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Today I've received a following letter about my bounty question.

Here is a quote:

Please review the answers. If you feel one of them deserves your bounty, award it by clicking the bounty icon to the left of the answer. Otherwise, you might consider providing feedback in the form of comments or edits. If you don't award your bounty, the highest scored answer (with a minimum of 2 score) provided after your bounty started may be automatically awarded half the bounty amount.

The thing is this very question does not have any answers at all. May be we should send such letter only when there are such question that could be awarded?

This is not a proposal, I just want to comprehend the original position. May be there are technical limitations, or may be it is an ideological issue, and this is done intentionally - just like with vote arrows near my own questions.

4
  • Related (dupe?): meta.stackexchange.com/questions/59782/…
    – Matt
    Jul 11, 2012 at 12:08
  • This is not a proposal this sounds exactly like a feature request: don't send bounty reminder emails when there are no actual answers.
    – JimmyPena
    Jul 11, 2012 at 12:17
  • @JimmyPena - all I can do is to repeat two sentences next to your quote, "May be there are technical limitations, or may be it is an ideological issue, and this is done intentionally - just like with vote arrows near my own questions"
    – shabunc
    Jul 11, 2012 at 12:19
  • 1
    Understood, and I agree with you.
    – JimmyPena
    Jul 11, 2012 at 12:22

2 Answers 2

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Maybe, if there are no answers to a question that has a bounty on it, the email should say something like:

Thanks for putting a bounty on your question. It looks like there are still no answers yet. You should consider improving your question to attract more answers. Could you

  • add some sample code?
  • add more text describing the problem?
  • add or change the tags?
  • update the title to more accurately reflect the issue?

Once you get answers, please review them. If you feel one of them deserves your bounty, award it by clicking the bounty icon to the left of the answer. Otherwise, you might consider providing feedback in the form of comments or edits. If you don't award your bounty, the highest scored answer (with a minimum of 2 score) provided after your bounty started may be automatically awarded half the bounty amount.

1
  • 2
    +1 for the idea to encourage zero-response question owners to improve somehow the bounty itself.
    – shabunc
    Jul 11, 2012 at 12:31
16

We have used Jimmys suggestion for the content of the email if there are currently no answers on a question with a bounty at the time the email is sent. This will go out with the next deploy.

2
  • Fantabulicious! (syn: cool) Jul 11, 2012 at 17:59
  • Awesome, thanks Geoff.
    – JimmyPena
    Jul 11, 2012 at 18:25

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