A more recent problem with Stack Overflow now that its a few years old. The tech gets updated, and previously good answers are now out of date, as libraries and frameworks have changed.
We have an edit button though! And edits are community validated before being merged. I use it regularly to update other people's answers. If the update breaks backwards compatibility, I'll just add a separate section "For Python 3.x, use .items() instead of .iteritems()" etc.
Very true but I think SE does a poor job incentivizing upkeep. Its very little Karma compared to new contributions. Honestly the only thing I with they would change.
I agree, and would like to see a change like that in Q&A, but it would be a pretty big deal at this point in the site's life. However, the new Documentation section does a much better job with this. Each edit is worth +2, and upvotes give points to all significant contributors (+5 or +1 depending on size of contribution), not just the author!
This system has had some issues and may still be adjusted, but I think it's a lot closer to the mark. I've probably gained close to 1000 rep so far from documentation I contributed to but did not author.
This is fair. I think it's +2 for an accepted edit vs +10*n upvotes +15 for accepted. Another approach is to just make a new answer on the original question later. I see that a lot for Python 2/3 stuff too.