Unpinning the accepted answer from the top of the list of answers

Question

Today we changed the way we sort answers on Stack Overflow. We no longer pin the accepted answer (with the green checkmark) to the top of the list of answers. By default, we now sort strictly by votes (descending order by highest score), and the accepted answer's order in the list is based on its score.

The history of feature requests to unpin the accepted answer on Stack Overflow dates back to 2013 and has been raised almost every year since. This year within the Outdated Answers project we did research that showed that we are good to proceed with the accepted answer unpinned.

Would you like to have the accepted answer unpinned on your site?

We can change the way the engine sorts answers in site settings. We would like to hear from you all if it is something you want to see on your site. (Please let me acknowledge in advance that we will not be able to run a test on each site.)

Currently we are planning to move forward with one of two scenarios, based on your feedback:

1. Unpin the accepted answer on all SE sites by default and pin it back on a few sites that ask us to do so.
2. Keep the accepted answer pinned on all SE sites by default and unpin it on a few sites that ask us to do so.

Please let us know what you think will work best for your site! If you can discuss this question with your community it would be awesome. We are going to collect feedback before the end of September 19th.

Site settings are per-site and child metas are also considered a "site".

---

Update

As Anita Taylor shared:

The Public Platform team will go through these requests and determine what to prioritize, defer and decline. We ask for your patience -- key members of the team are on vacation over the next few weeks, so we won't be able to triage these requests until mid-to-late October.

---

Update 2

Thanks to everyone for the feedback. Seeing that some sites do not want to unpin the accepted answer, we decided to move forward with the status quo and not to change the default behaviour on existing sites. If you think unpinning the accepted answer on your site makes sense, please do the following:

1. Start a meta discussion on your per-site meta.
2. When the discussion is completed and the community agrees to change the default behaviour (agrees to unpin the accepted answer), please ask one of the site moderators to add the status-review tag to the question. It will generate a ticket and let CMs know that we need to adjust the site setting for your site.
3. We would appreciate it if you add the outcome of the discussion to the accepted answer in this question. This will allow all of us to see the full picture.

There's no need to do this on the sites that are currently on the list; we have already adjusted the site setting for them.

Answer 1

Full List of Community Discussions

✅ indicates that this has been implemented on the specific site.

