Which answer should I mark as Accepted? Best way or way I actually used? [duplicate]

Question

As the title states, I came across a small but tricky question.

The specific content can be found here: how to properly handle input dependent async data calls in react component?

I got one answer which is actually the better way of solving such scenario, but the other answer was more practicable in my specific case because it constituted only a minor refactor. So which one should I mark as the accepted answer? The better way or the actually used way?

Considerations: At first I thought about accepting the actually used way but on the next moment I thought, I better highlight the answer which is more valuable for the community in general. So which one should I choose?

Answer 1

From the help article on accepting an answer:

Accepting an answer is not meant to be a definitive and final statement indicating that the question has now been answered perfectly. It simply means that the author received an answer that worked for them personally.

But, really, it's absolutely up to you which answer you choose to accept. The accepted answer checkmark is meant to indicate that a particular answer helped the question author the most. What "helped" means is entirely up to you. Did that more broadly-valuable answer give you insight in some way, even if you decided to choose the other solution? Maybe consider accepting that one. Or don't! You have no obligation to accept either if you don't want to.

As VLAZ mentioned in a comment, votes from the community are really the most driving way we have of moderating good content and granting it higher or lower visibility (i.e. good answers rise to the top, less-useful answers float to the bottom). The accepted answer checkmark no longer pins the answer to the top of the answers list over on Stack Overflow, so you're not exerting any visibility power with your choice of accepted answer.