Accepting answers in challenges

Question

In any code-golf question, there is the possibility that the OP wants to accept an answer that is not the shortest. I have not heard of it being possible for mods to change the accepted answer. Therefore, I propose that

Accepting for specific tags should be automatic.

For example, for code-golf when the OP wants to accept an answer (if ever) they can just click "accept" and the most-golfed answer (with correct formatting) will be accepted.

• busukxuan: It would be very hard to implement. First the system needs to know which one is a valid answer. If you rely on OP for "flagging" that an answer is valid, OP can just choose to only flag the one he wants to be accepted.
• NoOneIsHere: @busukxuan: What I meant was proper formatting: # Lang, xxx bytes <newline> <codeblock>code</codeblock>, where xxx == len(code).
• busukxuan: yes, but the answer itself must first be valid.
• NoOneIsHere: @busukxuan: If it is not, it can be commented on and flagged by anybody with >= (50, 15) rep.
• busukxuan: That's even worse. You need a very reliable system.
• DJMcMayhem: IMO, this is a very bad idea (tm). The system will not be as reliable as humans are, and it will be very prone to abuse. Also, this is only very rarely a problem. When the OP misaccepts the wrong answer, this should be brought to his/her attention with comments. If the OP acknowledges it and still refuses to change (which is rare, but I've seen before) this should be accompanied by downvotes.
• Martin Ender: I think a better solution would be to get rid of the checkmark entirely.

Answer 1

This idea has many problems.

1. It will be very difficult to write a fool-proof program to detect the shortest valid answer. This also seems rather abuse prone to me. What if the challenge has a deadline? What if the answer was formatted wrong? I suppose you want the accept to automatically update if a newer-shorter answer is posted. What if this answer is invalid? What if a user posts the wrong byte-count to snag the +15 rep? Yes, all of these could be handled with editing and flagging, but this seems like much more work than leaving the accepting up to a human that can judge the answers.

2. Not everyone agrees that having an accepted feature is a good idea.

3. There are much more pressing feature requests, and pretty much every time the answer (if we get one at all) has been "We're not willing to put dev time into customizing a single site", or "Those features are too integral to the site to make any major changes to." It seems like this would also fit in the same boat.

4. Not every question tagged code-golf has the shortest answer accepted. For example, tips.

• user45941: Also the catalogue challenges don't have accepted answers, and there's not even a tag to distinguish them from non-catalogue challenges. That makes it much more complicated.
• DJMcMayhem: @Mego I really dislike "catalog" questions. The point of them was to encourage competition between languages, but it ended up being an excuse to ask really trivial questions. :(
• user45941: I dislike the direction they went too, but that is tangential to the matter at hand here.