I would like to recognize a good answer giving away some points to the guy who answered. In this case I did a dumb and incorrect question and the guy foreseen why my question was incorrect and corrected it (curious guys ), but I already did this before some times. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that this is a somewhat common practice.  The thing is that waiting for the bounty time and then one extra day to reward the answer takes... time. I know that the bounty time is to avoid giving bounty hastily, but many times the answer for a well-defined question is correct or wrong, no middle way.   Plus, when using bounty hunter the way I'm doing, I don't want my question to have any extra attention. I just want to reward a guy.  What about open the possibility to give away some extra bounty instantly for the accepted answer? Or even better, add a "reward" option, since it is semantically different from a bounty?  Note that it has it value to SO too - I'm actually telling, judging by that answer, that this guy is X * 2 points more reliable then myself.
10454
I was impressed by the effort that Ankur put into his answer to my question "", so I created a bounty so that I could award extra reputation as a way of thanking him for his help.  As the reason for my bounty, I specified, "One or more of the answers is exemplary and worthy of an additional bounty":    When I went to award the bounty, however, I noticed that I still have to wait 24 hours:    Is this really necessary, seeing as how I started the bounty specifically to award it to an existing answer?
55088
Well, it is not really efficient, but gives some reps (tried two days ago, only 41 reps :-) ).  I have, for example, 50 question where I had accepted answers. And 101 reps, because each accept gives you 2 reps. Then I offer 100 rep bounty (or lose this rep by some other way, e.g. downvotes), unaccept and accept answers again. I am again at 101 reps. Yoyo!
24986
Sometimes you start a bounty and, since the problem is difficult and people try to reach the bounty, there is higher probability than usual that you get very low quality answers. Sometimes these answers even get some upvotes, thanks to a lot of people viewing it. When the problem is so difficult that no one solves it, the investor does not award the bounty and implicit bounty award takes place. It would be extremely humiliating for the investor to see that one of the bad answers is getting the bounty. Therefore I propose to add the following rule:     Do not implicitly award bounty to an answer that has been downvoted by the investor.   I agree this will not probably happen often, but I have actually seen bad answers taking two or more votes. And I think it doesn't make any sense to award an answer which is bad according to the investor, so I think this case is worth handling.  EDIT: I wouldn't mind because someone will gain rep. What bothers me is that answer which is apparently wrong (possibly have been too quick in the urge to win the bounty) will be marked as bounty winner and thus confuse the visitor, giving the feeling that this is a good solution and the question is answered and OP satisfied.. This would be sick! In case of the accept button you have it under control but this can become really weird especially for 200+ bounty.
13361
Often you have a question, you can't find the answer on Stack Overflow so you search for it (or think a bit more). Having found the answer you'd like to keep a record so you can find it again later.  Before Stack Overflow I would write a blog post so I could search for it later. Jeff and Joel, I think, specifically said SO is a good place to replace these blog posts. So what is the best etiquette for adding your answer?   Just ask the question, then post your answer immediately and let voting sort the answers out. This is okay, but it looks like you are just trying to generate reputation, and other people often don't vote or answer, and a lot of the SO information is lost. Provide the answer in the question and ask the question phrased as "is there a better answer". This allows others to gain reputation, and doesn't look so greedy but makes your answer harder to vote on. Post your question, let others answer it. If no-one puts the answer you already found, then add it an hour or so later. If someone else gets it then accept their answer (or the best one). This is more selfless with reputation, but makes other people do work you have already done which feels a bit lazy and a waste of everyone's time.   Or maybe there is another way?
38538
It strikes me that the most popular reason for starting a bounty on a question is because the question hasn't received any answers thus far. However, when starting a bounty, whether there are any answers or not, it still presents you with the full array of reasons for starting the bounty.  Three of the reasons should surely be removed in this instance:     Current answers are outdated   Improve details   Reward existing answer     If the screen is still shown I'd advocate that they were greyed out rather than removed for the sake of consistency.  However, in truth, I think I'd go one step further and suggest this entire screen is skipped in the case where there are no answers. Surely in that case, it's pretty obvious that the reason you're starting a bounty is just "there's no damn answers and I need an answer!" (Or, out of the current options, perhaps that should be "draw attention".)
