Can something be done to achieve fair votes in this forum? If yes, what could be done?

Question

Today I stumbled upon this question:

Will the new ISO/IEC 29119 Software Testing standard work with agile methodologies like Scrum?

I was astonished that James Bach's answer was upvoted at least 16 times, because it did not answer the question. In fact, it is a rant against the standard which was asked about. Also, this answer was accepted by the questioner, who, in addition, is a moderator of this forum!

It seems that some users just hate standards so much that they vote up such answers!? Some users might have voted up the answer because it was written by a well-known person in the SQA world!?

In my opinion this is sad. I don't think we can do much about it, but I at least expected that a moderator would not accept such an answer.

Users, please be more objective!

Sorry, I just wanted to get this off my chest.

Answer 1

Well, let's remember the criteria that we use for an upvote on Stack Exchange (not necessarily meta): "This answer is useful." It may not have the silver bullet, but we're talking about a potentially subjective question (which contrary to some myths, is allowed on almost all Stack Exchange sites). I feel the answer is useful, in that it gives valuable information about how the community at large responds to attempts to be standardized.

You'll note that a couple days after the question and answer were posted, Bruce made an edit that brought up the exact point you did: it doesn't actually answer the question. Now, should he also have un-accepted the vote? Probably, if he felt it didn't answer the question. That is probably an oversight, which can happen to anyone.

As for him "being a moderator, oh the humanity!" I think it is worth mentioning that this post was made before his being elevated to moderator status. I also feel that as a Stack Exchange user, he is within his right to accept any answer he feels advances his objective sufficiently, even if we disagree with it. It appears even he disagreed with himself and made it clear that he would like more input on it.