Accepted Answers - to pin or not to pin? New Se feature, a per site option, may be coming

Question

Stack Exchange staff have announced an upcoming change to the way answer acceptance works.

• Unpinning the accepted answer from the top of the list of answers

Currently, the original poster of a question can accept one non-deleted answer. This does several things,

• the question poster receives 2 rep, and the answer poster receives 15 rep

• the answer has an added green tick mark below its score and vote buttons

• the answer itself is pinned to the top of the list of answers, regardless of sort variable

This change will affect the last of these behaviors, removing the "pin to top".

The staff has indicated this may be configurable per site - each individual site can have this behavior turned off or left on (with the default setting yet to be determined by consensus and research).

links

Announcement - Unpinning the accepted answer from the top of the list of answers

post with links to user script which may "fix" behavior - post

half of the text is stolen from a different place with a permission

SEDE query, taken/forked from Astronomy.SE, credits - created by Nihar Karve & Emilio Pisanty from Physics.SE

• in our case, it affects 3'325 questions out of 31'089 questions total.

Actions

Anarchy mother of the order, so just be informed. (I guess)

I hope we will have it on by default.

Update, after 10 days, 179 views

At the moment we have 50/50 results like 8 vs 8 votes

Here is Full List of Community Discussions so someone may be interested.

SFF.se aka sister site for us is also on that list, I think their situation is quite similar to ours, seems they are for the change even if not expecting that much from it. What is funny, we have 11% of old answers affected, but they have only 6% - quite an interesting difference.

In general, the number of decisive sites is not overwhelming.

P.S. Skeptics thread, lol, as you would expect it, no strong feelings

Answer 1

Leave pinned -- on Worldbuilding.

Unpinning is absolutely the right behavior when people are asking questions about biology or physics or most other Stack Exchange sites. The person asking the question is often simply not qualified to say which answer is right, or else they wouldn't be asking.

But on worldbuilding, the utility of an answer really is in the eye of the beholder, and in particular, of the person who posed the scenario. No one else can be sure they interpreted the question in the right way in the first place. We're not talking about taxonomy and general relativity here - more often magically enhanced mermaids and siege weapons usable by pigeons.

Answer 2

Best to Unpin

The green check mark really only does two things: first, it dissuades users from posting their own answer because, well, the "best answer" has been chosen, indicating that there is no point in anyone writing an answer in the future; and second, its sole purpose is for the querent to advertise that their specific needs in asking a question have been met to their satisfaction.

The green check mark kind of defeats the dual purpose of queries and responses here: one being to help the specific querent with their specific worldbuilding problem; the other being a repository of geopoetical wisdom that will last through the ages (or until SE shuts down and scrubs its archive).

It is often the case that the accepted answer, which helps the querent most of all, is not necessarily the best possible answer, which helps the broader community most and would be of potential service to future seekers.

UNPIN the GREEN CHECK MARK
My vote, if I understand the terminology correctly, would be to unpin the accepted answer and let it rise or sink according to its community voted merits.

Doing this satisfies both our purposes. The querent gets the answer she's looking for; the respondent gets his rewards; the broader community gets to place its own best answer at the top.

Answer 3

TL;DR - We need a test run, a month, it is hard to say without actual experience.

Thinking about it, especially after Qami's post, it should be different for various sorting methods :

• Oldest first - it should be unpinned
• Highest votes - may be pinned
• Recent - probably unpinned

The reason is the desired outcome, which is important when we choose this or another sorting method.

When I sort in chronological order, oldest first, I intend to scroll and see if I have something to add, or if I am willing to post an answer to the question, while reading I vote answers. If I feel I have something to say then I do so, after scrolling through all answers, and sure I will notice the accepted answer as well if it is present.

Most voted first - the current behavior works in 90% cases, so a change here is not a huge deal, but maybe we can argue here that accepted on top may be important here.

Recent change sorting - one probably does expect to see that recently changed answer on top, maybe for the reason one prefers fresher ones

• other more dynamic reasons are not necessarily a factor because changes of sorting methods are not such a convenient procedure - so it from the start some long-lasting reason and sorting changes are rare for a person, I guess (at least for me).

And in this case, unpinning is the desired outcome, but there may be a value of comparison between fresh answers and the accepted one, having them next to each other, but it sure is for special people, but I can see how it can be useful for some adaptations and strategies for some people.

This way unpinning:

Fixes behavior for 100% questions with accepted answers for 2 out of 3 sorting methods.

