Why do incorrect answers getting “accepted”?

Question

This is probably a duplicate question from Meta SE, but in my opinion it is relevant to this site.

For example, this answer about creating Variation Labels in SharePoint 2013 using CSOM was accepted, but the answer is incorrect, since it is possible to accomplish via CSOM as demonstrated in that case in my answer.

So, the question, is this a site that values accuracy or googling and copy-pasting from another resources?

Answer 1

I think this is not about this site per se. But more of how different members uses it.

If you have limited knowledge in an area, and ask a question here, all you want is an answer that is inline with your view of the problem / context.

It is hard for that member to know if an answer is incorrect or correct (they need to look at the sources provided, and somehow also evaluate if what the answers say makes sense).

I can not express my opinion about this specific case, but it looks like you found a way that is not very well documented but probably works.

All you can do in this case is to try to point this out to the user, and hope that he /she will mark your answer as opposed to the other one.

Hopefully the community can also help you, and future readers, out by upvoting your answer to make it clear that it is indeed possible.

Generally, this is something that is up to the members of the community: to overtime correct by using the power of comments and up-/downvotes.

Answer 2

I agree very much with Robert.

As of my experience, I sometimes even got downvoted for perfectly correct (from my perspective) answers. Which is a pity, because usually I spend a lot of time, up to several hours, composing a single answer... And definitely I don't mean to provide bad answers, and everybody who read my answers for a while, knows that. In most cases, after each of these downvotes, I leave community for months...

I think there are 3 main reasons for this problem:

1. English. Not everyone on SP SE knows English with sufficient proficiency to express exactly their situation and what they want. This leads to cutting off important parts of questions or just expressing them in a confusing or misleading way.
2. Learning what question is about takes time. Our brain works in a certain way. In terms of neurobiology, when we learn, we make connections between our neurons, and after the connections are made, we are able to comprehend the thing we learned as a single chunk of data. You cannot learn complex concepts instantaneously (e.g. a language), it's just impossible. Now imagine a person who spent months working on a project and obviously learned a lot of things in this particular area, is trying to ask a question. No matter how well he explained the problem, you as an expert just cannot comprehend his situation until you spend some time pondering it.
3. SharePoint. Well, the thing is, SharePoint works very differently in different environments. I think everyone knows that solution that is tested on a test environment, is not actually guaranteed to work in production. So even if you tested your solution in your environment before posting it here to SharePoint SE (and most people don't even test), it doesn't mean it will work for the people who wants this solution. Once I posted a solution in my blog, that was meant to solve a big problem. I investigated this problem for weeks, and spent many hours composing the blog post. It turned out that solution didn't actually even work, because the results I've got were caused by artifacts left from one of previous experiments...

Answer 3

Based on my analysis usually new or with low reputation users mostly accept answer regardless of how correct the answer is actually.

I think the reason behind such action is them getting 2 reputation points.

Few Motivations for new user for accepting incorrect answer ?

• They (new users) don't have ability to up-vote any post until they have got +15 reputation points.
• They don't have ability to down-vote any post either till they have got +125 reputation points.
• They won't be able to join a chat room till they have got +20 reputation points.

Answer 4

The post you are referred is about my answer... I am not developer and what I wrote their is some who Official from MSFT as MSFT support guy said that in technet forum...it is quite possible in SharePoint something works for you but not for others...and you cannot force your opinion on others as everyone have the rights...

this is social community and no one get paid here but we are here to help each other...

accepting answer is not my right rather its questioner's right, if he like a reply an answer then how can you fight with him...may be that's what he want....

check my answers/replies in some cases my accurate answer not accepted but others short got accepted because it depend upon user what he wants.

So if you want that a moderator check every marked answer and mark sure it is correct then i think a bad idea...We are limiting the user's rights.In my opinion, User always have a right to accept a reply as an answer which fit to according their needs.