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Encourage users to select ‘Accepted Answer’ for old Questions
Basically as the title reads. Sometimes I see 'unanswered' questions which do actually have a good answer, only it's not accepted. Is there some way that I can flag an answer as the correct one, even if I didn't ask the question? I see there is a 'flag' link but the title reads 'flag this post for serious problems', so it would seem like the wrong thing for a correct, but unaccepted answer.
If we're talking about the unanswered tab, applying an upvote to any answer present will make the questions "answered" for the purpose of the tab.
Acceptance is a whole 'nother matter. It is a decision for the OP to make (exception after offering a bounty and not accepting anything in the allotted time an answer may be auto accepted). Acceptance mean no more or less than "The OP accepted this answer".
Some users don't pay attention to their questions to accept answers, and there's no technical solution to fix that.
The only thing you can do as a 3rd party to the question/answer is to upvote what you believe is the correct answer. (Also, you can upvote the question if you feel it's appropriate -- since this shows up in the activity summary, it may draw the asker's attention to the question.)
I think even leaving a comment on the question to get the question-asker to mark an answer as accepted is taking it a step too far. Certainly, flagging is out of the question, and should only be used for instances of misuse/abuse of the system.