Breaks (or maybe not - a matter of personal preferences) expected behavior for 11% of questions with accepted answers in 1 sorting method out of 3.

It looks like clear cut to me, in terms of consistency of results and meeting expectations. ("And" because we use and adapt our practices to known inconsistency, and if a change breaks something again, I guess we will do that again, adapt, and I do not think new adaptations in that case for those people are that much more annoying than existing ones)

Premise for 90 degree turn

In general, the reusability of old questions and answers is low on WB. I have an old answer 7yo on a different SE site, where I have one or few answers and it brings me some points once a half year or so(it is/was a recipe for a problem), on WB upvotes for my old answers as rare as that one q, I have 100+ answers, and even when I'm not most likable answer provider (far from it), it kinda leads me to certain conclusions, which I think I'm not wrong about. I think a similar situation is for other se sites which are not recipe providing ones.

Most of the activity happens in some period of TTL (time to live) for the question and then it is done, and that TTL correlates with the position on main. It also can be seen by the frequency of providing new answers to old questions.

90 degree turn

So until a question is on the main it has life, once gone it is toast and history. And for active users who are looking at active question's with an existing answer, they are probably curious about - what kind of answer op accepted. Or if they are looking to provide an answer then anyway the accepted one needs some reading (chronological sorting or not), and only with recent sorting unpinning may be an improvement. So for a fraction of questions, those which TTL isn't expired, and those which are important as they are currently in active use, it is less of clear cut than for older questions, mainly because of that curiosity aspect what kind of question op accepted, and after a few minutes of reading be a reminder that you reading a question with accepted answer, which could be forgotten already but here it is - a reminder.

So yeah, it needs a test run, as there are less obvious conveniences and inconveniences in the current situation. Be the change an individual preference, like button pin accepted (4th sorting button, which can be toggled on and off for each sorting method, creating 6 options in total), then that would be perfect as user experience, and we probably should insist on that option. Not caring about google traffic at all in this case and in this post.

Answer 4

I don't have any strong feeling about this topic, but just for the sake of balancing opinions with advanced arguments, I'll play the fey's advocate. Don't tell me I'm the devil's one. Who would like to be on Devil's side? Now I'm sad for the Devil, all alone :p.

No, we should keep accepted answers on top

Unpinning won't improve that much the amount of new answers coming in

That's a direct counter-argument to what people might naturally think as they evaluate there's "more space for unaccepted answers" after an answer has been accepted. People are by good nature lazy, and as such limit unnecessary efforts when they can. This includes looking for questions to answer.

My understanding as a game designer is that people who look to answer questions to get accepted will look first and foremost the question list, which already contains all the information they need, including the answer indicator. This one :

Which one's has been accepted¹?

As such, having the accepted answer on top doesn't impact a lot people looking to get their answer... Well, accepted. Most if not all would stop at the list and be fine with it.

This alone is insufficient to prove the whole pointy point. Indeed, I showed that if you are looking to get "accepted", then this has no impact, but does unpinning change how likely you are looking to get accepted? A new challenger comes in!

Unpinning reduces the likelihood of less popular questions getting attention

It's important to recall why accepted answers exist. It serves as additional, single-use, big rewards to questions. This is in contrast to votes, which are multi-use, weaker-alone rewards.

While those two rewards set the same user goals (answering questions) and work towards a functionnal website (people getting answers to their question), they don't really aim the same kind of questions :

• Votes, by their multi-usage nature, are most numerous and effective on popular questions, since they're directly proportional to the number of people reading them. After all, even if you double the percentage of votes/readers on a question as they're exceptionnally well-thought, if there are 10x more readers on another one, you'll have more votes there.
• Accepted answers instead impact any question, as they are single-use. They level -even a little- out the rewards among all questions, regardless of their fame.

We still get a good chunk of questions with low views and answers. Took a look at 50 non-closed questions from one month ago (well beyond their tsunami of incoming readers). Out of these, 19 has 1 or less answer (2 without any), so almost 40%. It's a lot, considering that among them 9 (~20% of total) are questions which doesn't absolutely imply only yes, no or a single value (e.g : how much/long for X...) as answers. They therefore would probably need more of than one them to have a good understanding off the topic's possibilities.

Removing pins will remove one of the few rewards that accepted answers give, meaning fewer incentive to look for questions which have mathematically higher probabilities to get your answer accepted. Indeed, if you have less to choose from }i{... It therefore reduces the rewards you can get from low-popularity topics reducing their value to potential answerers.

