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One option: Vote to close the original question instead. If its information is no longer current, and the newer question and answers to it have been posted anyway, make the newer question the "original". ^{Could single, still applicable answers be moved to the newer question? Or will merging always merge into the older topic?}

This invites participation on the site without being told "this topic from mid '09 covers that" — even though its information is out of date and the user has no way of making it appear on the front page again (without posting a "not an answer" or hijacking an old topic, as is happening sometimes with bounties). Having a few of these topics on the front page, instead of buried in the archives, will also lead to new, good answers that wouldn't have been posted otherwise.

OTOH, this will invite creation of duplicates. Users might post answers for those questions even more than now, since the topic might become the often-linked-to new canonical question on the topic. Some pretty much solved topics (backups *cough*) will stay on the front page forever, without actually getting new answers.

Feature Request: There should be a way to deprecate answers that are no longer useful, something which counts as a topic modifying action, pushing it to the front page.

They might have been useful at the time, but things change. I don't want to have them deleted, and make them disappear. Deleting once perfectly valid answers that, as a kind of warning, have a date attached to them, punishes actively participating users, as the reputation gained is lost. In addition, someone still might be using that out-of-support ancient software version* for which the answer still applies (and newer ones don't). Just tag it as This is probably no longer useful unless you know better, make it a grayish text color and don't count as answer with respect to the Unanswered tab (similar to deleted answers, but still visible to everyone).

^{*I'm not referring to the Windows 8 Preview discussion here. More like "Our organization has rather slow update cycles, so we're still using Windows XP / Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3"}

As a specific example, consider this question. The user tried to use instructions for resetting the password that were at least two years old by the time his OS was released. With this feature, we could mark answers as deprecated on this site, as an additional indicator that you should really know what you're doing before doing what the answer says.

One option: Vote to close the original question instead. If its information is no longer current, and the newer question and answers to it have been posted anyway, make the newer question the "original". ^{Could single, still applicable answers be moved to the newer question? Or will merging always merge into the older topic?}

This invites participation on the site without being told "this topic from mid '09 covers that" — even though its information is out of date and the user has no way of making it appear on the front page again (without posting a "not an answer" or hijacking an old topic, as is happening sometimes with bounties). Having a few of these topics on the front page, instead of buried in the archives, will also lead to new, good answers that wouldn't have been posted otherwise.

OTOH, this will invite creation of duplicates. Users might post answers for those questions even more than now, since the topic might become the often-linked-to new canonical question on the topic. Some pretty much solved topics (backups *cough*) will stay on the front page forever, without actually getting new answers.

Feature Request: There should be a way to deprecate answers that are no longer useful, something which counts as a topic modifying action, pushing it to the front page.

They might have been useful at the time, but things change. I don't want to have them deleted, and make them disappear. Deleting once perfectly valid answers that, as a kind of warning, have a date attached to them, punishes actively participating users, as the reputation gained is lost. In addition, someone still might be using that out-of-support ancient software version* for which the answer still applies (and newer ones don't). Just tag it as This is probably no longer useful unless you know better, make it a grayish text color and don't count as answer with respect to the Unanswered tab (similar to deleted answers, but still visible to everyone).

^{*I'm not referring to the Windows 8 Preview discussion here. More like "Our organization has rather slow update cycles, so we're still using Windows XP / Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3"}

As a specific example, consider this question. The user tried to use instructions for resetting the password that were at least two years old by the time his OS was released. With this feature, we could mark answers as deprecated on this site, as an additional indicator that you should really know what you're doing before doing what the answer says.

One option: Vote to close the original question instead. If its information is no longer current, and the newer question and answers to it have been posted anyway, make the newer question the "original". ^{Could single, still applicable answers be moved to the newer question? Or will merging always merge into the older topic?}

This invites participation on the site without being told "this topic from mid '09 covers that" — even though its information is out of date and the user has no way of making it appear on the front page again (without posting a "not an answer" or hijacking an old topic, as is happening sometimes with bounties). Having a few of these topics on the front page, instead of buried in the archives, will also lead to new, good answers that wouldn't have been posted otherwise.

OTOH, this will invite creation of duplicates. Users might post answers for those questions even more than now, since the topic might become the often-linked-to new canonical question on the topic. Some pretty much solved topics (backups *cough*) will stay on the front page forever, without actually getting new answers.

Feature Request: There should be a way to deprecate answers that are no longer useful, something which counts as a topic modifying action, pushing it to the front page.

They might have been useful at the time, but things change. I don't want to have them deleted, and make them disappear. Deleting once perfectly valid answers that, as a kind of warning, have a date attached to them, punishes actively participating users, as the reputation gained is lost. In addition, someone still might be using that out-of-support ancient software version* for which the answer still applies (and newer ones don't). Just tag it as This is probably no longer useful unless you know better, make it a grayish text color and don't count as answer with respect to the Unanswered tab (similar to deleted answers, but still visible to everyone).

