What can be done to **effectively** combat 100% wrong answers that generate more upvotes than correct answers?

Question

For example, here: Do (weaponized) lasers exist in the Star Wars universe?

• @Zato posted a what-seemed-at-the-moment-correct answer, which generated tons of upvotes (10) stating "no such examples exist" - he did the research, but the only actual reference he had was Wikia (lack of references is of course not surprising given that the answer is "no").

  _{Just to be clear - Aside from the fact that the answer is wrong - it's a good answer, with effort put into it, and I'm not intending to criticize the answer or the user.}

• After that happened, @DrewS actually posted an answer which found a canon example that showed the existence of lasers, thereby 100% proving the previous answer to be wrong. I even added exact book quote proving the assertion.

• PROBLEMS:

  • Voting is now only 2 votes on correct answer vs 9 (+11/-2) on incorrect answer

  • Even worse, someone upvoted the wrong answer AFTER I the correct answer was posted; AND after I commented on the wrong answer that it's incorrect.

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What can be done to effectively combat such a situation?

None of the "normal" methods seem to work well:

• Posting a comment on the wrong answer noting its incorrectness didn't stop people from continuing to upvote it.

• Posting a new correct answer didn't bring enough upvotes to it to even remotely offset the upvotes on incorrect answer.

• Flagging for moderator is useless because moderators 100% always decline flags about incorrect answers (I personally think should be within moderators' scope to deal with, but the fact of life is, it isn't)

• Publicizing in chat doesn't help (didn't try for this one yet, but tried it before... zero or negligible effect on subsequent votes)

Answer 1

Patience?

All this happened yesterday, and posts tend to have a big surge of activity initially, followed by a long tail of occasional visits. So most posts will garner a ton of votes early on, then they'll steadily get more votes as weeks and months pass.

In this case, initially the wrong answer got a bunch of upvotes. As time goes on, the comments and the new correct answer will wear down those upvotes, and more upvotes will go to the correct answer.

By commenting on the wrong answer, you can point out how it is wrong, so others will see there's an issue with the answer in its current state. This discourages upvotes. The question asker hasn't accepted any answer. An answer they accept will get a bit more attention, and hopefully more upvotes.

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There's a 5th option by the way, it's a bounty. In a couple of days, the question will become eligible for bounties. You can create a bounty with a reason of 'Reward existing answer' so the correct answerer gets some reputation, and the correct answer gets the little tag indicating it earned a bounty.