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Often I am browsing the unanswered questions, and stumble upon a question I find interesting and whose answer I don't know.

My current method is to bookmark it in a special folder, and periodically check back for an answer.

But it would be nice if I could click a button to "Notify me when an answer is accepted". Note that these are typically questions that I have not participated in at all.

Is this possible or in the development queue?

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  • Why the downvotes? Did I break some rule or do you guys just not like the idea? If the latter, that doesn't seem like a valid reason to downvote....
    – Jonah
    Jan 5, 2013 at 7:20
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    It is, Voting is different on meta. It is an indicator of disagreement.
    – Manishearth
    Jan 5, 2013 at 7:21
  • Downvotes work differently here. It means people disagree.
    – Austin Henley
    Jan 5, 2013 at 7:21
  • I see. That seems odd to me. I am penalized for expressing a personal opinion. I mean it's fine if no one else is interested in this feature, but I would like it. Doesn't this rule just encourage a mob mentality, where people will never propose feature requests that they think will be unpopular?
    – Jonah
    Jan 5, 2013 at 7:24
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    Hi Jonah, I wanted to give you some feedback. I wasn't a downvoter in this case, but I would have been more interested in this as a feature if you edited the question to also include subscribing to get notifications when any answer is posted on a question. If you're really interested in a solution, and editing and posting bounties doesn't help, then subscribing to updates could be useful. As for downvotes, if you can demonstrate in your feature requests how it will benefit the Q&A, the core of Stack Exchange, people are more likely to see things your way.
    – jmort253
    Jan 5, 2013 at 7:52
  • In other words, tell us why this would be nice beyond just curiosity. Why do we need this? Hope this helps! :)
    – jmort253
    Jan 5, 2013 at 7:53
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    @jmort253, Thanks I appreciate it. I agree that subsribing to notifications of any answer would be a more useful feature and is actually more consistent with my own use-case as described in the OP
    – Jonah
    Jan 5, 2013 at 7:55

1 Answer 1

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Actually, there's really not much point to you being notified that there's an accepted answer. All the big green checkmark means is "this is the best answer that helped the original question asker", and it by no means should preclude you, or anyone else for that matter, from posting your own answer, upvoting other helpful answers, or using the information posted in a non-accepted answer to solve a problem you're facing.

Additionally, many times when I use Stack Overflow during my work, the answers that help me the most oftentimes aren't the accepted answer. Every person's problem will be different.

With that said, you might check out Stack Apps, as there may very well be a user who used the Stack Exchange API to build an app that does something similar to what you're asking for.

Check out StackStalker. It looks promising! Hope this helps!

Also, if there is a question you see that is unanswered, you can always post a bounty on the question, which will get it more attention and increase the likelihood that it will be answered. However, before posting a bounty, be sure to edit the question to clarify it. This will not only make it easier to understand, but also it will bump it to the top of the active main page.

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    I disagree with your reasoning in the first paragraph. Yes, an accepted answer is not a guarantee of usefulness or correctness, but it is positively correlated with those things. Just because I choose to be notified does not imply I am going to blindly accept the answer myself or refuse to read the other answers. Thanks for the other info though, that seems like the way to go.
    – Jonah
    Jan 5, 2013 at 7:26

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