Site	Verdict	Site Discussion Link
Academia	50/50	Should the answer that appears on "top" be the OP's "accepted answer" or the answer with most votes?
Anime		Does the community want the accepted answers to be pinned to the top?
Apple		Do we want to unpin the accepted answer from the top?
Arqade	✅ Keep Pin	https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/q/16087/163757
Ask Ubuntu	✅ Unpin	Should we unpin the accepted answer from the top of the list?
Ask Ubuntu (Meta)	✅ Keep Pin	Should we unpin the accepted answer from the top of the list on meta?
Astronomy	✅ Unpin	https://astronomy.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/803
Aviation	✅ Unpin	https://aviation.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4253
Bicycles		https://bicycles.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1433/
Biology	✅ Unpin	https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4230
Board Games	✅ Unpin	https://boardgames.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2048
Chemistry	✅ Unpin	https://chemistry.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5077
Christianity	✅ Unpin	Is Christianity.SE a OP's Gets it or Community Gets it community?
Code Golf	✅ Unpin	https://codegolf.meta.stackexchange.com/q/23854/
Code Review	✅ Keep Pin	https://codereview.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10719
Coffee	✅ Unpin	https://coffee.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1253
Computational Science		https://scicomp.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/600/
Cross Validated		https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6220/
Drupal Answers	✅ Unpin	https://drupal.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3869/
Earth Science	✅ Unpin	https://earthscience.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1932/
Economics		https://economics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2151
English Language Learners		https://ell.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5514
English Language & Usage	Keep Pin	https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/q/15144
French		https://french.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/833
Gardening	Keep pin	https://gardening.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/943/
German Language	Unpin	https://german.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1653
Genealogy & Family History		https://genealogy.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3522/19
GIS	✅ Unpin	https://gis.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5303
Graphic Design	✅ Unpin	https://graphicdesign.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3779/41100
History		https://history.meta.stackexchange.com/q/4311/1401
Interpersonal Skills	✅ Keep pin	https://interpersonal.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4038
Judaism	✅ Unpin	https://judaism.meta.stackexchange.com/q/4708
Language Learning		https://languagelearning.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/720
Literature		https://literature.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1602
Math	✅ Unpin	https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/34076/
Matter Modeling	50/50	https://mattermodeling.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/294/
Meta Stack Exchange		Do we want accepted answers unpinned on Meta Stack Exchange?
Movies	Unpin	https://movies.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4780
Music		https://music.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3781
Parenting	Keep Pin	https://parenting.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1455/
Pets	✅ Unpin	https://pets.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2379/please-vote-do-we-want-to-unpin-the-accepted-answer-from-the-top-of-the-list
Physical Fitness	✅ Unpin	https://fitness.meta.stackexchange.com/q/865
Physics	✅ Unpin	https://physics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/13811
Politics	✅ Unpin	Should accepted answers still be pinned to the top of the list of answers?
Politics Meta	✅ Unpin	Should accepted answers be pinned to the top on meta?
Project Management		https://pm.meta.stackexchange.com/q/896
Puzzling	✅ Keep Pin	https://puzzling.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7230/
Quantum Computing		https://quantumcomputing.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/512/
RPG	50/50	https://rpg.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11726/
Sci-fi and Fantasy	✅ Unpin	https://scifi.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/13478/
Seasoned Advice		https://cooking.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3716/
Skeptics		https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4786
Spanish Language	✅ Keep Pin	https://spanish.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4435
Sports	✅ Unpin	https://sports.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1027/
Stack Overflow (Portuguese)	✅ Unpin	https://pt.meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/8662/
Superuser	✅ Keep Pin	https://meta.superuser.com/questions/14531
TeX		https://tex.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8841
UNIX & Linux	✅ Unpin	https://unix.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5835/
Veganism & Vegetarianism		https://vegetarianism.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/366
Webmasters	✅ Unpin	https://webmasters.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1728
Workplace	Keep Pin	Any thoughts on unpinning the accepted answer
Worldbuilding	50/50	https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8441
Stack Overflow in Spanish	✅ Unpin	https://es.meta.stackoverflow.com/q/5273/10
Stack Overflow in Russian	✅ Unpin	https://ru.meta.stackoverflow.com/q/11766/6
Stack Overflow in Japanese	✅ Unpin	https://ja.meta.stackoverflow.com/q/3641/78

Sites that want to remove the pin

• Ask Ubuntu
• Astronomy
• Aviation
• Biology
• Board Games
• Chemistry
• Christianity
• Code Golf
• Drupal Answers
• Earth Science
• German Language
• GIS
• Judaism
• Math
• Movies
• Pets
• Physical Fitness
• Physics
• Politics
• Politics Meta
• Science Fiction and Fantasy
• Sports
• Stack Overflow em Português
• UNIX & Linux
• Webmasters
• Stack Overflow in Spanish
• Stack Overflow in Russian
• Stack Overflow in Japanese

Sites that want to keep the pin

• Arqade
• Ask Ubuntu Meta
• Code Review
• English Language & Usage
• Gardening
• Interpersonal Skills
• Parenting
• Puzzling
• Super User
• The Workplace

Answer 2

status-completed

If the accepted post has score equal to another post please show the accepted post upper.

Suppose there are 3 answers for a post say A, B and C. Let A score be 1, B and C score be 0. Let C be the accepted answer.

Like you can see then if votes order is choosen then the post will be in order A>B>C. But I guess it should be made A>C>B. If 2 or most post have same score out of which one answer has been accepted then that accepted answer should be upper than the remaining answer because since OP accepted it, the accepted answer might be more helpful than the other answers at same score.

