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Taken from this question: question

What should I do in this case? Of course, Arqade needs to stick by its values of high quality Q&A, and low quality Q&A doesn't do any good.

What should I do?

  • A. Downvote the answer: The answer doesn't answer the question
  • B. Flag the answer: It isn't an answer to the main focus, but I'm unsure here
  • C. Downvote the question: I'm wary of this; the question is valid, but the user accepted a very low end answer
  • D. Flag the question: Needs review? This is a bit of a stretch, but I'm unsure of using this.
  • E. A Combination of the Above
  • F. All of the above: Enough said

So what can I do? As many users have mentioned, it is entirely up to the asker's choice to choose their answer, but in this case, it's low quality. There's nothing we can do on our part. So what can we actually do?

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  • 1
    Do not underestimate our users :) I like to think that everybody reads all the answers, especially if they are short. This way you can make an educated decision how to solve your problem. Some answers complement each other anyways.
    – ayckoster
    Commented Dec 27, 2012 at 23:31
  • 1
    You're missing an option: Edit the answer and fix it
    – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft
    Commented Dec 28, 2012 at 19:44
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    @BlueRaja-DannyPflughoeft - That would be great, except edits aren't supposed to significantly alter the meaning of the question/answer.
    – SaintWacko
    Commented Dec 31, 2012 at 1:05
  • 1
    @SaintWacko Yes, it's not (necessarily) a good option, but it is an alternative that should be considered.
    – Mark Hurd
    Commented Jan 2, 2013 at 3:28

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Accepted Answers are not special. They reflect the fact that the author found them useful and/or correct, regardless of whether or not they actually are.

The Author gets to promote one answer. Whether or not the community agrees with him (i.e., the accepted answer gets the most votes) is not guaranteed to happen. Heck, we even have the Populist badge for when when the accepted answer is clearly insufficient.

Whether or not an answer is accepted or not should have no bearing on whether you would vote it up or down.

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    Thanks...but should I still flag the answer?
    – childe
    Commented Dec 23, 2012 at 20:42
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    @Retrosaur Providing a bad answer is not a flaggable offense. Downvote is your "this answer is wrong" button.
    – Raven Dreamer Mod
    Commented Dec 23, 2012 at 20:59
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    @RavenDreamer Depends how bad...there is an extremely low quality flag for truly terrible answers that merit deletion but aren't quite "not an answer". Though that's definitely more for cryptic grammer-free answers that take ten minutes to decipher, and don't say anything not already better stated by another answer. Definitely not something to do with a tangential answer that's helpful (if poorly worded) but doesn't directly answer the question asked.
    – Theodore Murdock
    Commented Jan 3, 2013 at 4:45

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