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Just now I have noticed two wrong answers which have been upvoted and accepted:

"Aaron is a genius boy"

Why are days of the week proper nouns?

I have also noticed many other wrong answers getting upvoted.

I have used many downvotes trying to affect this kind of nonsense, but I feel like I am fighting a losing battle.

This kind of thing makes me wonder about the future of this site. A site like this needs experts to decide what answers are correct, but the voting system gives power to the utterly clueless.

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    Obligatory XKCD link: xkcd.com/386
    – Andrew Grimm
    Sep 26, 2010 at 11:19
  • My god, reading the accepted answer for the days of the week gave me cancer. I try to think that he was just using his troll card.
    – Grizzly
    Apr 26, 2016 at 23:39

2 Answers 2

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Good question. As the author of one of the answers that Shinto selected, I'd say that it's up to the community to not only downvote the answer but also include a comment indicating why it is wrong. Comments will have at least two positive effects (and no downsides):

  1. The author of the answer will be notified and have a chance to correct the answer, delete it or explain why he still thinks that it's right. (This is what I did with my answer, BTW.)

  2. Other readers will know that somebody disagrees with the answer and why. If they agree with the comment, they will downvote the answer or at least not upvote it. In either cases, the comment will be ending with the upvoting trend.

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    I agree with you on this, Bruno. Even if the comment remains the highest voted or the asker's choice for best answer, anybody who comes across this answer can see the discussion below it and form their own conclusion. The only alternative that comes to mind would be to have some autonomous moderator or board decide to strike down a wrong answer, but that is almost certainly too extreme.
    – Kosmonaut
    Aug 19, 2010 at 12:59
  • @Kosmonaut: Agreed, democracy seems to be the lesser evil, as usual. One problem with discussions in comments is that they sometimes refer to older versions of an answer, which might be very different.
    – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica
    Jan 6, 2011 at 4:16
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Keep downvoting those wrong answers when you see them, commenting on the questions with clear explanations of why they are wrong, and upvoting other comments that do the same. Seeing as how our site is only 15 days old at the time of this question, I believe that in the fullness of time the best, correct answers will be vindicated. In the meantime, folks can identify potentially wrong answers by perusing highly-rated comments on answers. Clearly identifying an answer as wrong should eventually lead future readers to vote down the question.

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  • I guess the other problem is if the author of the question chooses a wrong answer as the best answer, it still remains at the top with a checkmark next to it, even though it isn't highest voted. That is what we have at the moment.
    – Kosmonaut
    Aug 19, 2010 at 20:36
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    @Kosmonaut - Plus,theoretically, the person asking the question is probably the least qualified to identify and mark the correct answer. It is just the nature of the beast with Q&A sites. I think you just have to factor that in when using them.
    – JohnFx
    Aug 25, 2010 at 15:22

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