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Stack Exchange staff recently announced that they are considering the prospect of unpinning the accepted answer from the top of answers, and instead sort them by votes.

I noticed some of the other communities discussing this on their meta sites, so I thought of initiating a discussion on Chemistry Meta too.

This setting will be configurable per site. The default setting will be fixed according to the preference of the majority among the Stack Exchange Network.

After a decision is taken, one of us could report it at the main Meta. If permitted, I would like to do that, in hope of garnering some upvotes and rep :) The last date to give feedback is the 19th of this month.

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    $\begingroup$ I was thinking of making this post. Thanks for saving me the effort. ;) $\endgroup$
    – orthocresol
    Sep 15, 2021 at 16:28
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    $\begingroup$ Yes, please. And thanks. I've featured it because the 19th is just around the corner... $\endgroup$
    – Martin - マーチン Mod
    Sep 15, 2021 at 17:42
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    $\begingroup$ @Martin-マーチン Thank you :) $\endgroup$
    – TRC
    Sep 16, 2021 at 3:48

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For what it's worth, I support the proposed change, i.e. I don't want accepted answers to be pinned to the top.

My reason for this is a simple one, and one that has already been given in the many discussions about it: the OP is not always a reliable judge of which answer is the best. This may either be because they don't understand the question / answer, or they might hastily accept the first answer and never come back.

Sometimes votes are not a good judge either (some old questions are like that...), but collective voting is generally much less likely to be wrong than a single person's accept button (cf. law of large numbers), so I view this as a strict improvement.

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    $\begingroup$ Yes please! I use "Active" sorting usually and I always found it annoying to scroll past the accepted answer to look for a newer one and then maybe finding out the accepted actually has changed. That is one reason why I support this. $\endgroup$
    – Martin - マーチン Mod
    Sep 15, 2021 at 17:46
  • $\begingroup$ I have stated on main site table to unpin accepted answers in tabuler answer by seeing support here. If a mod have problem he may revert so. $\endgroup$
    – Jay
    Sep 22, 2021 at 2:01
  • $\begingroup$ @Jay What are you talking about? $\endgroup$
    – orthocresol
    Sep 22, 2021 at 9:09
  • $\begingroup$ @orthocresol see last edit of meta.stackexchange.com/a/369914/1050972 . Hope it will clear your confusion. $\endgroup$
    – Jay
    Sep 22, 2021 at 14:35
  • $\begingroup$ @Jay Yes now I understand, but you can't expect me (or other people in general) to understand what you mean by "main site table". Firstly, "main site" could either mean the main Chemistry site i.e. chemistry.stackexchange.com, or the main Meta Stack Exchange site, which is more likely in this context but cannot be ascertained. Secondly, on both sites there are a lot of tables and you can't expect people to know what table you're talking about. Providing the link from the start would have been much clearer... $\endgroup$
    – orthocresol
    Sep 22, 2021 at 16:46
  • $\begingroup$ ... Anyway, thanks for doing that! I don't think anybody is likely to revert it. I'm honestly more surprised that there are sites that don't want to do this. But, well, to each their own. $\endgroup$
    – orthocresol
    Sep 22, 2021 at 16:50
  • $\begingroup$ Perhaps a proper vote should take place now that SE decided to stay with the status quo. For example, a new Meta thread allowing people to upvote on one of two options. $\endgroup$
    – user1271772
    Oct 3, 2021 at 22:11
  • $\begingroup$ @user1271772, what for? According to the accepted answer on the Meta.SE post (and my own observations), the accepted answers on Chemistry are already unpinned. So it seems that at least on Chemistry, the desired outcome has been accomplished. $\endgroup$
    – orthocresol
    Oct 3, 2021 at 23:19
  • $\begingroup$ We weren't given the opportunity to vote like in this case: astronomy.meta.stackexchange.com/a/804/33303 That's the way many other sites have been doing it. $\endgroup$
    – user1271772
    Oct 4, 2021 at 0:14
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    $\begingroup$ @user1271772 Hmm, I see, but I don't entirely agree. This wasn't a poll with the binary choice of "vote for my post, or do nothing". There were plenty of ways to express disagreement, either by downvoting my answer, or by adding another answer to say no (you can still do that if you wish!). These actions are open to all users, not just me. I think it was democratic enough. $\endgroup$
    – orthocresol
    Oct 4, 2021 at 0:24
  • $\begingroup$ The outcome was the one you wanted. So I'm not surprised you feel that way. But if this is really what the community wants, an unbiased question could be asked with two simply answers (yes or no) with no attempts at persuasion from people wtih blue "Mod" tags next to them, and the same results will be found (if that's really what the community wants!) :) $\endgroup$
    – user1271772
    Oct 4, 2021 at 0:29

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