I offered a bounty on this  that I asked last year. I have provided the answer with working code, and days later someone else provided a &quot;duplicate&quot; answer without code. Currently the highest voted &quot;duplicated&quot; answer is borrowed from existing comments and answers, and more importantly does not even contain a code example. Because the bounty can't go back to the poster, now the bounty goes to him. I feel this is not fair.
143
It's possible to offer and award bounties of reputation on questions.   What is a bounty? How can I find questions that have a bounty attached? How do I start a bounty? When can I start a bounty? Why is the system requiring me to choose a bounty amount that's higher than the minimum? Can I use Markdown formatting in the bounty remarks? Can I edit the remark? How long is the bounty period? How do I award a bounty? Can I award a bounty to my own answer? Can I award a bounty to an old answer? If I offer a bounty on someone else's question, can I award the bounty to their answer? After awarding the bounty, can I remove it or move it to another answer at a later time? What happens if there's no answer after the bounty period? What happens if I feel my question is still unanswered? What is automatic awarding? Are bounty awards exempt from the 200 points/day reputation limit? How does Community Wiki mode affect bounties? How does user deletion or post dissociation affect bounties? Can I award a bounty to an answer from a deleted user or one where the author was dissociated? Can I offer a second bounty after the first one has expired? Can I raise my bounty? What happens if a bounty question is closed or deleted? Why can't I vote to close or migrate a bounty question? What happens if I delete my account while I have an active bounty? Do I keep an awarded bounty when I delete my answer? What happens if a question where I awarded a bounty later gets deleted or migrated? Can I cancel my bounty? Can I affect / divide / share part of my bounty to two (or more) users? How many outstanding bounties can a single user have?      See also:  in the Help Center
38864
Duplicate questions are "solved" &#8212; it's clear what to do with them, there're tools to deal with them... but what happens when two users post the same answer? This happens a fair bit, particularly on questions with simple answers ("Click this button"-type ones).  Do we upvote both answers, since they are both correct? Do we upvote the first one (although if the answers were posted within a few minutes of each other, after an hour it's impossible to tell as they both show up as "answered 1 hour ago")? Do we upvote the currently highest voted one? Do we upvote one and downvote the other? Do we flag one (seems a little excessive)? Something else?
31029
In short, if the last action on the post is someone posting an answer, it shows "answered [x] minutes ago PosterName". However, deleting and undeleting a different answer (posted earlier) causes it to switch to "modified [x] minutes ago PosterName", even though post deletion and undeletion do not cause bumping. The last action on the post was answering, so it should continue to show as "answered".  For example, I tested this out in the sandbox:  Answer is posted:        30 seconds later, another answer is deleted (and optionally undeleted; or vice versa probably), changing the label but not bumping it:        The behavior that it should be is:    Find the last active post   If the last active post is deleted it should say "modified" If the last active post is not deleted and not edited it should say "answered" If the last active post was edited, it should say "modified". No duh.      Here's my original bug report, which you can probably just skip unless you need another example:  I just posted an answer to a question, then left the page without doing anything else. But it says the last action on the page is me modifying something, with the  (which shows the last activity) redirecting to , as shown below on the  (it's at the top of the list):    (The , under Questions, also shows this problem.)  I didn't modify the answer after posting (not even during the grace period) nor did I do something else that would cause a "modified" bump (protection, close/reopen votes, add bounty, messing with deletion). There were no deleted answers when this happened. I'm not sure if the problem is related to the question having a bounty on it (by the OP, who is deleted).  None of the other activity on the active page shows this problem. (The "modified 10 minutes ago" on the second question is an edit to an answer.)    Since I first posted this question, another user (named ) posted an answer to the exact same question. For some time the listing read "answered X minutes ago", but now it says "modified X minutes ago" even though it points to the same, unedited answer. However, I noticed that there is now a deleted answer which was last edited before 1006a's answer was posted, but was deleted after it was posted. Now I'm wondering if it has anything to do with deletion.
100407
I know a lot of people really want to get lots of SO rep points to improve their quality of life. I get it. When I read a question, I think about whether I know the answer or not. If yes, then I take the time to write up what I deem to be a reasonable answer. If not, then I think about whether or not I want to try to figure it out. If so, and if I do, then I repeat the "know the answer" step. I don't try to flash answer questions. I'm just not the type.  But what's bugging me lately is the copy cat answerer. I read a question. Think. Formulate an answer. Then answer. This takes at least a few minutes. Four times this week, about 5-10 minutes after I post my answer (which comes 10 or more minutes after the question is posted), someone else posts the exact same answer! Even the same code with the same variable names! That's annoying. I don't really know why it bugs me so much, but there you have it. I'm annoyed.   In my annoyance, I feel like voting the answer down. But technically it's a correct answer, so I shouldn't do that. Maybe I should leave a comment? Maybe I should let it go? Probably the latter. Then again, duplicate questions are closed, why not close duplicate answers? Any suggestions?
