Consider the following question I've just had answered:    Which would be the correct answer to mark as accepted?  The shorter answer was given first (in the comments) (let's also assume as a hypothetical, second case scenario that it was posted as an answer first). The more elaborate, in-depth answer was posted shortly after.  Does the more thorough answer get accepted? Or could it merely be adding extra noise to what the shorter answer has suggested? Or is this subjective?
19039
Lately I've been getting some good answers to some specific questions. However, I've been hesitating on what answer I should accept.  Do I go with the short quick answer or do I accept a later answer where someone has elaborated on the previous answer with some code?  It's not really important but it kind of bugs me to not accept an answer when people have taken the trouble of replying.  Here's two examples:
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.
89363
. When I took a look at it now, some guy edited my answer, which totally changed the answer and made it wrong. To my surprise, the edit was approved in review. To add to that, that same guy who edited my answer posted his own answer, which ended up being accepted.  Seems like peer review of the edit was taken lightly, and others just want others' answers wrong. From my end, it seems very unfair. What can be done to prevent such events?
4126
For the 400 votes tag badge, does it take into consideration answers marked as the accepted answer?  The description indicates it does not.  I would think an accepted answer would be worth more, or at least the same amount, towards getting a tag badge than just a simple upvote?  Lots of users mark answers as accepted and do not bother giving an upvote since the 15 points is like and upvote and a tip.  So it's possible for a user to have 400 accepted answers with no upvotes and not get a badge where a user with 400 answers (which could be right or wrong) with a single upvote and no accepted answers ever would get the badge.  Just seems a little odd or does accounting for accepted answers make the badge calculation too complicated / slow?  Edit: Questions you ask and submit an answer to shouldn't be counted towards the total for accepted answers.  Edit: It just seems to me that the most important thing in the system is an accepted answer yet there are no badges for achieving more than one accepted answer.  If up votes were more important, and therefore far more worthy of a badge, then why do the top voted answers not appear above the accepted answer?  When it come to badges, accepted answers are second class citizens as compared to a possibly random upvote.   I have seen many upvotes on completely wrong answers but rarely do I see an accepted answer that was completely wrong.
35140
I have often come upon questions where the asker never bothered accepting what is obviously a correct answer. "Obviously" can mean (aside from my own judgment):   The answer is a clear leader in up-votes (again, combined with my judgment that it is a correct one) The answer is the only one (and again appears correct) The answer (or Q) is commented on by OP indicating it helped.   If the user is still active on SO, what helps sometimes is to post a comment on the question mentioning you can/should accept the answer. For my own answers, this technique worked ~30-50% of the time.  However, if the user is a zombie (showed up >1 month ago, asked one or few answers, and was not on the site for >1 month since), this would obviously not work.  To ameliorate this situation, I would propose allowing users whose rep > threshold to "accept" answers from other peoples questions. This would be limited to:   questions from zombie users as defined above (e.g. total active time on site &lt;= 30% of time since last visit, or however you want to define). questions from non-zombie users with very low accept rates (this may require higher threshold).   In either case,   neither the OP nor "guest acceptor" gains 2 points for accepting. the OP should have the right to choose a different accepted answer at any time, and get 2 points rep when that happens. If you accept your own answer, you obviously don't get 15rep for acceptance.   I think if implemented to the above specs, it should provide enough of a barrier to misuse while serving the goal of the site (allow arriving at the best possible answer).  P.S. This was obviously triggered by some of my own answers but once I realized the situation I observed it numerously with questions I was merely browsing.
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?
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.
61320
Do we want long comprehensive answers to questions on stackoverflow?  Is it better to spend 30 secs to write "look this up [insert link here]", or do we want people to take their time (maybe an hour! maybe more!) to write a more comprehensive and detailed answer?  I've seen people make comments like these on highly voted short answers:   "+1; this is why i love stackoverflow! answers are short and to the point!" "+1; beat me to it!" (because it's all about quickness?)   And some of my long answers have been:   Downvoted (Was it too long? All pole and no fish? Was there a minor technical mistake somewhere? Too many quotes from references and/or books and not enough original material? Was the answer not entertaining enough because it's all business and no personality, since I refrain from making jokes, using smilies, or injecting personal opinions/anecdotes?) Commented with "who has the time to read this???" etc Unrewarded with regards to votes   I've only been on stackoverflow for a few months, so I'm still trying to figure out what kind of answers the community wants (as evidenced by their votes), what kind of answers the owners want (as laid out in their vision), and what kind of answers I want (yes, I can have my own vision too!), and how best to reconcile the differences that may exist between them, so any guidance is appreciated.