116147
If I ask a question on StackOverflow, and find multiple answers to be especially pertinent and useful to my own work, is it appropriate to award a bounty to them?   Others may also find the information useful, but it would be hard to find given the context of the question.  Link:   This is a question that I did not create with the intent to apply a bounty to, and I feel it has received sufficient attention.  I simply want to reward those who shared knowledge that I desperately needed right away.
27722
I had this question:    All 3 responses were rated at 1 when the bounty expired. Nothing got selected as the "best answer", and I can't even manually select an answer.
81125
I have started a bounty:   It expires in 3 days. I don't have an appropriate answer to accept, and the only answer which it has gotten has no votes.  So am I going to simply lose 100 reputation without getting a satisfactory answer?  Or should I accept the lone inappropriate answer so that I will not lose my right to accept answers to any questions which I might ask in the future, which is what the bounty rules claim?
108216
I don’t recall putting a bounty on … \… and what about it, anyways? That’s a fragment. We should consider revising it.
20400
I keep on seeing a fair number of questions (such as ) which get marked as answered within 5-10 minutes of being posted. Sometimes the questions like this are insanely popular and actually see some proper discussion, however often I see questions have few views and only 1 answer. The trouble with these questions is that very few people have scrutinised the answer for correctness, or possibly a better solution. I always make a point of not accepting my answers until a day or so has passed — would it not be a good idea to put a short (1 hour or so) time limit on accepting answers on new questions with few views or votes, or perhaps just an additional confirmation dialog, something along the lines of:  Your question is new and not many people have had a chance to look at it yet.  Are you sure you don't want to wait to see if anyone else has a better suggestion?
106722
I am still new to this website but I am curious, what is the incentive for people to answer questions?  It seems like there is a much higher time effort of people to answering versus asking, which surprises me (from a pure utilitarian perspective).  For me the answer has boiled down to a few basic categories:   To gain reputation (this was novel at first and wore off after the first few days of using the site).  Also rep can always be gained by asking questions, with the benefit of also obtaining information. To give back.  I find myself doing this whenever I come to SO to search for/ask a question, and see something on the landing page I can answer. To correct the answer to an existing question.  This happens when I find the answer on SO and after trying it find it to be incomplete/not fully correct. Boredom.   I'm surprised how many people are willing to contribute so much time in answering questions with seemingly minimal reward.  Is it just that the community is that friendly and people are acting out of the goodness of their hearts?
24430
One of the odd patterns I've noticed on SO goes something like this:   Person A asks a question. Person B very quickly delivers the minimum viable answer, with minimal explanation. B's answer starts to receive votes for being 'correct' even though it may not actually help the poster due to its sparseness. Person C started composing their answer at the same time as B, but instead delivers a detailed, well thought out reply with examples and explanations. They receive fewer points due to the time difference since they took longer to compose their answer. Person B then later edits their answer to include more detail to a similar quality as C's. People tend to be more generous with points to the earlier answer so the effect continues.   This strikes me as a cheap way of gaming the system for points by just making sure you have a 'correct' answer as soon as humanly possible to be available for votes.  My question is whether or not this is a behavior that should be discouraged or not, and if so - what could be done about it.  If there is a consensus that this is to be discouraged, I'd like to suggest that for very new question, for the first 15 minutes or so - answers given appear in a random order, and the number of points for each are not shown (except to moderators) and only the voting arrows appear - this would eliminate this kind of pattern I've identified and encourage higher quality answers out of the gate by eliminating order effects and the first poster advantage.