Answer 3

This is a modified copy of my answer to the related question on Meta Stack Overflow.

---

status-deferred

Unpinning the accepted answer is a good change for the majority of SE sites I imagine.

However, I would still very much like a clear indication (near the top of the question) that an answer has been accepted and offer a link to jump to it. As it is now, when viewing the question, there is no indication that an answer has been accepted unless you scroll through the answers (if there are other answers that have more votes).

(Something similar has already been suggested in comments by @ColleenV and @V2Blast.)

Perhaps a link next to the sorting buttons, something like:

Answer 4

Stack Overflow is probably the site where the concept of accepted answers makes the most sense, and even there I think pinning the accepted answer is overall harmful in the end. For non-technical sites the accepted answer concept is often less meaningful simply because it is harder for the asker to evaluate answers, especially when the questions aren't about fixing a problem. On SO many questions can be objectively evaluated even if you have less knowledge than the answerers, e.g. now the code compiles or now I get the correct result. For more "fuzzy" subjects the asker might just accept the answer that best fits their preconceived notions, or simply the one that sounds and looks the most impressive.

For this reason I would argue that the default should be not to pin the accepted answer to the top. And any site that likes to do that different can request changing this back. If you are convinced that this is the right choice for Stack Overflow, unpinning by default is the right choice for the network as well. This is not one of the cases where SO is the outlier that needs special handling.

Answer 5

I agree with the change, thanks for doing this.

For users who want to keep the old behaviour, I've written a small userscript, Accepted Answer Pinner (direct installation link – Stack Apps post). It pins the accepted answer back on top, unless it's a self-answer that wouldn't qualify for pinning in the old situation.

Answer 6

Not every moderator or high-rep user participates on Stack Exchange Meta, and not every hi-rep or engaged user participates on their child site.

Nevertheless, I think the option to unstick the accepted answer from its pole position should be discussed by each individual meta site. Please feature this post and communicate this proposal to all the moderators across the network. I think it's possible that many moderators, especially on smaller sites, might be oblivious to this announcement.

Answer 7

status-completed

Keep the accepted answer pinned on meta sites

Oftentimes, on meta sites, the behavior of pinning the accepted answer to the top is preferred:

• Answers can be different opinions in a discussion, and accepting the one that is eventually the community's consensus or is the one that eventually gets implemented will make that fact clear to others reading the question, especially if that one isn't the one with the highest number of votes.

• A question may receive an official response from the team, which may not be the highest-voted answer, usually simply because other community answers were posted first, but in some cases may be due to the answer being negatively-received. However, it's still preferred to have it pinned to the top so that others can more easily see the official response.

Please don't unpin the accepted answer on meta sites, at least.

If there are concerns that the wrong answer (not representative of community consensus) would be accepted, then another, separate feature, to allow moderators and staff to change the accepted answer on meta sites, should be implemented. Personally, though, in my experience, that happens a very tiny minority of the time, and in the rare cases where it's a problem, a developer can change the accepted answer so it remains pinned even if it's later voted out.

Answer 8

Please let us know what you think will work best for your site! If you can discuss this question with your community it would be awesome.

We've already discussed this on Mi Yodeya. As of this writing, the question there is +12/−0 and the only answer is +10/−0; both ask for the accepted answer to be unpinned. So Mi Yodeya wants the accepted answer unpinned. Thanks!

Answer 9

status-declined

I'll throw in what I suggested on Politics SE: A hybrid model. Acceptance indicates that "this answer is what the asker was looking for." On Politics, that can range from "I feel informed" to "This confirms my political beliefs so I like it."

Even so, I think acceptance still has value, but shouldn't be the end-all of the matter.

Adding a site-configurable weight to the acceptance is probably a good compromise feature. Accepted answers can enjoy top billing until an answer outscores them by a significant margin (e.g. 125%+). For low-scoring answers this could get distorted but I think that, overall, it lets an asker indicate "this had particular value for me" but allows majorities of presumably knowledgeable people indicate that such an answer may not actually be superior.