42607
I don't know about you, but to me happens a lot: if I'm reading a question with a LOT of answers, (specially in a really specific question) I just read the most voted up: that's the way the system was made to be, and it's really good. The most relevant voted by the community are the first ones.  Since we have TOO many users, and a lot of them are reading the same questions and answering them almost at the same time, do you think the "urge" to be the first to answer a question and so gain reputation points makes people sometimes write things too fast and not try to really elaborate a really helpful answer? We may think: "people aren't going to read all answers, so I need to be really concerned about how fast I'm to answer". Are we incentivating "objective answers", or "not so good but objective and good to be voted up"?  I'm not trying to be unfair with all answers people here provide, we have really good ones here. But supose what I wrote above is a reality: what you think it would happen if it was a "time delay" between an "up-vote or down-vote" and it's sum in the answer? Summarizing: what if the sum wasn't almost "real time"?
104374
I would like to ask a question on SO. However, a search reveals that a similar question has been asked, and I feel my question would get marked as a duplicate. The similar question has few answers - one of which is the accepted answer; and this answer is not the one I am looking for (i.e. it's a strategy change rather than a real solution to the answer).  I am very motivated to get an answer to this question - and thus would like to drive forward responses; possibly by offering a decent sized bounty.  Should I simply ask my question, or is it possible to get "ownership" of the similar question?
113487
Existing, already-answered question:   My own unanswered and closed question:   The answers to the existing question don't answer in any way the question I am interested in.  Now, I was told  that I just should start a bounty on the already answered question.  I just did that, and the bounty ended without helping me at all. The default when I don't specify any answer &#8212; giving it to the answer with the highest score &#8212; does not make sense. That answer does not help me at all. None of the answers do help me.  Now I wonder what I should do. I am still waiting for an answer to my question. My question still is closed. To get traction on it, I would have to start another bounty. I am very short with reputation on Super User, so I can't just always do that again and again.  To not lose the reputation senselessly for the first bounty, I thought I would make a dummy answer and give that dummy answer the reputation. That way, I could keep my question open with further bounties until really got answered. That didn't work for some reason. It seems I just lost the reputation. Was that a bug/problem or is this intended?  How should I handle this? Obviously I cannot just always open bounties again and again until I get an answer. So should I just ignore it and go on to another question/answer site where unanswered questions can stay open?  Or maybe the system should be fixed so I can get the reputation back from bounties that didn't get me an answer I wanted.
79266
Sometimes we get questions where the problem can't be reproduced given the information OP mentioned. Sometimes we get questions where OP posts code and asks why the code doesn't work where in fact the code does work.   Here is  I just ran into in the edit queue. However, we've all seen them.  In the example  the question basically saying "When using your code in an isolated environment it works. This is not the first or tenth time I've seen these sort of answer.   Should users post these sort of answers? Are they useful for the site? Why?  Note: This is not about whether or not to close such questions. I think that's clear.
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".)
21862
I'm looking around for answers to my questions on several Stack Exchange sites and the good boy that I am I don't want to ask duplicate questions.  Often I find that there are other people who asked the same questions, sometimes years earlier, but still don't have an answer. I'd figure I could bump these back to top, but if I don't have enough rep for a edit (or comment), how would I do that?  Or, in that case, I should just post a 'newer' version of the same question?
91582
An answer on Stack Overflow was recently brought to my attention as possible plagiarism, but I determined that the source of the suspected plagiarism was actually written and posted by the answerer elsewhere and later copied over to Stack Overflow verbatim.  The question  seems to cover the opposite scenario, where someone might want to copy their Stack Exchange answer onto another SE question or elsewhere on the Internet.  Is this an acceptable practice?  I am assuming:   That the answerer has permission to post the answer here, either because they never gave up the rights to the content or they have retained enough rights to also post it here. That the answer is at least minimum quality and makes an effort to answer the question (that is, it's not simply a rant from the answerer's blog, or random ponderings with nothing to do with the question asked).   In response to Anne Daunted's question, no, they did not disclose that they were copying over content that they had previously written and posted elsewhere. It got brought to chat as a possible plagiarism to be flagged. I investigated and declined to flag, commenting instead that it looked ok enough to not be flagged for summary deletion by a moderator. Instead, I decided it would be best to leave it to voters to decide how useful it is.  While this question is inspired by something that happened on Stack Overflow, it belongs here because it is relevant to every site, and there is no obvious reason that such a policy is or should be different across the network.
