Should we have a way to "red flag" an answer that becomes incorrect with passage of time?

Question

No doubt any technology forum has the problem of old answers being potentially incorrect or less useful with the passage of time (except SQL, ha-ha). ;-)

Seriously, though, I think that SEO answers in particular run the risk of being incorrect with the passage of time. Wouldn't it be helpful if we had a way to "red flag" an answer that had been correct, but is now incorrect due to a new Google algorithm (for example)?

It would be easy to pseudo-accommodate this with a tag, but I think that doesn't stand out enough and it's not what the tags are meant for.

To truly pull this off, you'd need some way to blanket the entire answer with a status flagging it, which would accomplish the following:

1. warn users/readers the information is not correct (even though it might be the accepted answer)
2. open the question up to new answers, hot-listing it, etc.

I'll admit, my suggestion sort of opens a can of worms. We are participating in a very open forum and it's sort of a given that the natural process already in place should cover this. However, largely due to SEO, it seems like we'd benefit by having a mechanism such as this.

What do you think?

Answer 1

Just flag the question for mod attention, but really there's not much more you can do than that because we don't have a method of confirming if the answers are still correct or not.

The other option is to post your own answer to the question with the new correct solution. Just make sure you mention that the previous solution is incorrect and why (not that they are wrong overall, just that things have changed).

There's no reason these sites can't be fluid. Your answer might not get the "accepted" flag, especially if the op has moved on, but as it will be bumped to the top of the page, it may very well get more upvotes than the accepted answer. There's even a badge for that.