Answer 10

status-declined

We've had some discussion over on Puzzling, where there is a definite consensus on keeping accepted answers at the top (i.e., not unpinning).

One person looked at some concrete examples, which suggest to me that actually "keep the accepted answer at the top, unless its score is actually negative in which case don't" might be a better option (for us) than either "unpin completely" or "leave exactly as is".

Answer 11

status-completed

To aid sites in deciding what impact this might have, is there some SEDE magic query that would list and/or count questions where this change would alter the answer order? It would be nice to have local data about the scale of the change.

Answer 12

I think choosing between "pinned" and "unpinned" is not good enough. I think "pinning" should be replaced network-wide with something that accomplishes the original goal of pinning the accepted answer with fewer negative side effects and possibly even a slightly improved user experience, instead of either taking away something that some of the community find useful or leaving something in place that causes a negative user experience for some of the community.

According to What does it mean to accept an answer?

Accepting an answer is important as it rewards posters for correctly answering your question, informs others that your issue is resolved, and pins the answer to the top so others reading your question read that answer first.

I interpret that to mean the goal of pinning the accepted answer is to make it more visible to future readers. There are ways to accomplish that without forcing readers to see the answer that personally worked best for the question's author before they see the best answer as voted by the community.

I would prefer an easily noticed (but not intrusive) button to bring up the answer the author chose. If there is no accepted answer, the button should not be visible. The checkmark should continue to exist so the accepted answer is still highlighted as I scroll through the answers.

Not only does this put the decision on whether to read the accepted answer first in the hands of the reader, I think it improves the accessibility experience because someone using a screen reader will be able to tell immediately if there is an accepted answer by the presence of the button. If "pinning" can change according to the site, it would be difficult for someone using a screen reader to get directly to the accepted answer (or know whether one exists) on sites that choose not to pin it. I don't have a lot of experience using a screen reader, so I'm just speculating.

I don't know if this solution is the best one, and I would support more elegant alternatives, but it's better than forcing each site to come to a consensus about whether to pin or not to pin.

Answer 13

Sports SE will use voting on a meta post to make the decision, or failing sufficient engagement, we can discuss it as a mod team with CMs.

If other sites need a template for this discussion, they are free to use this question and its answers.

Answer 14

status-declined

Can a setting be included in the user profile to keep the accepted answer pinned to the top? My preference is to have the accepted answer shown first.

Ollie said:

(...) because it'll work for more people.

Sonic the Hedgehog said:

(...) this should be a per-site setting, because I'd want to see the accepted answer on the top on some sites but not on others.

Answer 15

We've discussed this on CGCC and have come to the conclusion that we'd absolutely like the accepted answer to be unpinned on our site.

Answer 16

A problem I see with this is the new better answers to an old question, e.g. once the Hot Network stampede has subsided. This leaves better or even the correct answers buried.

What I thought about before is vote normalization based on Q age. Of course some may want to game such system by answering later, but here's the cool thing: it works the same for downvotes. Call it the anti-necroing device (i.e. be sure to add to the topic).

Just food for thought. I'm not really familiar with posting answers on MSE, so let me know if I shouldn't have posted this tangential viewpoint.

Answer 17

status-completed

A point raised in the comments by ColleenV is that Google displays the accepted answer in the snippet. My understanding is that this is automatially done by getting the answer with acceptedAnswer set on it (see docs). Will this change for this experiment to be the top answer, or is that outside of the scope?

Answer 18

In Stack Overflow in Portuguese we opened a Meta post discussing the matter.

Devemos mudar a ordenação das respostas, não afixando a resposta aceita antes das demais?

Votes up are "Unpin", down are "Keep pinning".

Currently we have:

• 12 + 1 votes to unpin ¹

• 1 to keep pinned

¹ The "+ 1" vote to "unpin" is per the last post line (OP can't vote, but stated he wants the change too).

