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Someone posted a new answer to a rather old question of mine, Disadvantages of partitioning an SSD?.

The answer I accepted has 13 upvotes at this time, and I have accepted the information therein as truth.

The new answer disagrees on several points with the accepted answer, and the poster (although a completely new user) gives compelling arguments.

Anyway, I don't have the technical knowledge on this topic to judge which answer is correct. What remedy does the Q/A format of Stack Exchange prescribe for this kind of situation? Obviously either of the answerers have got to be wrong, but I think it's better to have a sort of merger between the two rather than let the votes decide, in the interest of having a canonical reference.

Would offering a bounty be helpful in this case?

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    Why would you think that a mix of correct information and rubbish is better than allowing separate voting on two answers? FWIW, the new answer is correct; while the old one contains a lot of true facts they are almost totally unrelated to your question, and when it finally does address your question it is wrong on almost every critical detail.
    – Ben Voigt
    Commented May 29, 2016 at 20:22
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    You also have the option of retracting the 'correct answer' flag & applying it to another answer.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented May 30, 2016 at 10:09
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    @Tetsujin for the time being, I've retracted it but have not applied it to the other answer since I'm not sure if it's correct either.
    – MarioDS
    Commented May 30, 2016 at 11:07
  • That's fair - as @BenN says, citations would remove doubt in this instance.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented May 30, 2016 at 11:18

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Optimally, voting is how the correct answer is recognized. In practice, though, sometimes people vote up answers that are long just because they look thorough.

I notice that, in this case, neither answer has even a single link. The information might be true, but at the moment it's not backed up by credible sources. In many cases, links aren't necessary because the answer content can be verified experimentally, but that's not really possible here.

Therefore, I think the best course of action is to ask for links to current, trustworthy sources. A polite comment on each answer could result in pointers to such things. A bounty can also help with that; there's even a predefined bounty reason for situations like this:

Looking for an answer drawing from credible and/or official sources.

So if you really want to encourage the writing of a canonical, well-supported answer, you could consider offering a bounty.

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    Suggesting to add links + that bounty reason seems exactly what's needed in this case. Thanks!
    – MarioDS
    Commented May 30, 2016 at 10:05

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