Suggestion: An alternate way to have your answer chosen as best

Question

I and many other people have answered a lot of questions by new users. The trouble is, not all of those users are the smartest, or read the rules, or even listen to comments asking them to select a BA.

So I propose a way for other users to vote for an answer to be selected as best. If after a certain amount of time an answer has not been selected, other users may vote on whether an answer should be the BA. If there are multiple answers, whichever gets the required amount of support first (maybe three votes?) is selected. This voting system is separate from the regular, so you would be able to both upvote and vote on an answer, if you so desire.

Both mods and the question asker could override an answer selected as best at any point, and select another if they so choose.

Voting for an answer to be the Best Answer would not give the answerer points like upvotes do. A person could remove their vote at any time, but they wouldn't be able to vote on multiple answers as candidates for the BA.

I haven't noticed mods selecting Best Answers often anymore, if at all. If they're too busy with other things, a way for regular users to vote upon a BA would be very helpful. There would obviously have to be a point goal you have to achieve before you have the privilege to vote.

I'm not sure if this is possible, but if it is, this would be an excellent feature to have.

Thanks for reading!

Comments

> I haven't noticed mods selecting Best Answers often anymore, if at all.
Here's a fun way to address this problem... flag questions where the asker was happy with the answer, but didn't select it. That way, we will definitely see the question and deal with it. (Quick plug that this would work a lot better if this was implemented! https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/meta/72602)
I do intend to select answers when I see the asker was happy with them, though I suppose I personally haven't come across the threads where that happened. As for going back and selecting answers on weeks-old threads... yeah I haven't done that in years.

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So if I find answers that the asker seems happy with, but did not select, I should flag them so a mod can potentially select it. Is that correct?

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For now, it might be a good solution. It might cause some confusion, but nothing that can't be explained away (or maybe addressed in the mod update thread I've been meaning to make for ages...)

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Understood. Though I do hope that solution doesn't detract from the potential of this suggestion getting implemented.

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No, I think your suggestion is good too.

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Wait, was this why there was a bunch of new stuff flagged? I just cleared flags on about 5 questions a few minutes ago that were probably flagged because of this. Whoops.

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Nah, that's my bad for not pinging you guys about it. I'll try to remember in the future.

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"If after a certain amount of time an answer has not been selected, other users may vote on whether an answer should be the BA."
what if the person who questioned doesn't like the answer?

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@SYL

"Both mods and the question asker could override an answer selected as best at any point, and select another if they so choose."

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Well if if answers the question, and is generally agreed upon to be good, then it's probably fine. If the asker doesn't like it then they should say something.

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@X that is extra work for the asker

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Fair. They could leave a comment, like Kyogre said, perhaps.

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Ysee and this is where it's a suggestion that it would be okay to have as a feature but it's not worth the work because of the that is extra work for the asker (commenting is also extra work)

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Another fair point.

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why does anyone care if the extra work is literally pressing a button to select something else as BA? its not "extra" work because they could have done that in the first place [note that the fact that they might not have is the reason this became a suggestion]