year.
4. The warning might appear again next year and people can either suppress it again by voting or leave it there ....

Hope you can understand my idea.

Answer 5

Currently if I go to (I believe) just about any answer on stackoverflow (tested only a few random ones) I have the option of "close" and if I press it I'm presented with a 50 vote limit and the options... (writing them here for people who cant see them)

• duplicate of
• off-topic
• unclear what you're asking
• too broad
• primarily opinion based

Unless I'm mistaken it takes something like 5 votes to close; regardless of reason.

I have no particular opinion on all but the "duplicate" option; in fact they seem to be working fine; this may just be bias as I've only experienced "bad behavior" with mainly the duplicate of option.

So what's wrong with duplicate option?

1. what qualifies someone to say it's a duplicate? technically you should be an expert in the field and be able to understand the context, but there's no such requirement when the moderation option is presented... you just have to feel like you're right about it; as the site grows the higher the chance of 5 people "feeling" like they are in the right to mark it as duplicate because it looks like a duplicate

2. why is it wrong to have duplicates? a lot of the time the same question is asked from different angles; having "some" duplicate questions/answers to account for this isn't that bad. They should probably be limited once a certain type of question reaches a certain number of "duplicate questions" but it's not necessary to limit the question to one context (or "one persons unique problem"). I find this problem to be the most common, and the most annoying. A lot of the time the questioner will also ask a different problem then he does though the title, get the solution to his problem, but not the solution to the title question. Subsequent more proper questions are marked as duplicate of the improper question that doesn't really answer the general question (even though it my solve the question askers problem). One very specific type of this type of question is the "Hey how do you do X" that's answered with "Don't bother with X just do Y" ...sure the person asking got his answer, but everyone who really really NEEDS to know "how to do X" is now faced with the "your question is duplicate of" problem. This is extremely problematic since searches and search engines will generally weigh titles higher then content.

3. you can't crowd source "understanding of context" so while 5 judge rule works for "off-topic" it's inappropriate for context sensitive issues. Since context changes with time (in particular with technology) the problem becomes worse as time passes. Implementations would have to take into account at least time (so marking a question as duplicate of one posted just last week may be fair; not so much marking one as duplicate of one 3 years ago). But then how much time is enough? With how some technologies like kubernetes move even 1 year might be too much.

How to fix it

Option A: Fix by dropping current methodology entirely

Make mark as duplicate is purely declarative and not tied to a question being protected and/or closed

Marking as duplicate doesn't close question; it does aggregate them togheter though and make it easy for someone to navigate though them as a "thread" of question on very narrow topic. This should help a lot with version dependent answers and legacy vs modern systems inconsistencies in answers.

Duplicates are handled by the search system, views and may influence the user's ability to answer; but people should have the option to forcefully answer a question if they feel the question deserves answering. 5 random people should not be able to block this.

Option B: Fix by enhancing current system

Add the ability to mark questions as "verified" and "canonical" (should be done only by experts in the field). Verification expires after X years.

Questions can be marked as duplicate by 5 people so long as the target of duplication is a verified question. Otherwise, it needs to somehow determine that the people trying to mark it actually know what they're talking about (eg. number of accepted questions relative to question tags)

Answer 6

I like simple solutions. Time is king.

All that is needed is to reduce (wear out) the votes.

If an old answer does not get new votes, it will wear out, become obsolete without any human intervention. If such answer keeps getting new votes, it remains actual. Better answers, as perceived by users (for which they vote), will raise quicker.

For the sake of this argument let's say that each year a vote gets reduced by 1/2, then, in 4 years time it will have 1/16 of the old votes. It either gets updated to meet new challenges or fades out.

The time factor may change for each site of the stackexchange, some sites, probably math (sorry if I am wrong) sites may have a longer time period. But sites that deal with fast changing technology could use shorter times.

With this, people will make obsolescence automatic, by not voting for an answer.

Or, if a compromise is needed, add an additional (to the ones existing) sort order by this measure. If people like this new order (by using it), make this new sort order the default.

I am not calling for a wear out of users reputation, that is a very different issue. User's reputation will not change from what it is now, nor how it is obtained.

What have I missed?, thanks.

Answer 7

Stop chasing your userbase away would be a good start.

The current climate here seems to select for semi-noobs, nitpickers and people who have time to game of the system.

A good start would probably be to make destruction of information expensive: Remove a good number of points[0] from anyone suggesting the deletion of userful[1] information. Adjust the cost as necessary.

[0]:Maybe proportional to the number of upvotes a piece of question, comment or answer has gotten so spam can be removed without ruining anyone.

[1]:As seen by looking at the upvotes a piece of information has gotten.

Answer 8

No way, and you know it already.

To make Stack Overflow not a trash-site but something useful, you have to completely change paradigm, from ochlocracy to something like technocracy.

Of course, nobody would do it ever. So, you are doomed to eat that old trash forever. Enjoy.