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Stack Exchange staff have announced an upcoming change to the way answer acceptance works.

Currently, the original poster of a question can accept one non-deleted answer. This does several things,

  • the question poster receives 2 rep, and the answer poster receives 15 rep
  • the answer has an added green tick mark below its score and vote buttons
  • the answer itself is pinned to the top of the list of answers, regardless of sort variable

This change will affect the last of these behaviours, removing the "pin to top". Staff have indicated this may be configurable per site - each individual site can have this behaviour turned off or left on (with the default setting yet to be determined by consensus and research).

Please indicate by voting on the answers below, which setting you would prefer.

Downvotes will be ignored for this purpose, as they add no useful information. Just upvote one, or both or neither.

Feedback will be collated on September 19th, giving seven days to make a decision.

To help us decide, here is a SEDE query, created by Nihar Karve & Emilio Pisanty from Physics.SE:

Questions with accepted answer pinned above highest scoring answer

The query shows the results for Physics by default, but you can ask for the results for any main or meta site.

You may also like to browse the parallel question on Physics meta.

Unpinning has now been implemented.

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    $\begingroup$ This question and its answers were derived from the template created by Nij on Sports.SE, and mentioned here $\endgroup$
    – PM 2Ring
    Sep 11, 2021 at 18:36
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    $\begingroup$ Here's a link to the MSO post with the results of the A/B test on unpinning. $\endgroup$
    – PM 2Ring
    Sep 11, 2021 at 18:40
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    $\begingroup$ I support removing "pin to top" as I think it's confusing on science sites. In fact, I'd change the checkmark symbol to a different symbol if I could. The "accept" indicates what the asker found most helpful, which is a good feature to have, but the checkmark symbol and "pin to top" imply correctness that isn't always the case on a science site. $\endgroup$
    – called2voyage Mod
    Sep 13, 2021 at 11:55
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    $\begingroup$ @called2voyage Comments are certainly welcome! $\endgroup$
    – PM 2Ring
    Sep 13, 2021 at 14:54
  • $\begingroup$ @called2voyage "I'd change the checkmark symbol to a different symbol if I could" - good idea! Alternatively, if changing the checkmark isn't possible, then maybe the top-voted answer could receive a checkmark of a different colour (gold? silver? blue?) to denote it to be the "community-accepted" answer? $\endgroup$
    – Aaron F
    Sep 13, 2021 at 21:01
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    $\begingroup$ @AaronF There's a current MSE question: Should the 'accept' icon be updated?. Changing the icon is not very popular, at present. $\endgroup$
    – PM 2Ring
    Sep 13, 2021 at 21:08
  • $\begingroup$ @PM2Ring To be clear, I don't think it should be changed site wide. I think it should be an option for it not to be a check on some sites. Which I know is a bigger change for SE to implement, so probably even a more hare-brained idea, but that's how I feel about it. $\endgroup$
    – called2voyage Mod
    Sep 14, 2021 at 15:45
  • $\begingroup$ @called2voyage Ah, ok. For the past few years they've been moving to simplifying themes and making the sites more uniform, through the Stacks design framework. Prior to 2018, graduated sites could have their own custom accept icon, but that's been eliminated. FWIW, here's a recent staff post on site themes. $\endgroup$
    – PM 2Ring
    Sep 14, 2021 at 20:11
  • $\begingroup$ @PM2Ring Yeah, I knew about the unified design, just wish that feature was customizable. $\endgroup$
    – called2voyage Mod
    Sep 14, 2021 at 20:13
  • $\begingroup$ Obviously, I can't vote on the answers below, but I suppose I should mention that I support unpinning the accepted answer. $\endgroup$
    – PM 2Ring
    Sep 15, 2021 at 20:10
  • $\begingroup$ I have posted our "Unpin" verdict to the table on Meta Stack Exchange. $\endgroup$
    – PM 2Ring
    Sep 18, 2021 at 21:46
  • $\begingroup$ Finally! I had long ago given up on advocating for showing the highest rated answer first instead of the selected answer. $\endgroup$
    – David Hammen
    Sep 19, 2021 at 16:44

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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Remove the "pin to top" behaviour.

I want this behaviour to be removed. An accepted answer should be sorted in the same way as all answers.

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Keep the "pin to top" behaviour.

I want this behaviour to be kept. An accepted answer should be placed at the top of the list.

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