The "unpin" is active now, and the score had no recent changes.

Answer 19

status-declined

Right now, we are discussing this issue on Math.SE. I posted an answer there, but I think it is relevant here also.

I think the best solution would be to allow users to choose between sorting strictly by the number of votes, and putting the accepted answer at the top. Right now, there are three ways of sorting the answers: active, oldest, and votes. I would like to add a fourth option that ignores whether an answer has been accepted or not. (What this option should be called is another question.) As before, the site should "remember" the option that you used last time.

Answer 20

status-declined

Accepted post is pinned second, if it's not the top-scoring answer.

My thought process:

1. Sometimes accepted answers are underrated in terms of voting, especially in relation to Fastest Gun in the West, Hot Network Questions, and answers to old questions (slow, but well-thought-out answers => fewer upvotes).

2. However, sometimes the most upvoted answer is indeed far better than the accepted answer (or perhaps the accepted answer is flat-out wrong).

I like this approach because it's so simple, and it has the property that "accepted answer" + "most upvoted answer" remain the top two answers (in some order).

(This was originally a comment since I didn't put much thought into it at the time, but Mari-Lou A proposed making it an answer. There's still some boundary cases that need ironing out, e.g. two equal-score top-scoring answers vs. accepted answer.)

Answer 21

The Mathematics SE community is in favor of unpinning accepted answers (judging by the response to the statement "I am in favor of ordering answers by number of votes only.")

Answer 22

We've discussed this on Chemistry Stack Exchange. The only answer is by one of the highest-rep members and a moderator, with a score of +10. The general consensus is to unpin the accepted answer i.e. we support this proposed change.

Some of the reasons given there, which I think would apply equally well to some other sites too -

1. The OP may not be the best judge of answers. This can happen if they themselves have a limited knowledge of the subject (as in the case of many students who frequent the Science sites, me included), and some of them hastily accept the first answer and never come back.

2. The number of votes is an indicator of which answer the community, as a whole, believes to be the most useful. The opinion of the whole community is certainly more likely to be a better judge of answers than a single person's accept-tick.

Answer 23

Our vote at rpg.se What is our stance on "Unpinning the accepted answer from the top of the list of answers"? features a great variety of answers.

Until we reached the first cutoff period on September 19th, our position expressed in Doppelgreener's answer was by a significant margin in favour of unpinning the accepted answer.

Until September 24th, the voting remained in favour of unpinning accepted answers. On that day, Doppelgreener declared in an edit to align her position with the opposing views while keeping her initial answer intact. This edit was the first edit to her answer after September 9th.

In particular, her views aligned thereafter with KRyan's answer, first posted on September 14th, that steadily gained support at the same time. After that, the voting trend changed to have an influx of negative votes on Doppelgreener's answer - as of now, KRyan's answer sits at an only slightly lower score than hers.

The first answer, posted by Screamline, is against unpinning the accepted answer. As of now, it is the answer with the fourth-highest score. Our, as of now, second highest-scoring answer, posted by Thomas Markov, gives insight into various statistics.

We feature our discussion on meta until October 14th. We first featured it shortly after KRyan added their answer.

The top scores are currently about 50/50. Doppelgreener's answer has the highest participation of currently 48 votes, KRyan's answer has 35 votes (this answer had six fewer days to accumulate initial votes available to the other two), and Screamline's answer has 31 votes.

We concluded our vote with a slight majority of votes in favour of unpinning accepted answers, at 36 votes, which, however, also includes 15 downvotes bringing it to the score of 21. The minority vote in favour of pinning accepted answers ends at 31 upvotes and only 9 downvotes, scoring 22. In conclusion, we remain at a 50/50 score with no clear consensus. So we continue with the status quo, which is the old default of pinning accepted answers until we decide to revote.

Answer 24

Would you please post a link to a Data Explorer Query, which would list the Q&As (on a given site) where the accepted answer is not also the top-voted answer?

I think it would be helpful, when deciding, to see examples of which topics are affected by this decision.