109755
Sometimes I find that I'll post an answer on an SO question that, for whatever reason -- probably luck, most of the time -- climbs to the top by votes, beating out other answers with equally (sometimes more) useful information.  At times like this I feel strangely obligated to also mention some of the same points made by those whose answers haven't received as many votes, just so that info doesn't get "lost" to someone who's only looking at the top-voted response for a quick answer.  I understand that the main purpose of SO is to provide good, thorough answers to technical programming questions; so I feel like this is the right thing to do. However, I also appreciate that many users (myself included) can get caught up in the rep game, which adds an element of fun to the site. So I always include links to the answers mentioned in cases like these, so that the user who originally made the point I'm repeating (hopefully) gets credit for it.  But the thing is, I suspect that simply by including that information in my own answer, I'm perhaps unfairly collecting even more votes for myself, simply by making my already top-voted answer that much more comprehensive.  So, my question is: which is better? Should you include references to others' answers in your own, effectively repeating what they've already said; or should you simply let those answers stand on their own, even if it means they might be more easily overlooked?
421
I asked a question almost as soon as I got my account. I got a few decent answers, but none of them helped solve my problem. The question has long since become buried by newer questions, and there's still no accepted answer. Unfortunately, because there are quite a few answers with votes, to a casual observer it probably looks like the question was answered and I just neglected to mark an answer as accepted, and the system does not consider it "unanswered".  Or, I asked a question that was a bit more difficult to answer. After waiting for some time, I received no answers, little or no comments, and only a few views. The question does show up in the "unanswered" list, but no one has answered my question.  In either case, what's the protocol for me to try to get this question answered?  I see several options:   Post the question a second time, possibly linking to the original, to get attention for the original question. This is encouraged on sites like Reddit.  However, it's probably not appropriate here, since we're encouraged to check for duplicates and not submit a question that's already been asked by someone else, so this probably falls under that heading. Wait for some kind of wiki-like talk page to be implemented, then post a plea on the talk page for input and hope that activity on the talk page bumps up the question. Edit the question, but do nothing further on the Stack Exchange site. If I edit my post to say that I haven't accepted any of the current answers but am looking for more, then the question might get answered eventually by people browsing through old questions to find something they can answer. Post the question on other sites, but link to my original question on Stack Exchange. People will either answer here, or they'll answer on the other site and I can post the accepted answer here myself.  This might be considered spamming, so it might be better to do this without the link.      For more information, see the "" page in the .
43092
Is it okay to repost a question from another Q&amp;A website/forum that was never answered there? Is that plagiarism?  I came across  that is very similar to a problem I am currently encountering, and would really like to see an answer/response. Would it b e appropriate to copy and paste that question into a question on Stack Overflow?
22382
Minor UI glitch: The button to award a bounty is active on a deleted answer. Clicking on it results in the "THIS CANNOT BE UNDONE!" alert.         After confirming, I get the following error though:        So not a fatal bug, but still better not show the +50 next to deleted posts.
112880
What this question is about:  It occurred to me that even experienced users occasionally forget that they either:    received viable answers to existing questions or  need to edit existing questions to get more appropriate answers.   What this question is not about:   I'm not suggesting that we badger "or otherwise nudge" users into accepting answers to their questions, as per this discussion:  I'm not duplicating the discussions about reminding/educating new users to accept answers to their questions, as discussed here:  and elsewhere.   My personal rationale:  I suspect that OPs occasionally hesitate to accept an answer in hope that someone will later post a better answer even though there may already be acceptable answers provided. I know that I have done this in the past and then forgotten about my question, only to remember months or years later that I hadn't yet accepted a viable answer to my question.  For busy people, it's inconvenient to go through your activity history and find the question with the upvoted answer that still was never accepted. The inconvenience factor is enough of a deterrent that busy people don't always do it.   My proposal:  For a question with unaccepted answers for over a year, could we please alert the OP with a link (this is the key feature) to their question with a suggestion to perhaps review their question to edit it if no acceptable answers have been provided (or something like that)?  Perhaps there could be other criteria to prevent obnoxious reminders, such as the question needing to have at least 3 suggested answers or that the suggested answers must have been upvoted at least 3 times or that the question has been upvoted at least once or something like that.
108216
I don’t recall putting a bounty on … \… and what about it, anyways? That’s a fragment. We should consider revising it.