I have a small number of answers, and the most successful / least criticized ones were always on niche languages or topics. C/C++/Java? No chance. I corrected a wrong answer on a question in C++ once, which was immediately reverted with “nope, your answer is too different from the original, make a new answer”. Great, so now there’s an answer that is fundamentally wrong with 26 upvotes that apparently can’t be corrected because the correct version of the algorithm is too different from the original. I just stay away from answers in those languages now, they’re more effort than they are worth
> I corrected a wrong answer on a question in C++ once, which was immediately reverted with “nope, your answer is too different from the original, make a new answer”.
This is how Stack Overflow is designed to work. One single user is not supposed to be able to edit a top answer and change it into a different answer.
The Stack Overflow Way™ is to post a new answer that tells the correct answer and why the other answer is wrong. Then the community has two separate answers and they can vote on which one is more correct.
Confusing? Yes. Arcane? Yes. Did the system fail in this specific circumstance? Absolutely yes.
But they can't just let people edit highly voted answers into fundamentally different answers. That's why your edit was not approved.
That's apparently the intended design; SO bills itself as "questions and correct answers", but they've made it clear in the Meta site or in blog posts, I don't remember where, that the accepted answer and upvotes are not "this is correct" but "people found this helpful", and people can find "wrong" answers helpful, so they stay.
The intended outcome here is that you post your own answer, and leave a comment on the most upvoted one summarising your concern with it.
And that readers don't just pick the most upvoted one, (even though it's obviously the site's design that they should be able to do that).
So on your last point, I found something sneaky you can do to people:
The answers have a sort order, controllable by tabs below and to the right of the question. These go to the same page with a GET arg to change the order. The trick is that these are sticky - browsing to one saves it as your preference. So if you post a comment to a question and include that arg, it'll switch the whole site for whoever clicks it, without telling them.
That kind of behaviour is what's most annoying about their site, their conventions sometimes overrule common sense or intelligent queries/dialogue.
Last I contributed anything on there I was being told by a single poster that my question was 'wrong', and descending into an argument - and started throwing SO convention at me. I just deleted the question. There's a sociopathic nature about those looking for ratings and authority that's totally at odds with simple sharing of knowledge and learning.
