Instead of “best” answer, how about “accepted answer” that only the OP can grant. This works well at Expert’s Exchange and could work well in GQ.
If the OP knows enough to judge which answer is the best, why are they asking the question in the first place?
Many answers in GQ are easily verifiable once the answer is posted. But the intent is not to guarantee accuracy. It’s a value-add to the thread.
“Accepted answer” would just be a measure of whether the OP was satisfied - which only the OP can answer. Take the linked to example about the town in France. Great answer - has all appearances of being well researched and correct. If I were the OP I would definitely mark it as “accepted answer” and walk away believing I knew something about a French town I’ve never visited. No promise of accurace is implied - the reply may well have been totally fabricated. I as a French non-historian can well fall victim to such a prank. Like the answer itself “accepted answer” is no proof of accuracy.
How then is it a value add?
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If I see a question to which I too would like to the the final answer, I can search for “accepted answer” to get past clarification dialogue and/or missteps.
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In cases where an answer is verifiable, or where the specific answer meets a specific need, seeing an “accepted answer” is a signal that no further discussion may be necessary.
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If posters see an answer has been accepted that is clearly incorrect, they can don our ignorance fighting armour and address it (allowing the OP to change the flag?) Ah, I take this one back - 'sif any Doper needs such a cue
This also sounds very similar to the system they use over at Google Answers.
We could implement this idea without coding or upgrading, rather by convention - like many conventions on SDMB, e.g. bolding people’s names. For example, let’s say OP in this thread thought **Q.E.D.'s[b/] “secretary” was the accepted answer. Just click the “reply” button on his post and type “accepted answer”
As an alternative, when you click “reply” the URL in the address bar has the post number at the end. That number can be copy/pasted into a [ post = # ] link.
[ post = 6821994 ]Accepted Answer[ / post ]
with the spaces removed from the tags this becomes…
[post=6821994]Accepted Answer[/post]
Sounds kinda’ like, but not quite the same idea as Slashdot’s Karma.
Precisely the opposite. Only the OP can mark best answers, including their own comments. Doing so, highlights the comment with a lighter background. OTOH, anyone can flag any comment, via the exclamation mark on the comment byline. One can flag a comment as ‘fantastic’, ‘noise’, ‘offensive’ …etc. Flagging is a reporting mechanism akin to this board’s ‘Report Bad Post’. It doesn’t change the comment’s display.
Oh beg pardon, I mean the writer of the post can flag his or her own post. But ah, I thought everyone could do it, not just the OP. Sorry about that.
And when I say ‘can’, I mean ‘cannot’. Excuse me while I :smack:
Hehe. I’ve seen a number of threads where the OP asked a question, then disagreed violently (and baselessly) with the answer, ultimately storming off, proclaiming “Well, I’m going to carry on believing [something, by asking the question, that I initially implied I didn’t know]”
Actually what I had always hoped for would be that people in GQ would simply state what their qualifications are. I’m not enough an expert on much of anything that there isn’t someone more knowledgable on the board so whenever I answer I’ll generally preface it with “WAG” or “I read once…” but lots of people never state whether their response is a guess/hearsay or if they’re the personal preeminate researcher on the field. At the moment I think mostly only lawyers are the ones who specifically say “I am a lawyer…but probably not in your jurisdiction, this is not legal adivce, I am not your lawyer. (etc.)” which they are only stating by training, and not to establish authenticity.
I think more than going for a ranking system would be to put a sticky in GQ with the title, “Include your credentials when responding.”
A similar concept on some boards is to allow the OP to delete posts that follow his. So if two posters get into a tangent argument and the original question has been forgotten, then all non-responsive posts can be cleaned out and the thread kept on topic that way.
It may bother the mods at first that their job is “usurped”, but where they have it people like it and use it. (I suspect the current software allows this, but that’s based on the look and feel of similar boards. I haven’t checked what brand of boardware they use.)
Gee, that would be great. Then I could start a political thread in GD, and delete any posts that made an effective argument against me. That’s how it would work here.