How to resolve the checkmark sitting on answers now made incorrect/inaccurate by rule changes/updates?

Question

By the nature of tabletop games, rule books will come out that provide RAW answers to questions that have been asked before, were answered, and that answer was accepted; however, due to the new rule book that accepted answer is no longer correct.

This question's not an ideal example, but close enough for these purposes.

Is the burden solely on the original querent to remove and reassign the checkmark? Should we flag the question for moderator intervention? Or do nothing?

Alternately, is it appropriate to edit the accepted answer to indicate that it was provided prior to the release of material that contradicts or refines the answer?

Answer 1

The only way to move a checkmark is by the question-asker doing it. Not even mods can override which answer the asker found most useful.

There's no expectation set by SE that the checkmark will correspond to the best answer anyway. The opposite is actually considered fine (emphasis mine):

Accepting an answer is not meant to be a definitive and final statement indicating that the question has now been answered perfectly. It simply means that the author received an answer that worked for him or her personally. Not every user comes back to accept an answer, and of those who do, they might not change the accepted answer even if a newer, better answer comes along later.

Stack Exchange is mindfully designed to frustrate any attempt by a single user to impose their view of correctness. Only the result of the voting system over time is given that privilege.

The urge to see our view of what's correct at the top of a page has to be channelled through the checks and balances of the existing tools: voting and, sometimes, writing better answers.

Answer 2

We should be able to add a notice that an answer may no longer be accurate. That notice should probably go in the question though, because the answer should be to the question as posed. After all, we are curating a set of questions and answers, not blindly preserving them.

This situation should be fairly rare though.

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Above is to establish a position. What follows is a strawman for how we might implement it:

I suggest that a reasonable method for doing this might be to ask a new question about how some answer has changed since the original question (and link the original), and cite at least one new source which plausibly changes a previously accepted answer. Then we preserve the normal voting process. If there is reasonably strong support for an answer saying there has been a change, we can add a notice (ideally standardized) to the old question, indicating something like:

Note: the rules for [game] may have been updated since this question was asked.

See [link] for details."