So it's one reward less, one of "glory", which is also a very strong kind of reward²; It's also unique among others. The act of being brought on top like if you were 1^st on a leaderboard makes it more clear that at least one person read your answer throughly. And on top by the one which is the more likely (read 100% chance) of having that issue, facing it the way it is stated and that will be helped, as opposed to 90% of the rest who'll just read the main question out of curiosity and switch to something else. But that's not only about heart-to-heart -or should I say asker-to-answerer- discussions...

The act of accepting an answer helps in contextualizing questions for others

And because of that, accepted answers should be on top. There is both historical and "futurical" reasons to why I say this.

• Historical : Knowing quickly which answers have been accepted helps in turn to understand quickly what was the asker's thoughts relatively to their question. It also helps understanding in a glance how far the accepted answer at that time relates to the community's standards³. It helps clarifying what people understood of the question versus what the asker understood from themselves. And the reasons behind a decision is oftentimes more important than the decision itself, especially in more creative settings.
• For future answerers : It sets a better understanding of the question. Some questions lack clarity to some even if it has been well-written, and knowing that "this" answer got accepted sets some more frontiers you can more confidently walk in.

Of course, pinning or unpinning does not remove access to these information, but it removes their accessibility. Thus, removing common use of these. Remember my first few sentences : People are by good nature lazy :).

Devifey's Advocate mode : OFF

That's everything that came into my mind. That's quite a lot, considering I think it's not that important. Would have been smarter (but functionally more complex) to let people choose in their settings what they want if I'd dare to say so. or make some A/B group testing to help in the final call. but that's overjudging something I don't have access to the gears, so I'll just quiet my voice }i{...

---

¹ : Funny thing that questions with accepted answers are displayed more prominently than questions without any answer. This targets -with intents or not- more an audience of readers than answerers, but at the same time makes it feel like less of a constraint to answerers so it balances up that. Paradoxically funny.

² : Depending on the individual but still for many.

³ : To be accurate, standards up to today.

Answer 5

Keep pinned, for quick & deterministic comparison between accepted answer and top-voted answer.

"How far down will I have to scroll to find the accepted answer?"

Writing it out really makes it sound like a first-world problem and or/a silly thing to be concerned about. But for a user who is navigating tons of questions each day, constantly assessing whether they want to upvote an answer, leave a comment, or write one of their own, having guaranteed fast access to the accepted answer seems like a desirable element of design.

Consider our current layout scheme. For a question with many answers, there are only three possible arrangements:

[Most votes]       |   [Accepted answer & Most votes]   |   [Accepted answer]
[2nd most votes]   |   [2nd most votes]                 |   [Most votes]
[3rd most votes]   |   [3rd most votes]                 |   [fewer votes]
...                |   ...                              |   ...

In all of these cases, the first two answers always contain the accepted answer (if present) and the top-voted answer. Now, if we unpin it, we don't know where the accepted answer will end up. It could be the first, or second...or anywhere. Accepted answers are often highly voted, but on occasion we may see a situation like this:

[Most votes]
[2nd most votes]
[3rd most votes]
...
[Nth most votes]
[Accepted answer]
[(N+2)th most votes]
...

Thinking of my engagement with the site, it's pretty rare that I'd cast votes on answers without first checking the accepted answer and comparing it against other high-scoring answers. And in the rare but possible case that I would post a new answer to a question with an already-accepted answer, I would certainly want to read it before beginning to post. It's very nice to have the accepted answer always in the same place, and it would be bothersome to have to go hunting for it on those rare occasions when it's not near the top.

[Edit: If we do unpin the accepted answer, could we have a "jump to accepted answer" button at the top...?]

Answer 6

Please keep the current behavior if possible

This is the kind of change which is valuable only because it is a change and some software developers get to book an achievement.

If easily possible I would be happy to keep the current behavior.

On the other hand, I could live with the new behavior just fine.

After all, it's a free web-based application. Nobody expects the behavior of free web-based applications to make sense.

Answer 7

Leave it alone, change of any sort irritates me. That's my personal reaction, when I think about how our stack functions I'd also prefer it was left alone for two reasons:

• Accepted answers are one of the tools that I quite often use to understand how the person asking the question sees the question when I'm deciding whether I can contribute anything further that may be useful.

• When I have asked the question and then refer back to it later I want to know what I was thinking when I made a decision about the answer and being able to instantly access the accepted answer helps with that. In fact having that answer pinned is pretty vital in preventing concept drift (and the inconsistencies that it causes) created by reading other answers without having been reminded of what I felt was the best fit at the time.