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Can we have mods force-accept answers that obviously answer the question to the full extend? There are many very old questions the OP just didn't bother visiting the site. These questions keep bumping up into the active slot (I suppose it's due to the community slot) and the answerers should get the credit they deserve. This would be a great example of such a question (and answer).

I'm open to other suggestions though.

I'm not saying that mods should force accepting of answers, but that good answers that are not marked as "answered" because the user is inactive (usually they only ask 1 question and hence have a reputation of 1) should be accepted. This way, the Community bot won't poke them and the answerers get the credit they deserve.

As I only joined this site fairly recently, this is not for a personal benefit but rather just my good altruistic side ;P.

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  • If they get enough upvotes they won't be bumped up by Community. I myself wasn't aware of the answer that you used as an example, so raising the issue here helped already, at least in that one case (although you were aiming for a more permanent solution).
    – Lucky
    Commented Apr 4, 2017 at 11:32

1 Answer 1

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No. It is up to the OP to indicate that they are satisfied with an answer enough to accept it as correct. That is what the upvoting system is for, so that the community can indicate correct answers and reward them with upvotes, and downvotes or no action on less accurate answers.

To sidestep this basically gives the moderators power to just accept answers that they deem are the most correct, which may or may not be the case. For example, I have some medical experience as an EMT and a primary ER/field medic in the Air Force. For me to go around indicating "Yes, this is a correct answer" would be negligent and wrong. I just don't have the medical depth of knowledge that comes from a lifetime of schooling and medical experience.

The purpose of the moderators is not to ensure that every answer is answered correctly, and that the "best" answer is rewarded with points. The moderators are here to enforce the "get along" rules, remove gross breaches of site policy (Spam, porn, abuse, etc), and generally keep the site orderly. The upvoting/downvoting/acceptance is for the community to enforce.

While the traffic on Health is low enough that the moderators can play a more active role in the day to day voting, on sites like SO and similar where there are literally dozens of questions a minute, no reasonable amount of moderators could keep up if they were the sole arbiters of what is acceptable and right.

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  • The users I'm talking about are inactive though and have never read any answer at all. I understand that moderators bystepping the upvoting process would be a problem. Are moderators able to stop the Community bot to poke old questions that have an answer that should be accepted?
    – Narusan
    Commented Mar 28, 2017 at 20:51
  • I'm not asking the mods to decide what's right and wrong. It's just that many old question with (in my personal view) answers that perfectly address and answer the questions keep appearing in the "active" list of all question.
    – Narusan
    Commented Mar 28, 2017 at 20:53
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    That's just kind of the way it is. Again, if a moderator decides an answer "should have been" accepted, it subverts the whole process. Even users that visit the site regularly are under no obligation to accept an answer if they don't feel the current crop does the job sufficiently.
    – JohnP Mod
    Commented Mar 28, 2017 at 21:11
  • I shall be a good example and accept your answer then ;)
    – Narusan
    Commented Mar 28, 2017 at 21:24

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