Is it possible to spend some reputation for a particularly good answer? Sometimes I would like to say thank you by not just commenting. :-)  A workaround is to create a bounty, but that's not exactly what I'm after.
121322
Have you ever gotten an answer soooo good, you wished you could give a +20 instead of +1 ?  Bounty System  That's a good mechanism, but they're not always right for this situation:   Bounties are usually associated with giving incentive to answer or draw traffic. I would expect that most users offered bounties before getting an answer, not after. Bounties are usually offered by people with plenty of reputation. "New" users should be able to reward exceptional answers too.   Thanking in a comment  A warm comment on the answer is always nice, but I'm not sure comments are intended for saying thanks - but to clarify / improve the answer itself.  So what is the recommended way to reward this truly exceptional answer?  Other suggestions?  I know there is an answer of the week blog, is there a way to nominate an answer to be there? Sometimes exceptional answers are hidden in low-interest questions that receive less traffic - so those will never be upvoted enough to become noticed.  Or maybe instead of a single blog for the entirety of SO, there should be an entire section called "Answer of the week" with more than one answer (maybe on a per-tag basis). Answers should arrive there based on manual nominations and not on upvotes so unpopular questions will not be discriminated against.  Clarification:  It's not that I'm personally against bounties - I use them plenty of times. I'm mostly concerned about what other people tend to do. I suspect the bounty post-answer reward is not used as much as it should. I believe the majority of people don't consider bounties for this purpose.
18067
I came across  and at the time there were no suggested answers. After reading Mark Hubbart's comment (at the time with four upvotes), which was the correct answer, and seeing that it had been over 30 minutes since his comment, I figured I would provide that answer in my own words, which I did. My answer is longer, and I think more rounded and more useful, but the core of the answer came from the comment. I have no idea if I'd have thought up the answer on my own--a definite maybe to that.  Now had I tried to be "honorable" or something, such as instead of answering, suggesting to the commenter that he make his comment an answer, I would only have accomplished giving away easy rep to some other user not as into gratuitous self-denial.  The commenter had merely to enter his comment into an answer box instead of a comment box! It was his choice! Whether he was too lazy or didn't think his answer worthwhile or some other reason is not my responsibility. Must I bend over backward to help him earn points that he so carelessly left lying around for another person to take? It just took a tiny bit of non-laziness on my part to get my text typed into the box that would reward me instead of the box that wouldn't.  If my perspective is incorrect and the community would rather see such answers-as-comments rewarded and supported, I will gladly accept that. In the meantime, I just want to shake off the tiny bit of guilt my overly-nice and overly-concerned-with-propriety self is feeling. :)
54229
Why is there no possibility to make upvotes onymously? Seeing positive votes from credible other members would highly increase transparency and trust in answers.   Has anything like that been tried out so far?   What strong opinions are against such an option? Why not even make such behavior default?
45174
I like the community and appreciate the great service it's been to me over the past few months.  Sometimes I want to show my support for a great answer or comment, but I can't because I'm a new user and have only 1 reputation. It seems like the only way to gain the requisite 15 reputation (for voting) is to ask questions?  Until now I didn't have any questions that weren't already answered by the community. Is this the only way? Won't this one day lead to no new users not being able to participate?
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.
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?
29012
I just asked my first question on stackoverflow and I'm really impressed that my question seems to be answered sufficiently already! See:    The issue I have is that the last two answers combined would provide the most complete answer. What's the proper way to go about combining them, marking the question answered, and giving credit where credit is due?  Thanks big time guys for saving us all from experts exchange hell!  Edit: Wow, 5 responses in 5 minutes. I think what makes the most sense is that I create my own answer out of the two. I don't think the second part of my question was answered though.  What is the proper way to give credit to the 2 answers that I'm combining? Is an upvote for each sufficient?
82
Users with less than 50 reputation points cannot write comments on questions and answers that they don't own.  Why does this limit exist? But I want to contribute now. What should I do instead? But I can't write a good answer without more information! Shouldn't I be allowed to post comments if I have reputation on a different site? But I saw a new user posting a comment! How did they do it? Why do I need 50 reputation to comment on my own post?   See also:    in the Help Center
63867
Earlier today I posted  which yielded a .  I'd like to attract attention to this answer in the hope that the answer will get upvoted, as a kind of reward for the quality of the answer.  Is there anything that I can do to achieve this?
