What to do with old questions/answers providing out of date information?

Question

I ask especially about crate training questions, which are around 6 years old. They most times look the same:

I need my dog to stay in crate for night and workday, but the dog is not willing to do so without barking/whining/destroing the crate. What should I do?

The answers provide solutions, but nearly no talks about that it may harm a dog to stay in a crate for this long time.

I assume there are more old posts, where the gone years show new options of owner behavior to handle problems, so I ask this question a little broader:

How to handle questions and answers providing out of date information?

(As an example: 7 week old husky puppy cries in crate )

Answer 1

There is no dedicated process for outdated answers. Technical sites have the same problem (and much more pronounced since old answers often simply stop working at all). There's a Beta running on StackOverflow to test a new solution for that, but it relies on version tags, which are not viable for our site.

I would treat old answers just like new ones.

• If you think the answer is bad or wrong, downvote it.
• If you think an answer contains wrong facts, lacks crucial information or a question makes wrong assumptions, leave a comment. Honestly, I cannot emphasize enough how important such comments can be to unsuspecting users who read old answers.
• If you can add updated or missing information, write a new answer. It will automatically push the question up on the Home view and receive some views and appreciation from regular users.

The same is true for answers that only apply to certain regionales. Some things that seem "normal" in country A might be forbidden in country B to protect animals from mental or physical harm. You can leave a comment or an answer pointing these differences out. Casual readers who come here via Google or another search engine might take that as incentive to do further research rather than taking the first answer as ultimate truth.