You've probably seen the question "Isn’t the FAQ label obsolete by now?", which I thought were simple enough to answer. However that was not the case. Comments have been made about the topic and about my choice to make it a featured question. Some good, some bad. The question have been answered in different ways, with different conclusions, which made me think. I don't think its up to me to set "the answer" to a question under this circumstances. Since it has troubled my mind over the weekend I wonder if the question is best left unanswered, making it a community wiki instead? Or is there a better way to address this issue?
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3 Answers
If you've set a bounty for it then you've more-or-less tied yourself into having to accept an answer. Even if you don't then the bounty will be automatically assigned to the top answer (or the highest answer added since the bounty was announced).
Bounties can also be used just to award to answers to your question without even having opened a bounty on the question, so you can accept one answer and award a bounty to another answer if you feel they deserve some recognition in addition to the accepted answer. That way you can kind of have more than one accepted answer.
Or of course, as you suggest, you could just not accept any answer and leave comments on each of the answers saying what you like / dislike the answers (but then if this happens a lot your 'Accepted Answer Rate' percentage will start to drop, possibly affecting the number of people who will answer future questions of yours).
Finally, some people may say that if your question isn't the type of question that can be definitively answered and just solicits discussions and random opinions then it doesn't really meet the criteria of the Q&A formula so shouldn't have been here anyway ;p. (However I don't think that's the case here; your FAQ question can be answered, just perhaps not in the way you were wanting).
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:) True! I want another answer than to that of the majority. Thus I can also do as you suggest, John. Give the bounty to the answer to the one I like the most, and the correct answer to the one favorite by the majority. A comment to the referendum has to be made and then this case is closed. Thanx for the advice! Mar 19, 2012 at 14:48
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You can also provide your own answer and accept that, if you've found a better one out there other than the ones supplied. (I doubt that you can award yourself your own bounty though!)– JonW ModMar 19, 2012 at 15:04
It doesn't really need community wiki. Community wiki usage has been strongly discouraged and when it is used, it's for something truly colaborative like Android's How do I root my Device? post.
If you think it's not up to you to pick the "correct" answer, simply don't accept an answer and allow users to vote. Community Wiki doesn't let others accept posts anyway.
answered Mar 19, 2012 at 13:29
I noticed this question was locked today:
Examples of placebos in UI design?
It happens to be my question, but I'm trying not to be biased.
I thought it was a good community-wiki question, though. Are we no longer supposed to use the community-wiki feature?
On SO, the community-wiki questions always seemed like some of the more interesting questions on the site. They also seemed popular.
If the SE network wants to discourage use of the wiki feature, so be it. That said, I'll miss it, as I think it's a great feature (and question why the feature was even implemented in the first place if the goal was to get rid of it).
