Isn't it the question author who gets to choose when an answer is satisfactory or not on SO? If a question is full of answers that aren't marked as satisfactory, then there's still an opportunity for someone to come in and get the points by providing a different one. What more can they do, ban people from trying to provide alternative solutions? Surely that is going to create much more harm than good.
> Isn't it the question author who gets to choose when an answer is satisfactory or not on SO?
This would be a fine policy if SO didn't also make a huge stink about duplicate questions. As is, there's one canonical copy of each similarly-phrased question, and a re-ask that says "but for real, I actually want to do it this way" is going to get shut down as a duplicate.
> If a question is full of answers that aren't marked as satisfactory, then there's still an opportunity for someone to come in and get the points by providing a different one.
The system rewards being one of the first responders, not the one who actually answers the question. This is especially true now that they've updated the system to place the highest-voted answer first rather than the accepted answer.
> What more can they do, ban people from trying to provide alternative solutions? Surely that is going to create much more harm than good.
I don't know that there's anything the company can do, since it's pretty clear that they've lost control of most aspects of the culture.
