How should the community handle the following problems related to current events?
Please vote on the various solutions below (they should be independent) or add another idea for voting.
Make it a policy to add the following disclaimer banner to all current events questions:
>  **This question is about a current event.** Information may change rapidly as the event progresses.
which looks like
This question is about a current event. Information may change rapidly as the event progresses.
OPs are expected to add it themselves, high reps and mods are expected to put it in if necessary.
https. Actually, isn't this very similar to the one banner mods can add? I don't think it existed when this was written, so it might be a good idea to ask another question about updating the policy.
Make it a policy for high rep users and mods to modify existing answers to add the following banner to answers that have become outdate/incomplete/obsolete.
> **The information in this answer is no longer accurate, events have progressed further after this answer was written.**
which looks like
The information in this answer is no longer accurate, events have progressed further after this answer was written.
If the highest voted or accepted answer is:
...then propose edits to it, even substantial ones, to bring it up-to-date. This is, I think, what Joel was talking about and I've seen several answers (example) improved drastically on Skeptics by third-parties even when the topic wasn't rapidly changing. I am really encouraged to see users doing this.
If the highest voted or accepted answer has become totally wrong (in other words, events have come to light that have reversed what was believed or even what was accurate before), substantially wrong, misleading, or otherwise unsalvageable:
Stack Exchange sites are about getting expert answers, not for taking stabs at questions for which answerers do not have the sufficient knowledge to answer (i.e. because the event is rapidly changing).
Questions that ask about existing events should be considered on a case-by-case basis for the following:
In addition, answers should be considered on a case-by-case basis as to whether they actually answer the question. Guesses and speculation based on a lack of detail about the event are bad answers, and should be down-voted (or even removed). It's better to leave a question unanswered until it can be definitively answered than to provide a bad answers for the sake of answering it.
The alternative is for answerers, who don't have all the information but welcome others filling in the details, to mark their answer as community wiki. This significantly lowers the bar to contribute to providing a useful answer about an event, and is the closest analog to how Wikipedia handles current events. One person won't have a definitive answer about a current event, but potentially several people working together will.
There is now a dedicated close-reason, discussed here:
Questions about unresolved current events and issues currently under investigation by a court of law, government, or other similar investigative body are off-topic because there is insufficient data for a meaningful answer.
As an alternative to the options Sklivvz posted in answers, we can also Lock out of date questions to essentially archive them. Adding a banner to the top of the question body would be pretty clear. People can (if they see fit) re-ask the question now that the old question and its answers are out of date.
Delete questions and answers that have become obsolete. For example delete answers that have become wrong even if accepted and upvoted.
Apply a meta-tag to the question:
current-event
so that such questions can be easily monitored and checked.
Only normal SE guidelines are needed to keep the posts up to date and no other guidelines are needed for Skeptics
