I have a suggestion: After a certain set amount of time automatically mark the question with the most upvotes as the accepted answer. Many of us have experienced this: You answer a question posted by someone with 1 reputation. They leave a comment thanking you for solving their problem. You respond back that you are happy to help and asking them to click the green check mark to mark your post as the accepted answer. But alas, it is too late. They will never see your comment because they only needed Ask Ubuntu to solve their one problem so they will never sign in and check their inbox, and they didn't set up email notifications. The question will remain unanswered, and you will be annoyed. Therefore, you don't answer users with low reputation's questions for fear of the same thing happening again. I propose a solution so that users with low rep get answers and the answerer gets their 15 reputation. I propose that after a fixed amount of time, let's say a month, the answer with the most votes is marked the accepted answer. In the case of a tie the longer answer gets it (they put in the most effort). Any comments, questions or concerns regarding this idea?
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2would be more trouble than it's worth, wrong answers would be accepted, and it would appear as if the OP tested and verified the answer works, it's bad enough that bounties get partially rewarded, on detailed but also wrong answers.– MateoCommented Apr 30, 2012 at 15:19
1 Answer
Would be a hell load of trouble just to get a user their (deserved, correct) 15 rep.
Ask Ubuntu works over time already, answer a question in a good manner and you will keep having reputation incoming for a very long time.
A question that as an answer with at least 2 up votes is already considered answered, so statistically for the site it self this is kinda useless.
In the case of a tie the longer answer gets it (they put in the most effort).
So are you saying that if a question has 2 answers:
- "hi I solved this by using something else"
- "ih I devlos siht yb gnisu gnihtemos esle."
If none of the answers has up votes and no one catches the 2nd one - and deletes it - for some time, the 2nd answer should be marked as the solution because it has 1 char more than the first? I do not see the usefulness in this, sorry. Too much automation is bad!
Giving a better answer or taking care of your old answers and improve them will score you much more reputation than getting a green check next to it and ignoring it forever.
You cannot force a user to accept an answer even if he says that it was the solution for their problem, it is also wrong to accept it for him. Each user has an accepted answers percentage displayed with their name, that should give you an idea of what will happen even if the user agrees with your answer.
Of course new users will always be a (?) but that is just a risk you will have to take when answering questions.
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Um... a hell load of trouble? It would be a matter of adding another item to the cron task list. I'll take 15 rep any day. No, I'm not forgetting about those situations. I quote: In the case of a tie the longer answer gets it (they put in the most effort). If the user obviously accepted the answer informally, I see nothing wrong with giving it the final push.– WilliamCommented Feb 9, 2012 at 2:50
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You know what I meant, it would be a matter of adding one more thing to the list on automagically done stuff on the site. However, your'e saying you'd cheerfully throw away 15 reputation? Yep, that's right. You are being WAY too overly negative.– WilliamCommented Feb 9, 2012 at 13:44
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6@William I get the feeling you think rep points are important, they're not. :) Commented Feb 9, 2012 at 15:27
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1Umm... I wouldn't be talking. I would love to have as much rep as you. I know that sounds horribly mean and harsh and immature, but I mean it. If I got my 15 rep points from each answer that wasn't accepted but should have been, that would be 100 rep easy.– WilliamCommented Feb 9, 2012 at 17:20
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1If reputation is all you want then you can make easy 100 rep by answering two questions with an epic answer. This site is not really about reputation. Commented Feb 10, 2012 at 0:35
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