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I ask some questions and get answers on the Stack Exchange network as usual.

But I am biased towards accepting answers late because of the following reasons:

  1. Waiting for better answers

  2. Checking answers for myself till I know its validity if I am novice to that topic

I know that there is no such force on any user to accept answers in a stipulated amount of time. But is it acceptable to accept answers with so much delay? Because sometimes I get comments saying to accept answer either directly or indirectly.

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Both things are ok:

  • You may wait as long as you need before accepting an answer
  • Anyone can ask you to accept an anwer if thinks the problem is solved and enough time passed

But it doesn't mean that you must accept an answer. In case of such asking it would be good to pecify in the comment something like "if the problem is solved" but not just "accept my answer". If the problem really seems solved, but you don't want to accept an answer, it would be nice to answer what are you waiting for.

Also you should know that you can change accepted answer at any time. But personally I prefer not to use this option, so I'd like to wait without accepting.

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because some times times I get comments saying to accept answer either directly or indirectly.

Flag those comments. They're the ones acting inappropriately.

You can accept whatever you want, when you want.

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    What are you talking about? o_O meta.stackexchange.com/a/88539/260198 Asking for the acceptance is a good practice.
    – Suvitruf - Andrei Apanasik
    Commented Dec 3, 2018 at 18:15
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    @Suvitruf from the answer you linked to 'and they commented something like "thanks, that worked!"' which is different from what the OP asks about (see their 2nd bullet point about checking the validity of the answers first).
    – Anne Daunted GoFundMonica
    Commented Dec 3, 2018 at 18:44
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    @AnneDaunted does it matter? You shouldn't flag comments about acceptance.
    – Suvitruf - Andrei Apanasik
    Commented Dec 3, 2018 at 19:04
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    @Suvitruf It's literally on the blacklist of words along with swear words because of how often these inappropriate comments are posted and how infrequently they're appropriate. It's absolutely appropriate to flag a comment like that.
    – Servy
    Commented Dec 3, 2018 at 19:05
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    @Servy could you provide the link about this discussion or the link to this blacklist?
    – Suvitruf - Andrei Apanasik
    Commented Dec 3, 2018 at 22:18
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    @Suvitruf I don't know if the entire blacklist is public. You can tell that a particular word is on it by seeing when comments containing it are instantly deleted after a flag, but I don't know of any way of seeing the entire list publicly. I'm not sure if it's public at all or not.
    – Servy
    Commented Dec 3, 2018 at 22:25
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    New users often don't understand the mechanics of accepting answers, and kindly reminding about it helps them. There were tens of times when I saw a question with upvoted but not accepted answers, so I wrote something like “If one of the answers was useful and helped you solve the problem, please mark it as accepted (green V near the arrows).” It actually makes many newbie OPs return and accept one of the answers — or explain that none of them were useful and why.
    – Nick Volynkin
    Commented Dec 4, 2018 at 3:06
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    Of course, saying “Do accept my answer immediately!!!11” is a bad thing to do, but please do not shrink the whole variety of comments about aceepting answers to this extreme case.
    – Nick Volynkin
    Commented Dec 4, 2018 at 3:09
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    @NickVolynkin Sure, I believe you when you say that berating users for not accepting answers resulting in them accepting answers. They'll do so begrudgingly often, and they'll have a poorer experience here, but they'll accept answers when people tell them to. Maybe those answers weren't great, maybe they didn't use it, but they'll accept them because that's what they were told to do. That you're more concerned with how many answers are accepted is exactly the problem, and exactly why these comments should be flagged and are consistently deleted.
    – Servy
    Commented Dec 4, 2018 at 14:33
  • @Servy berating users? How saying “please mark a helpful answer or explain why none were helpful” is berating? Now, the way you address me here, your tone and the way you accuse me of being concerned with numbers, not people — that looks like you're berating me. And I don't accept it. If we need to argue, let's do it with mutual respect, or let's not talk at all.
    – Nick Volynkin
    Commented Dec 5, 2018 at 4:01
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    @NickVolynkin When you continue to post comments like that on every post, yeah, it becomes berating. It's why users like the OP here feel pressured into accepting answers when they don't want to because people keep telling them to accept answers. When you respond to people feeling pressured to accept answers by saying that posting the comments is good because it results in your numbers going up, then yeah, I'm going to think that you're more concerned with them than with people. If you want me to think the opposite, indicate the opposite.
    – Servy
    Commented Dec 5, 2018 at 14:18
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Yet another approach is like so:

  1. Mark some answer accepted (whenever you think the time is right).
  2. Later on, if you think some other answer is better, un-accept the previously accepted answer, and mark the better answer as accepted.
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