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Please consider accepting a good answer, even if it does not (possibly) give you what you asked for
I have to say I completely disagree with this. Accepting an answer is saying that that answer solved the OP's issue. If no answer solves it, then none should be accepted. Sure, it would be nice to get that extra 15 rep that comes with an accept but, as the OP,...
21
As pointed out by Mark Kirby, you can't effectively call on a particular user from a post they haven't yet commented on or edited, because an @user will not send them a notification. See this Meta Stack Exchange answer for details of when comment notifications are triggered.
If you want to seek help from high rep users*, you can always find a few lurking in ...
19
Usually, nothing. If the other answer is flat out wrong, downvote it and leave a comment explaining why. You can also leave a comment for the OP informing them of why it's wrong.
If the other answer is just less correct than yours but not wrong, do nothing. The OP is free to accept whichever answer they prefer. If your answer is considered better by the ...
19
It's up to the person who asked to determine the best answer, and many times the person never comes back to check to see if newer answers get better.
I wouldn't worry about it, the community will vote the good answers to the top and I would think that most people reading a question will look at a few of the answers instead of quitting at the first one, ...
18
Try to accept whatever has helped you the most. That's what it's supposed to mean but it's really down to your interpretation.
Timeliness could well be part of that utility and I know —from painful experience— that there are a lot of very good answers that haven't been accepted because they're an hour or two late to the pack.
But if we're talking minutes ...
17
If user A comes along and answers your question, and you accept it, he gets 15 reputation. If user B then adds an answer and you accept his answer instead, user A will lose 15 reputation and user B will gain 15 reputation.
This can cause hard feelings (it is amazing how much people care about stupid internet points!) so what I recommend is waiting awhile ...
16
No, no need for that. But...
Up vote great content and correct information that helps directly solve issues on the site. Was there effort? Get that guy some rep! Was it sloppy, confusing and all in all a not so good post? Well, its up to you.
Bad content, wrong information, you don't agree with the posted information or the information is dangerous? Down ...
12
Nothing.
Since Stack Overflow began, it has been strongly encouraged for a user to answer their own question.
In fact, it's codified in the FAQ:
It’s also OK to ask and answer your own question.
The Official Stack Overflow blog says this:
To be crystal clear, it is not merely OK to ask and answer your own question, it is explicitly encouraged.
So ...
12
The one you prefer, the one you end up using. It's completely up to you.
Acceptance is very personal, it's your question. Accept whichever answer you want.
11
Yes, but...
If you can edit their answer to include the comments, that'd be great. Comments are second class citizens here on Ask Ubuntu - they can (and are) deletable at any time, for almost any reason. So just keep that in mind.
Someday I'll write a script to purge all comments from the year 2010 - nobody will miss 'em - I hope. ;)
11
If both answers are correct, you might also consider how the respondent approached the problem, how efficient the solution is, and how they presented it. Of course, this might be overthinking, but if both answers satisfy the criteria you might exted the criteria. Among other things, leave a comment telling why you chose a particular answer. Personally , I'm ...
11
You can mark it as the accepted answer.
It's not automatic though. There are scenarios where you might have multiple options to accomplish the same thing. You might prefer somebody else's answer (and mark that as accepted) but still want your answer available to other people.
In terms of reputation, you don't get the +2 for marking an answer to your ...
11
General answer
There are different "schools" on AU, and below is just my perception.
Personally, I would have mixed feelings to accept my own answer, if it is based on the good work and research of someone else. If what I end up using is mostly an edited version of the existing answer, I would probably either:
ask/suggest an edit or addition to the ...
10
Option 3, we should be a resource that is as correct and useful as possible.
Having archives of information that doesn't work doesn't really help anybody and having those answer there just clutters up the site.
9
You can answer your own question and then mark it as the best answer after two days of asking the question. It won't be considered as an unanswered question if there is at least one upvote on the provided answer. There is even a badge promoting such a behavior.
9
No, you can't make (or force) people to accept an answer. What you can do instead is vote up the answer you think is best.
If everyone keeps doing that it just works out.
9
I disagree.
Primarily, there is no such thing as an "obviously abandoned question" - or rather: when do we draw the line?
Secondly, I don't really see a point in forcing questions to be accepted. It may not be what the person who asked the question was looking for (i.e. incorrect answer for the specific case), for instance. Also: There is no real benefit ...
9
The help page What should I do when someone answers my question? provides a single guideline for the selection of the accepted answer (emphasis by me):
Choose one answer that you believe is the best solution to your problem.
I think there are valid arguments for either answer but ultimately it’s up to your judgement which one you find more helpful.
Imho ...
8
Since reinstalling Ubuntu was ultimately the solution you used, and none of the other proposed solutions worked, writing your own answer saying you had to reinstall and accepting it (as you did) seems perfectly good.
You did solve your problem, after all. It's just that, unfortunately, you were not able to solve it in a particularly ideal way.
8
As the person who asked the question, it's entirely up to you to decide which answer should be chosen as the "accepted" answer, or indeed if none of them should be chosen. You are also free to change your mind later.
What I would suggest you do is choose the answer which helped you solve the problem the most, even if it was only a partial or alternative ...
8
Adding an answer so this question doesn't go unanswered..
The Stack Exchange system prevents accepting an answer within the first 15 minutes of asking the question. This is the system's way of ensuring that good to great answers are made.
If an answer is made to your question within the first 15 minutes of asking, but is not particularly good but you still ...
7
Once a bounty is awarded (or the bounty period has expired if the bounty has not been awarded), you can't remove the bounty from one answer and award it to another.
What you can do, is to start another bounty and award it to the new answer as you see it fits.
7
I think the bounty/reputation should be preserved for the answers even after the question is deleted.
There are specific conditions in which rep on deleted posts are preserved:
First, if you’ve contributed something worthwhile to the site, you
should keep the reputation for that even if it eventually gets
deleted. “Worthwhile” here is defined as,
...
7
If it's really early in the vetting process (not a lot of activity/voting around your post), it may be acceptable to retract and "fix" your original answer. But long after the fact (after the original material has already been vetted and voted on), I'd have to put that under "not okay."
Edits are designed to improve, correct, or clarify specific issues with ...
7
I think it should be clear by now that you should always accept my answers.
Seriously, Meta is mostly about discussion. That means it is to find, if possible, some kind of consensus, within the scope of the site, and to find out which opinion(s) possibly exist in the community.
Therefore downvotes, upvotes and acceptance or not, those are almost by ...
7
You got another 15 rep because your answer was accepted. See https://askubuntu.com/help/whats-reputation for details about reputation. The relevant bit here is:
You gain reputation when:
[ . . . ]
answer is marked “accepted”: +15 (+2 to acceptor)
6
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 ...
6
But there is a way!! Write your own answer, and then accept it.
it isn't considered impolite.
it gets off the unanswered list.
For more info, take a look at this meta stackoverflow question.
6
I was being too condescended, that all thing should be deleted.
Its mostly wrong, there is no useful information to merge to the main post and the user should have taken care of that a long time ago. Locking it "for historical reasons" only means that the post will stay there visible to all -would be the same as its current state except it cannot be fixed ...
6
The highest voted answer is listed first if the accepted answer is made by the OP. See Why are the accepted answers always on the top of the answer list? for details.
Note that you can choose how to sort answers. Currently it is possible to sort by activity, date and votes. The latter is the default.
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