Answer 25

Ask Ubuntu

We discussed on our meta whether to have the accepted answer unpinned or not.

Most people voted in favour of unpinning the accepted answer from the top, it seems.

A relevant concern that was strongly expressed was about obsolete answers appearing ahead of newer ones. A very popular answer proposed a solution to that instead of directly addressing the question of whether to unpin. One answer said that an advantage of pinning the accepted answer to the top was that the OP could change the accept if the old answer became obsolete. (I upvoted the answer even though I do very much want accepted answers to be unpinned). My opinion is that this rarely happens; another answer argued that it's more likely that an obsolete answer is pinned at the top while more up to date answers, often with more votes, are stuck below, and I feel the same, but it's hard to be sure (on our site, more than 9000 questions have an answer that outscores the accepted one, but I do not know, for example, how many of them are newer than the accepted answer by a margin of years).

I completely share the concern with the problem of obsolete answers, but I think that accept pinning, to the extent that it might mitigate that problem rather than exacerbating it, is a very weak mechanism, and I hear that better solutions are in the pipeline somewhere. If that is the case and we are going to have some way to deal with obsolete answers more effectively than we can with current tools, then I think all concerns about unpinning can be considered addressed and we can go ahead with it.

Ask Ubuntu Meta

We separately discussed whether or not to unpin accepted answers on meta and nobody disagreed with my opinion that we should leave them pinned. Some folks even upvoted my answer about it, so I guess they agree.

TL;DR

Unpin on main and keep pin on meta, please, and thanks a lot for asking <3

Answer 26

The issue with the Accepted Answer is about what Stack Overflow is and how it is intended to be used.

There are 2 possible ways to think about Stack Overflow:

1. A help-desk where someone asks a question and gets help from the community. Accepted Answer makes a lot of sense here because you let people that OP has found a solution and no longer needs help.
2. Wikipedia in Q/A format, of user-generated question. That is what SO is in practice. Here an Accepted Answer doesn't make sense because answers are not truly meant to help the OP in particular. The fact that OP does get help is tangential to the site's purposes and is merely useful because it entices people to generate content by asking questions for others to answer. The real goal is to help visitors who come from Google or other search engines.

When SO was new and little-known, and didn't have a critical mass of existing solutions and accumulated upvotes, it was 1) and Accepted Answer made sense, but it eventually became 2) and Accepted Answer was no longer needed.

Answer 27

Literature Stack Exchange

As one of the moderators on Literature Stack Exchange, I created a meta question asking whether the community wants accepted answers to be unpinned. Several people indicated in the chatroom that they have no opinion about the issue. The votes on the meta question suggest a slight preference for keeping accepted answers pinned at the top.

It is worth noting that answers on Literature SE don't get outdated over time, unlike answers on Stack Overflow, where validity or relevance can be influenced by technological evolution.

Answer 28

Language Learning Stack Exchange

As one of the moderators on Language Learning Stack Exchange, I created a meta question asking whether the community wants accepted answers to be unpinned. The votes on the meta question suggest a slight preference for keeping accepted answers pinned at the top.

It is worth noting that answers on Language Learning SE would rarely get outdated over time, unlike answers on Stack Overflow, where validity or relevance can be influenced by technological evolution.

Answer 29

Computational Science SE

via voting on Meta decided that we support unpinning the accepted answer from the top.

Thus,

• if "by default" the accepted answer is unpinned for all communities, we don't need anything special.
• otherwise, if unpinning requires explicit request, by the means of this message we express one.

Answer 30

French Language Stack Exchange

As one of the moderators on French Language Stack Exchange, I created a meta question asking whether the community wants accepted answers to be unpinned. The votes on the meta question suggest a preference for unpinning accepted answers.

It is worth noting that answers on French Language SE are much less likely to get outdated over time than on Stack Overflow, where validity or relevance can be influenced by technological evolution. Language does evolve, but not nearly as quickly as technology.