Comment by Breza

Currently the only incentive to post a new answer to an old question is you get a special badge. That's neat but limited. I've gone through old R questions and posted answers with a more modern syntax and my answers rarely get much attention.

I'd be cautious about overriding an accepted answer. Imagine a situation where there's an easy-to-understand algorithm that's O(n^2) and the "Correct" algorithm that's O(n). If OP only has a dozen datapoints, the former might be the best answer for her specific problem, despite it clearly not being the right approach for most people finding the thread via Google in the future.