80500
I came across  question, which is fairly old, has 2 very good answers (with a good amount of up-votes), and the OP has stated in his question that both of the answers are acceptable. Yet they have not accepted either and simply left a note in their original question about the "correct" answer.  Is there anything that needs to be looked at here? Should I comment that the OP should accept an answer if they have one? Should I flag it?
19551
Regarding , made by me, and general questions in this matter. I did receive decent answers on the question that was asked, but it wasn't asked clear enough by me I now see. I do not want to invalidate the answers by completely restructuring the question. Should one post a new question ignoring the other? or Should one refer to their old post and writing a short &quot;because x I reposted this...&quot;?
112046
I am viewing one of my own questions, which has an accepted answer, in the Android app.  The checkmark for the accepted answer could be more distinct from those in the non-accepted answers. The former is a green check in a white field, while the others are a white check in a field with the same shade of green. Here's a screenshot:    It was a bit confusing and I had to confirm on my PC which answer was the accepted one.  Could this distinction be more clear? Perhaps simply no checkmark for the non-accepted answers?
43850
Allow converting comments to answers, so they can become accepted answers.  I asked a question. Someone commented on it, and it was an awesome comment that fully answered the question. As the original questioner, I would like to convert that comment to an answer in order to accept it.  Or, if you prefer, I would be okay with being able to simply mark the comment as accepted.
59271
I searched duplicates, and my impression was that requests may be acceptable, or at least tolerated, after questioner has indicated the answer solved his problem, and with the request for points via a comment.  For example, this discussion:   However, my question is slightly different.  Is it OK to include the request for points within the initial answer?  "Don't forget to tip your waiter by clicking on the checkmark next to my answer if this is useful. :o)"    In that example, the request wasn't demanding.  It was humorous.  Does that make a difference?  But since the request doesn't contribute to the usefulness of the answer, does it belong in the answer at all?  If it's not acceptable as part of the answer, would it be OK as a comment instead, and when submitted immediately after the answer?
40806
The accepted answer always appears at the top of the list, regardless of sort order. This can be misleading if the question author accepted an invalid solution and a better solution was proposed later, and eventually got more votes. I have seen somewhat obscure questions where the accepted answer has a negative score and the next answer has 10 or more up-votes.
28244
Answer in question:   I have the answers sorted by votes, but strangely the answer marked as accepted is listed last. The top answer is the one with most votes:    I've never seen that happen before. Is it because the answer was posted by the asker, or is it a bug?
16090
Is answering beyond the scope of the question a valid thing? Or should we just stick to the question asked and ignore any potential bugs which might be present (of course OP is unaware of that, as of now).  To make myself more clear, please have a look at this .  There are 3 answers which talk about the issue asked and that's it. If you look at my answer, I've added an additional point about a potential bug which the OP has missed now (may find out later). So is it a good thing to point out such potential bugs or not? Should this practice be encouraged?
88143
When someone posts an answer that's really a comment, mods can move it to the comments.  But when someone posts a comment that is essentially a complete answer (and no further answer is likely to be forthcoming) about all we can do to get the answer to be an answer on the question is say "please post that as an answer".  Should mods be given the ability to go the other way, making answers-in-comments into actual answers (simultaneously deleting the comment)?   [Note that this is not the same thing as  which is about commenters making their own comments into answers, nor is it the same as  (which is about askers making comments that answer their questions into answers, and which the previous one should not be marked as a duplicate of since they're asking quite distinct things); it's fairly obvious that those two questions could have very different answers to each other, and both could have very different answers to this question, which is about moderators converting comments to answers. Different questions, requiring different sorts of answers.]  If the original poster of the comment has some strong reason to not want it as an answer they are still able to delete the answer, of course, but the comment would (and generally should) remain deleted in that case.