Follow-up to: Alternative for deleting an answer
The following idea just came to my mind:
Sometimes users post wrong answers. They get downvoted. They delete their answer. What's wrong with that? Nobody else (except users with the privilege to see deleted answers) can then learn from other people's mistakes. One solution (see question above) is to mark the answer CW and add "This is wrong, don't use:" to it. But few users will do that - I must admit I didn't even think about using CW in such a case.
I propose a dialog similar to the "Close question" dialog - there you can state an explicit reason why you vote to close. So why not give a reason for deleting your own answers. Then you could for example decide between:
- Answers is so totally wrong and embarassing, delete it completely please.
- Answer is wrong but the mistakes made in it (and shown through comments) might be helpful to others. Mark answer in a special way (another color? "Wrong answers" caption before it?) but don't delete.
Oh and by the way, this question on SO (see singularity's deleted answer) made me think about this issue.
EDIT: Pollyanna made a very good point in his answer below. An alternative to my proposed solution could be to allow 10000+ users (the ones able to see deleted answers) to vote for reopening the answer in a "locked" state - that is, the question is marked as incorrect and no votes are allowed on it.