How do you ask OP to reconsider accepted answer and award yours?

Question

I was a little late to the part posting an answer to this question: How to get a substring from bash command

We are all proud parents of our posted answers so I'm probably biased but I think my answer is better than Windy's accepted answer because:

• It uses cut which OP was trying to master
• Uses one command instead of two

Without offending @Rinzwind (Waves to Windy) who I've known for many years and admire and without nagging / whining at OP, what comment would I post to have them reconsider acceptance.

Forget the fact you judge Windy's answer is better or my answer is better. How would you phrase the comment to OP?

This isn't necessarily about "winning" the 15 points. It's more about the fact we want future readers to get the most bang for their free Linux buck.

You can tell me I suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder if you want to :)

@Fabby confessed to me once how he made chatroom for OP and told OP to let me keep bounty but after period ended to accept Fabby's answer instead. That method makes sense but I think that is overly complicated.

Answer 1

Honestly? Just don't do it.

The OP gets notified about every new answer to their question, so you can assume they've either seen it already or they have no interest in checking their notifications. Promoting your answer to them, however politely, is likely to come across as unnecessary hassling. They might feel it would be rude to unaccept an answer and find the whole situation uncomfortably pressured, no matter how pleasantly you put it across.

Your answer may well be better (I'm not going to look), but the OP has accepted a different one. This happens all the time and it only really matters when the accepted answer is really bad or dangerous. The OP is usually not an expert on the topic, so votes are usually a better indication of answers' value (or popularity) than acceptance. Sure, many visitors will go straight for the accepted answer, but if they can spare more than 30 seconds to solve the problem they'll probably scroll down. I always do.

Now it's possible that the person whose answer was accepted will see your answer and think it's way better than theirs and closer to what OP really wanted. That person is in a position to suggest to the OP that they might consider changing their accept. If I really really wanted to pursue this, I'd approach the person whose answer was accepted and not the OP.

Early on I was very interested in getting my answers accepted. Of course I had been telling myself that getting accepts was helping the site or visitors or whatever. But I don't think that's really true. Its only significant benefit IMHO is making it possible for an unappreciated question by a new user to show up as answered. I don't think seeking accepts for my own posts does the site any favours and I think it gives a poor impression to the OP.

Answer 2

My answer would be that you shouldn't, and I must say both as the one who asks, as well as the author of the accepted answer, I'd consider it a kind of a contempt.

while anyone has the right to vote for (or against) the quality of an answer, it is the exclusive privilege of the one who asks to accept whichever answer he or she considers most useful. OP does not need to defend his choice, nor should anyone use any pressure to accept this or that. I have seen it in the past more than once, and found it horrible without exception, Not to mention that I often disagreed with the claimed "this is the best answer".

Really good answers will often attract more votes over time, accepted or not. The gloomy attempt to push someone simply isn't serving any goal.

Answer 3

My take on this particular link is I would never ask OP to change acceptance to my answer. I would point out that my comments made from "smartphone" were in error and I posted an answer still using cut but prepending pipe line with tr to condense contiguous whitespace.

I have on a few occasions asked OP to change acceptance to a different answer that is not my own. Reasons for this could be:

• Accepted answer is to a software package no longer supported or incompatible with current Ubuntu releases.
• Accepted answer could be dangerous if used improperly.
• Accepted answer involves too much hacking or is inefficient.
• Accepted answer simply doesn't work today or perhaps never worked at all.

I have accepted answers to my own questions as a way of awarding someone who answered that provided could insights to help me solve the problem.

In that case though I will post my own answer pointing out it is the best solution but thanking first answer and pointing out that is the reason for my acceptance.

I have posted a new answer five years later and the OP took away acceptance from a ~100 up voted answer and awarded to me. But in no shape or means did I request that.

I'm guilty of awarding a bounty to an answer that didn't solve the suspend/resume issue. But I did not accept the answer. I made it known the bounty was awarded solely for hard work.

This Q&A was intended for discussion. I have the upmost respect for Windy and have upvoted numerous of his answers along with the usual suspects Serge, Zanna, Terdon, Jacob, Fabby, Muru, etc.

I often get heavily down voted with discussion topics but that's the nature of soliciting opinions. I'll never be a politician :)

Answer 4

This in the question:

but I'd like to have the most recommended approach.

made me drop any interest in cut. Great command but it can't stand in the shadow of awk. Heck it even the command sounds more awesome.

For manipulation of text I depend on 2 tools: sed and awk.