25279
New users already have a reminder to accept an answer on their question. So I don't see the need in general for this post-answer badgering, even if it is intended to be genuine constructive help (which it almost always isn't). To me it seems like little more than rep greed, especially on a site like StackOverflow where such a reminder comes within 10-20 minutes of posting the answer, and when the comment is clearly intended for the OP to accept the commenter's answer. To me it feels like pressuring the OP to accept their answer before a better answer has a chance to come along (or, as others have put it, rep-whoring).  I know we've talked in the past about , but that deals with the behavior itself. I'm asking about how we should treat the comments after they've come - I'm not sure whether I should send the commenter to the meta question I just linked, flag the comment, or ignore it. Ignoring it doesn't feel right, but saying something in the open might not seem genuine in cases where I have a competing answer.  EDIT I'd like to add something to consider here: the case where a user makes it seem like further discussion or clarification of an answer hinges on an up-vote/accept first. A couple of examples I culled recently, but I don't want to call out the user here (they're both from the same user, on different posts, in response to questions trying to clarify their answer):     consider up-voting my answer if you found it useful first.      up-vote my answer if you found it helpful first.
97989
Proposal: Allow bounties on questions that are marked as duplicate, which may have valuable answers.  (or make duplicate questions not having the status 'on hold')    Motivation:  It regularly happens that a closed question has a really good answer. This particularly occurs with questions that are marked as duplicate (questions without intrinsic problems and that may have received good answers before being closed).  Therefore it might occur that a person wishes to place a bounty on the question to reward an existing answer or bring attention to it. However this is not possible under the current system. A duplicate question is a closed question.   This closed status has the undesirable side-effect that the answers given to that question are treated as second class content which can not receive bounties (but also the site does not direct to them, closed questions refer to the parent duplicate question but the other way around does not occur, there is a 'linked' and 'related' list but they are much less visible and in some interfaces, like phone, they do not appear).  Of course one might argue that questions can be merged (or get rid of the on hold status, or repost the answer on the duplicate). But merging would destroy the duplicate (and duplicates are also considered useful). In addition, duplicate questions may be different enough that you can not merge them, or at least it involves a lot of noisy bureaucracy and discussion.    Practical example case, sketch of situation:  I have searched for duplicate questions with bounties (). I found not so many but it did actually show up an answer of my own. .  I believe that this is a good example case where the closed question is still valuable and maybe shouldn't be closed for that reason (yet the 'duplicate link' is still useful). Also, the answer would not be suitable under the duplicate question and merging is not appropriate. The question is duplicate but asked in a very different way and with a different viewpoint angle in mind.
73946
When I post an answer to a brand new question I usually find that someone else has submitted that same answer just moments before. (, usually ;-) )  What I've started to do lately is (I think) the right thing.   If I notice that another answer predates mine, and that I add no value over it, I immediately delete my own answer, and upvote the other guy.  I recommend that you too do the same. Otherwise the message will be diluted.  Similarly, if after posting your "answer" you realise that you are in fact wrong (and you've just misread the question) -- you can actually delete your answer.  Is this reasonable?  (The reason why I'm writing this down is because it feels completely counter-intuitive to delete your own stuff. But it really saves everyone time and effort)
81012
I recently put a bounty on a question regarding the . I did this as the only two answers on that page are not satisfactory and I wish to encourage a tractable answer.  I am concerned that when the bounty period expires, if I do not select an answer for the bounty that it may be awarded automatically to one of these speculative and unsatisfactory answers. How might I prevent that? I could put an answer of my own stating "no satisfactory sources are available" and award the bounty to that, however I feel that there should be a better way.  I stress that I put the bounty on the question specifically because the current answers are not satisfactory and I do not want to award them.
23185
How should SO handle users who don't "maintain" their questions by selecting answers, or remarking newer/better answers as the chosen one?  Many questions...   Have no answer marked correct, even when one is plainly there Are not reviewed by the poster to select a new correct answer   I don't mind taking the time to answer questions, but don't see the point when I don't get "reputation" for doing so since no one reads those questions, and reputation seems to be the point of the site.  I think the "remind to accept an answer" feature is there now, since I just saw it when coming back.  I missed it the first time though.