As a way to improve the chance of the best answers showing up closest to the question, what if you randomly reordered all answers posted within 10 minutes of each other?

Once a question (or answer) received enough upvotes you could then switch back to ordering by upvotes.

This would help reduce the impact of variations in network access/latency while still acknowledging that, all other things being equal, it's important to be able to answer the question relatively quickly.

A variation: randomly reorder all answers posted within any 10 minute block since the question was posted - probably easier to implement...

As a way to improve the chance of the best answers showing up closest to the question, what if you randomly reordered all low-scoring answers posted within ten minutes of each other?

Once a question (or answer) received enough upvotes you could then switch back to ordering by upvotes.

This would help reduce the impact of variations in network access/latency while still acknowledging that, all other things being equal, it's important to be able to answer the question relatively quickly.

A variation: randomly reorder all answers posted within ten minutes of the question being posted — this would probably be easier to implement....