Are the Question Answering options set up to return the top n scoring answers?

[demongolem-biz2]

Either extractive or generative case. Can I get the top 3 answers from a scoring perspective or the top 5 answers?

[julian-risch]

Yes, that's done with the top_k parameter of the Reader component. For the reader, the answers have scores and the answers are sorted by the score.
For generative question answering, the PromptNode component also has a top_k parameter. For example you could set top_k=2 when initializing the PromptNode in the following tutorial and then later own have a look at multiple generated answers:
https://haystack.deepset.ai/tutorials/22_pipeline_with_promptnode
However, in for generative question answering, the answers don't have scores. You could use the score of the retrieved documents and generate answers based on different documents.