Community vote for "Accepted Answer" (Rep. >= 5000 only)

Question

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Would it be possible to have a “community accepted” feature?

People with reputation points >= 5000 should be allowed to vote for accepted answers for questions.

Right now, a lot of new people come in, do a hit and run question and never mark an answer as accepted. Using this mechanism would solve this problem.

It could work as the following, close to the "Close Question" mechanism in place:

• You must have 5000 reputation points or above to vote.
• You cannot vote for your own answer to be accepted.
• To mark an answer as accepted on a question with no accepted answer (for a day) requires 5 votes from the community.
• To discourage people from voting to advantage someone, a vote cost 10 rep.
• The OP of the question can mark an answer as accepted with no votes and override any votes without cost.

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Optional

This mechanism could also be extended to allow the move of an accepted answer (if the accepted answer is wrong):

• To move an accepted answer, it requires 15 votes.
• Add 5 votes each time an accepted answer has been moved. (Ie.: second move requires 20 votes)

Answer 1

That's what the up-votes are for. Up-votes show, unequivocally, what the community likes.

Answer 2

Even though I (once) thought it was a good idea, Jeff has been pretty clear that this isn't going to happen. I'll copy his answer to my UserVoice ticket that I posted in a similar question:

Every part of Stack Overflow is run and moderated by the community except one: the selection of the accepted answer. As long as you have one person in charge of selected answers you will always have to deal with their particular biases, which decrease the value of Stack Overflow as an objective reference to programming questions.

It might be a good idea that in addition to the answer selected by the asker that there be a community selected answer. This would be completely orthogonal to the up/down votes for the questions, and would only allow one selected answer per person per question. An approach like this would greatly serve to make Stack Overflow a more equitable and fair system.

Here is how it could work:

Expose the "select answer" link to everyone (or perhaps just registered users) and allow them to select at most one answer per question. The answer with the highest number (5 or more) of selections becomes the community-selected answer. To reduce potential for abuse, there should be no reputation or badge associated with this answer selection.

(this is in response to criticism that Stack Overflow is merely the "blind leading the blind": http://blogging-harmful.blogspot.com/2008/08/stack-overflow-blind-leading-blind.html)

And the official response was:

I did. Votes and sorting are the de-facto community answer.

community mode essentially achieves this; see FAQ. Posts automatically get moved into community wiki mode when certain criteria are met. Also, votes are de-facto choosing the community accepted answer; it's the one with the most votes!

It's certainly an interesting suggestion, but unless something has changed in the nature of Stack Overflow in the intervening months (as well it could have) I think that the official response would be much the same today.

Answer 3

I can almost understand the need for moving an answer (but really, if the person who made a question marks an answer as the answer, that answer ought to be a good one, even if there might be an answer that many of the community consider better further down.)

As for marking an answer when there is no answer, the only person it would benefit would be the person who submitted the answer, if you ask me. See this answer: 990364. It's obviously the community-voted answer, and since it's at the top, it's functionally as good as if it had been marked the answer. If it was marked as the answer however, I might get a silvery badge, which would be nice and all, but it doesn't improve the question.

Just my two cents.

Answer 4

Though I have an Enlightened badge awaiting if a guy ever hits that bloody accept checkbox, I still can't get behind this one. The voting system works, as has been proven.

Many times, users accept answers which help them the most, but the community doesn't necessarily like the best. Henceforth, we have the Populist badge. Why should you strip that reward mechanism away from the questioner? Though somebody explained something clearly to me (and I may upvote it), it may not be in terms that the OP can understand. Ergo, the "Accepted Answer" should be a responsibility that lies with the OP and possibly Moderators, if need be.

Answer 5

Taking advantage of the discussion.

Why do we want to be able to accept answers for other users' questions?
Or, what does it matter to us whether a question is properly marked as having received a satisfactory, conclusive, or salient answer?

There have been many feature-request questions which have concerned this very topic. Why?
Why does it come up so many times, and why does it always get rejected?
Would things be better or worse if we were able to do so?

The reason why I recently suggested something similar is, quite simply, because it bothers me — but did it actually bother me that I saw a question, thought that it hadn't received a satisfactory answer, but that it actually had?

It probably depends on why you were reading the list of questions in the first place. If you weren't simply looking for knowledge, or for problems which are are possibly similar to your own, then you might be looking for a challenge or an intriguing project for your spare time.
A minor concern, to be sure. Some variation of seemingly OCD characteristics probably has something to do with it, also. (I mean, I did invent my own alternative to the antiquated and clumsy Filesystem Hierarchy Standard.)

I suppose that it differs for whether you use the Stack Exchange because you are seeking answers, or seeking questions.