I was dismayed to find this (now old) feature-request declined: Another take on canonical answers: Add a "canonical" vote (... and this similar feature-request yet-to-be-addressed: Canonical answers for repeated questions)
On smaller sites like, say, Law, there are occasionally truly outstanding answers that will not only address many future questions, but also be useful references in answers to questions they do not fully cover. (E.g., this or this.) But there is no clear or established way of keeping track of these, or even finding them when I myself remember that, "Hey, there was a really great answer that covers this." (Heck, I can't even Favorite an answer.)
One way that might work is to use bounties as an indicator, but not until the following feature is implemented: Search for answers that have been awarded bounties
My inclination in the interim is to open a "Canonical Answers" community-wiki question in Meta where a list could simply be accumulated.
But first I want to make sure I'm not missing some other feature or convention that would better address this need.
tl;dr:
- It would be useful to be able to mark and find "canonical" answers
- Is there an existing feature or mechanism to do this?
- If not, does a community-wiki "Canonical Answers" question on a site's Meta seem like the best solution?
- If not, can you propose something better, or at least explain why that's a bad idea?