21810
I've seen , but there seem to be no proper solution.  I suggest an ability to insert a "Let us continue this discussion in chat" comment before the thread gets messy enough to fit the requirement. The point is to prevent the problem before it occurs.  Perhaps this should become a privilege for users of X reputation or more?  Your opinions on the subject?
20727
When reviewing an answer in the low quality queue the question doesn't believe that I have enough reputation to comment.        I can't remember if commenting on the post not actually being reviewed was ever allowed?
8870
Sometimes a comment can add great value to an answer once its content has been incorporated into the answer. Perhaps correcting an error to an otherwise good answer, plugging a logic hole, rendering a more elegant solution, making an important clarification to explanations, etc.  Once the answer has incorporated the comment/suggestion, it would be nice to credit the commenter with a "slice of the pie" - ie share reputation gains between the answerer and the commenter, as recognition of their contribution as "co author" to the final answer.  The simplest way would be to make upvotes on comments yield reputation, but that barrow has been pushed before.  A few possibilities I could think of for sharing rep are:   The commenter can be added to the answer as a "reputation sharer" - reputation gains from the answer are split 50/50 from then on The answerer can make a "donation" of reputation from the answer to the commenter - eg if the answer has 4 votes, they can donate up to 40 reputation (there may have to be a requirement that this donation comes off the rep cap, so answerers don't distribute their excess rep when exceeding their rep cap) Upvotes made by the answerer to comments on the answer do get reputation (maybe 5 - transferred as per previous point)     Why bounty doesn't quite fit:  The bounty process is just too long winded and doesn't have an on-going effect if the answer turns out to be a really good one. The bounty is too delayed. They didn't answer, they just added value - I just want to give the comenter a pat on the back right there and then, and I don't mind giving up some erep to do it.
66454
I have an  which had about 6 views. So I'm considering a bounty but I wonder if that will provide any answers. There's a risk someone will just answer with a non-reply just to get the bounty after a few days. (Because it's automatically awarded to the person with the highest votes.) Of course, I could downvote the answer but if it's the only one, it would still be the highest one in votes. I could flag it, hoping a moderator will remove it, thus saving the bounty for a real answer. But if that doesn't happen, then I've wasted reputation to a non-answer.  So, when assigning a bounty to a Q, is it possible to exclude certain answers from automatically receiving it, even if there's no other answer after the time's up? I just don't want to reward someone who adds nonsense to my Q.
124152
I've seen a few questions I'd like to comment on or give a different answer, but seeing how I don't have 50 reputation (I've been a lurker for years, finally decided to participate) do I really need to ask a few questions before I can comment/answer other people's stuff? Or am I missing something here?  Sorry if this has been answered before, but with a few search tries I couldn't find any similar stuff, even tried google just for "50 reputation stackoverflow" but that didn't give me anything either.
103998
I asked a question on SO and someone gave me the answer as a comment to the question. Subsequently, someone else gave the same answer as an answer.  I would like to give credit to the poster who made the comment. Is there any way to do that?   Being new to the site, my only thought would be to contact the commenter and tell him to post an answer if he/she wants credit.
86722
I think it would be useful if we had an option when deciding to open a bounty on a question that we could choose to allocate rep from one site even though the bounty is being offered on another site.  For instance I would like to use my rep from SO for putting a bounty on a question that resides on SF. I don't have enough rep on SF to make it enticing. So when you click on "start a bounty" you get sliders for each site that you can pull your rep from, maybe make it where you need to burn up all your rep for the site that your asking the question on and then allocate more rep from other ones, if you have it.  thanks devinb for clearing up my question with your comments! " transfer rep INTO a bounty. But you can't transfer rep across accounts. So, the rep you'd 'lose' from SO would never actually go into your SF account, it would go straight onto a bounty on whatever question." – devinb
18095
I've asked a question on SO and set a bounty of 50 rep. on it.  Would it be possible to permit me to raise this bounty, if I see that it doesn't get enough attention?