In what circumstances will mods select the best answer for others?

Question

I am creating this question to make it easier for people to understand when we will select best answers on other people's behalf, and to make the information easier to share with people.

Answer 1

We believe that askers of questions should have agency to select the best answer to their question. When reasonable, we will preserve the asker's choice, but we will also make common sense decisions around which answer should be most prominent to visitors.

In summary, we will select the answer in the following situations:

1. Asker approves: If there is no selected answer and the asker responded positively to an answer (e.g., with a comment), then staff will select that answer if there are no lingering concerns over its quality.
2. Asker abandons: If there is no selected answer and the asker made no comments about the answers, then staff will select the best answer in their view if there are no concerns about its quality. Correct and up-to-date answers will be selected.
3. Better answers first: If an answer is selected that is clearly incorrect, outdated, or unhelpful, then staff will select a different answer that is better, if such an answer exists.

For the second and third condition, a couple of days should pass before an answer is selected, which is enough time for people to point out any problems with it.

To help more questions have a best answer selected, do the following:

• If you see an answer that should be selected, flag it.
• If a question author responds positively to an answer, flag their response to make it even more obvious what the flag is for.
• If you answered a question and believe your answer should be selected, flag the question.
• If you see a question that has no answer worthy of a BA, it is a likely candidate for the outdated/unresolved questions thread. You should submit it there.

None of this applies to endless questions.

Comments

um fizz you selected this one even though the asker has been active since the answer has been posted and doesn't have a history of not selecting BA! also. the answer is only 12 hours old. you are a hypocrite and a bad person.

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LOL. The comment deserves a +1 :d
(This means nothing offensive to our great mod. Just the comment is great)

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So Set 1 got an extra requirement and Set 2 got it's 4th requirement changed from a week to 3 days, right?
I don't get the point of that extra requirement added in Set 1. A lot of times users who don't use the site often forget about the BA feature or simply don't care about it anymore. If the OP has given a positive response then I don't see any reason - to not select the answer as the BA - which would need that extra requirement to be added.

Also, when do you select answers for questions asked by banned users? Am I allowed to flag answers on Team RR Blaziken's questions since they're permabanned?

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There have been a couple times where OP said thanks for the answer, but very obviously chose not to select BA. I don't want any compulsion to replace their choice (and almost all of the cases I've seen involve people who post one or two questions then disappear -- I don't think it will make a difference in most situations).
And yes, we went through and selected answers for Blaziken a while ago. Feel free to flag any we missed.

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I agree -- there have been instances where the OP gave a positive response but didn't select the BA, but based on what I've seen, it's mostly when the answer didn't completely resolve the question (the OP didn't specify a particular detail) or the OP has a doubt regarding the answer (the most recent example being this: https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/401806).
I'm not saying only a positive response justifies a BA either, as I feel like a better requirement to add to Set 1 would be the 1st requirement of Set 2. An answer which completely resolves everything the OP asked (including further questions asked possibly in comments on the answer itself) which has also received a positive response from the OP deserves a BA. What do you think about this? :P

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In general, I just don't want to ever go against the will of the person who asked the question. The criteria in the answer works if you go in with that as a goal -- but if you think it's OK to possibly/ occasionally select an answer that the asker didn't want to be selected, then I think what you suggested is the best approach.
Opinions on this? I suppose that in the past I've been a stickler for making the thread best for people reading the thread in the future (i.e. not just the asker), so maybe I should be consistent with that.

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I agree that people should have the freedom when it comes to whether they wanna select a BA or not, but I feel like it's safe to *assume* that selecting isn't against their will in certain situations. If you look at Set 2, you'll realise that it's never confirmed that selecting isn't against the person's will. We might very well be selecting against it without knowing that -- we can just assume that we're not. In the slight chance that they don't like the BA and return to the site, they might have a problem with that. But the chances are so low that we can ignore that possibility! Similarly, I feel like a positive response from the OP + an answer which completely resolves everything, are enough requirements met to safely assume that selecting the BA isn't against the OP's will. Because at the end of the day, they can just deselect the answer if they don't like it -- they're not gonna leave the site just for a simple answer we selected for organisational purposes!

I don't really get what you mean in the 2nd part lol. Would it be too hard for others to understand the conditions?

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I have changed these conditions to be more "common sense".