A while ago I wrote an answer about a mechanical detail of a game. The answer got a lot of up-votes and got accepted.
But then came the next version of the game, and that game mechanic was completely changed. My answer was now practically useless for the current state of the game. The only value it still had was now historical in nature. There was literally not a word of the old answer which could be used and I had to rewrite it from scratch.
What should I now have done in that situation? My options were:
- Edit my old answer by completely replacing it with the new one
- Create a new answer while leaving the old one
I believe that the general Stackexchange idea would have been option 1: Outdated answers should be updated. But it felt immoral for me to keep those upvotes on the answer when those people who gave them were voting on a completely different answer. The voters would have had their upvotes on an answer they didn't even read. Maybe my new answer would have been much worse in their eyes and not worthy of upvoting, maybe even downvoting?
So I first picked option 2 and wrote a completely new answer. I expected the community to rate my new answer on its own merit and the asker to unaccept the old answer and accept the new one. But unfortunately my new answer got completely ignored by the asker and by the community. My now completely worthless answer was on top with accepted-tick and lots of upvotes, while the correct answer below had 0 votes. And I can hardly force the asker to redact his acception.
So I decided to change my opinion and pick option 1. I deleted my new answer and edited the old. But it still didn't feel right.