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When I click on the Bounty icon to award it, I get asked Are you sure, and then I say I am sure, only to be told that it's too early.

Just for kicks, here's the sequence in pictures:

  1. I see my bounty is still outstanding and that I have a great, spot-on, bounty-worthy answer:

    I see the bounty is not rewarded yet.

  2. I decide that I don't want to to forget to award this bounty to a deserving user:

    I see the scary warning.

  3. I see that I need to hold that thought for another two hours:

    I see that I have to wait 2 more hours.

What's worse, is that I did the same thing 3 hours ago. The only way I know that I can't award the bounty yet is to try (and fail) to award it. (I guess I could notice on step #1 that the bounty doesn't end for another 6 days and infer that I still need to wait until it ticks over to 5 days. But I wouldn't want to call that solution intuitive.)

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  • 2
    this is a fairly annoying change, I agree with it but it would take me a bit to shuffle the code around
    – waffles
    Commented Sep 21, 2011 at 2:06
  • 4
    A similar annoying thing is the "are you sure you want to vote to delete?" - "you already voted on this question!" sequence.
    – Paŭlo Ebermann
    Commented Sep 21, 2011 at 10:22
  • 2
    I understand the request, but it's a lot of work to fix "I have to click twice instead of once", and we're only talking about the period for 24 hours immediately after the bounty is started.
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Jan 24, 2012 at 18:41

4 Answers 4

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The simplest solution is to make the link grayed out with hover text that explains the bounty has not aged past the waiting period. A slightly more sophisticated solution would involve a countdown timer and a link to the appropriate FAQ. But I'd be happy with the text of the dialog box be replaced with You may award your bounty in 6 hours. No need to scare the user until the threat has some teeth.

(It's a really bad dialog box text anyway. Since the action is irrevocable the box is needed, but the "THIS ACTION CANNOT BE UNDONE!" is obnoxious and too scary. Most people don't read the text of a dialog box anyway.)

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5
+100

Probably best to have a message viewable to the bounty-setter only under the bounty notice: "You can award the bounty in X hours/days" and completely get rid of the "+XXX" buttons next to the posts until those buttons are usable.

Don't gray them out - just get rid of them until they actually do something.

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  • 2
    I don't know -- I favor showing them, then explaining what is going on when you click them. Things that are just magically gone, don't explain much. The OP's request is basically that there is exactly one too many clicks before the explaining happens, which I think is a bit of a trivial complaint.
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Jan 24, 2012 at 18:39
5
+50

This feature has been implemented. When you add a bounty to a question, the button for awarding the bounty to an answer is now grayed out for 24 hours, with an appropriate tooltip message and cursor.

If anyone wants to see how it looks, I encourage you to add a bounty to this question.

As others can't try, since I just did, I'll post a picture to comfort them: printscreen of this answer with a grayed out bounty button.

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  • P.s. there is no tooltip on the responsive design when browsed on a mobile phone (android) using chrome.
    – Luuklag
    Commented Jan 15, 2020 at 12:36
  • Interesting; you see a very different diamond than I do on my PC or Mac. Strange font? ;)
    – Lightness Races in Orbit
    Commented Jan 15, 2020 at 15:12
  • Standard chrome on android (Huawei) font I suppose... @LightnessRaceswithMonica
    – Luuklag
    Commented Jan 15, 2020 at 21:05
  • @Luuklag norepro
    – Lightness Races in Orbit
    Commented Jan 16, 2020 at 11:18
  • Yaakov, when clicking the background turns a shade darker, but no tooltip appears.
    – Luuklag
    Commented Jan 16, 2020 at 11:22
  • @Luuklag the tooltip should show up when you mouse-hover over the button for a couple of seconds
    – Yaakov Ellis StaffMod
    Commented Jan 16, 2020 at 11:23
  • There is no mouse on mobile ;)
    – Luuklag
    Commented Jan 16, 2020 at 11:27
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    There is also no tooltip on mobile (at the moment)
    – Yaakov Ellis StaffMod
    Commented Jan 16, 2020 at 11:27
  • Should I make a FR for that, or can you put it on the wishlist?
    – Luuklag
    Commented Jan 16, 2020 at 11:29
2

Maybe, it could be better to disable the icon when it's too early to be awarded.

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  • 6
    I doubt that: it's a nice way to get to learn the hidden features, even when it's too early. Also, that might get new questions like "why is the option greyed out"?
    – Arjan
    Commented Feb 11, 2011 at 10:14

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