What are the grounds to accept an answer?

Question

What's a good basis to accept an answer? The clearest one is "I tried that, and it worked." Sometimes, you see an answer that is well sourced (USDA, McGee, etc) and that you can also understand, and that's pretty clear too. The two cases I'm a little unclear about are:

1. The answer seems correct - it looks like the right answer, but I haven't tried it out yet, so I really don't know. Just wait till I do get around to trying it?

2. I have no way of evaluating the answer - The Flaming Banana question has a pretty comprehensive answer by hobodave that has been very highly upvoted. But like Aaronut, I'm not convinced by this answer and don't really have much way to verify it (i.e. I can't cook something with a change and see if it comes out better). So what should I do in that case?

I know there's no definitive answer to either of these questions and that the real answer is: whatever you feel comfortable with. But I'm interested in a couple of other people's take on it.

Answer 1

When we started this business on Stack Overflow, lo these many moons ago, it meant "this is the answer I used".

And I think that that standard works fine here for questions of the "How do I fix this problem I'm having with [dish]?", or "What is a efficient technique to accomplish [fiddly task]?" varieties.

That standard doesn't really make sense for the flaming banana, so were it mine I might leave it without an accepted answer. But if the poster really want to accept something, I think a highly voted answer that looks like a good bet will do.

Answer 2

I think personal verification is a rather unrealistic standard. If we used that metric for acceptance of answers, we'd have a much lower acceptance rate. e.g. this question -- I have no realistic way of verifying either Aaronut's or Darin's answer. I don't know how to test for ethylene gas, nor do I know how to verify Darin's claims, which are backed up by McGee. At some point you really do have to trust a source. If users want to use this as a personal metric fine, but I don't think it's advisable to present this as any kind of "suggested" behavior.

I also think it is a little melodramatic to infer that we would look like fools if an accepted answer is wrong. Acceptance, as well as votes, can be changed quite simply. If an answer is given, and provides reasonably trustworthy references, there is no harm in accepting it -- even if it later turns out to be wrong. If someone who knows better comes along and points out the error, that's great; we can thank them and make corrections.

In the banana question case -- I'd speculate that the vast majority of expert chefs don't even know the answer to that offhand. If inclined, they'd likely do similar research to my own, and accept the explanation given by the reasonably trustworthy USDA and Canadian equivalent. I've seen chefs I deeply respect say things that are completely wrong on television, and in print, and I don't think them fools. They just can't be expected to have the necessary chemistry/physics background to answer some questions truly accurately.

For example, caramelization and the Maillard reaction. There is a lot of misinformation, confusion, and misquoted foo out there, even on this site. Repeating what you've heard or read from a reasonably trustworthy source does not make you a fool. It makes your sources wrong, and that's patently different.

---

In short, the only grounds to accept an answer are really your personal preference. If you want to accept the most upvoted, do so. If you want to accept a completely wrong answer, do so. As always, I'm firmly against any attempt at trying to regulate, or even encourage the way people use their votes and acceptance.

Answer 3

My personal feeling on this is that you should only accept an answer if it actually solves your problem or if you can personally verify its correctness or effectiveness.

That an answer simply "looks" right, or is highly-upvoted, are not on their own good reasons to accept an answer. Neither is peer pressure.

That said, there's another side of the coin: If somebody has contributed what appears to be a good answer that has accumulated several votes, and you don't plan to accept it, you should explain why. It's common courtesy to the person who contributed the answer. Tell them what you think the answer is missing, why it didn't work, what changes you would require in order to make it acceptable.

If you have no way of evaluating the answer then it should not be accepted. If you have no way of evaluating any answer then the question should never have been asked in the first place (not that this is the case here - I'm just pointing it out for the record).

A highly-voted-but-wrong answer can be chalked up to information cascade and herding behaviour. None of us is as dumb as all of us. But if a wrong/incomplete answer is accepted, especially by a high-ranking member of the community, then it makes it look to an outsider like we're fools, the blind leading the blind. I would rather see a slightly lower accept rate than see wrong or even questionable answers accepted.

(And in case anyone is prone to take offense at this - I am honestly not thinking about or referring to any specific answers, just answering the general question that was asked here.)