How to call for updates to answers?

Question

When an answer is obviously out of date or incomplete, but I can't help it myself, how do I call for updates?

It is not unusual, after all the most likely reader of an outdated answer is someone who is searching for info on something, and perhaps knows enough to recognize out of date or incomplete info, but not knowing enough to edit it him/herself. When downvoting such answer is not going to help at all.

A comment will of course be noticed by the original poster, who may or may not react, or who may have lost interest and left the site for good.

If I edit the answer just a bit, it would bump it up onto front page of Active questions and perhaps draw some attention that way? Is that good thing to do? Personally I would not encourage this method.

I could offer a bounty on the question and be reasonably sure that at least some people will notice it and hopefully make edits or new better answers. But what if it is a community wiki? Can we offer a bounty to community? :)

Then I could talk about the need for updates in chat, but there's only so many active users there and it'd depend on luck if someone able to help happens to see it.

So, how to call for updates?

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Which digital cameras are using which sensors? - is the reason I ask.

Answer 1

The textbook response for getting new answers, is to offer a bounty, as you note.

In particular, for the question you refer to, it's worth considering that the StackExchange system works best for questions that have a "correct" answer, and the correctness of the answer doesn't change over time - so in theory, a good answer shouldn't require periodic updates - in other words, that question isn't an obviously good fit for StackEchange; it may be a better fit (in my opinion) had it been phrased along the lines of "I understand there's a flaw with sensor 'x', what camera models use this?". As it currently stands, it looks more like a request to write an encyclopeadia entry, rather than solving a real world photographic problem to me.

Answer 2

The two questions you link (both in your original and in your comment to Roland) are both examples of why community wiki pages don't work very well, even though it seems like those kind of questions would be helpful and useful. See How should we handle community wiki pages which are a big mess? for a similar thing prompted by another such question.

I've come to the pretty strong belief that we should close and remove all of these questions, and instead point to Wikipedia pages when they come up. (If a corresponding Wikipedia page doesn't exist, one could be created.) But not everyone agrees with me — which is, y'know, the way democracy works. :)