^{*I'm not referring to the Windows 8 Preview discussion here. More like "Our organization has rather slow update cycles, so we're still using Windows XP / Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3"}

One option: Vote to close the original question instead. If its information is no longer current, and the newer question and answers to it have been posted anyway, make the newer question the "original". ^{Could single, still applicable answers be moved to the newer question? Or will merging always merge into the older topic?}

This invites participation on the site without being told "this topic from mid '09 covers that" — even though its information is out of date and the user has no way of making it appear on the front page again (without posting a "not an answer" or hijacking an old topic, as is happening sometimes with bounties). Having a few of these topics on the front page, instead of buried in the archives, will also lead to new, good answers that wouldn't have been posted otherwise.

OTOH, this will invite creation of duplicates. Users might post answers for those questions even more than now, since the topic might become the often-linked-to new canonical question on the topic. Some pretty much solved topics (backups *cough*) will stay on the front page forever, without actually getting new answers.

Feature Request: There should be a way to deprecate answers that are no longer useful, something which counts as a topic modifying action, pushing it to the front page.

They might have been useful at the time, but things change. I don't want to have them deleted, and make them disappear. Deleting once perfectly valid answers that, as a kind of warning, have a date attached to them, punishes actively participating users, as the reputation gained is lost. In addition, someone still might be using that out-of-support ancient software version* for which the answer still applies (and newer ones don't). Just tag it as This is probably no longer useful unless you know better, make it a grayish text color and don't count as answer with respect to the Unanswered tab (similar to deleted answers, but still visible to everyone).

^{*I'm not referring to the Windows 8 Preview discussion here. More like "Our organization has rather slow update cycles, so we're still using Windows XP / Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3"}

As a specific example, consider this question. The user tried to use instructions for resetting the password that were at least two years old by the time his OS was released. With this feature, we could mark answers as deprecated on this site, as an additional indicator that you should really know what you're doing before doing what the answer says.

One option: Vote to close the original question instead. If its information is no longer current, and the newer question and answers to it have been posted anyway, make the newer question the "original". ^{Could single, still applicable answers be moved to the newer question? Or will merging always merge into the older topic?}

This invites participation on the site without being told "this topic from mid '09 covers that" — even though its information is out of date and the user has no way of making it appear on the front page again (without posting a "not an answer" or hijacking an old topic, as is happening sometimes with bounties). Having a few of these topics on the front page, instead of buried in the archives, will also lead to new, good answers that wouldn't have been posted otherwise.

OTOH, this will invite creation of duplicates. Users might post answers for those questions even more than now, since the topic might become the often-linked-to new canonical question on the topic. Some pretty much solved topics (backups *cough*) will stay on the front page forever, without actually getting new answers.

Feature Request: There should be a way to deprecate answers that are no longer useful, something which counts as a topic modifying action, pushing it to the front page.

They might have been useful at the time, but things change. I don't want to have them deleted, and make them disappear. Deleting once perfectly valid answers that, as a kind of warning, have a date attached to them, punishes actively participating users, as the reputation gained is lost. In addition, someone still might be using that out-of-support ancient software version* for which the answer still applies (and newer ones don't). Just tag it as This is probably no longer useful unless you know better, make it a grayish text color and don't count as answer with respect to the Unanswered tab (similar to deleted answers, but still visible to everyone).

^{*I'm not referring to the Windows 7 Preview discussion here. More like "Our organization has rather slow update cycles, so we're still using Windows XP / Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3"}

One option: Vote to close the original question instead. If its information is no longer current, and the newer question and answers to it have been posted anyway, make the newer question the "original". ^{Could single, still applicable answers be moved to the newer question? Or will merging always merge into the older topic?}

This invites participation on the site without being told "this topic from mid '09 covers that" — even though its information is out of date and the user has no way of making it appear on the front page again (without posting a "not an answer" or hijacking an old topic, as is happening sometimes with bounties). Having a few of these topics on the front page, instead of buried in the archives, will also lead to new, good answers that wouldn't have been posted otherwise.

OTOH, this will invite creation of duplicates. Users might post answers for those questions even more than now, since the topic might become the often-linked-to new canonical question on the topic. Some pretty much solved topics (backups *cough*) will stay on the front page forever, without actually getting new answers.

Feature Request: There should be a way to deprecate answers that are no longer useful, something which counts as a topic modifying action, pushing it to the front page.

They might have been useful at the time, but things change. I don't want to have them deleted, and make them disappear. Deleting once perfectly valid answers that, as a kind of warning, have a date attached to them, punishes actively participating users, as the reputation gained is lost. In addition, someone still might be using that out-of-support ancient software version* for which the answer still applies (and newer ones don't). Just tag it as This is probably no longer useful unless you know better, make it a grayish text color and don't count as answer with respect to the Unanswered tab (similar to deleted answers, but still visible to everyone).

^{*I'm not referring to the Windows 8 Preview discussion here. More like "Our organization has rather slow update cycles, so we're still using Windows XP / Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3"}