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Question

Can multiple users participate in a bounty, so

  • the points they lose sum up, and
  • they vote to choose the winner?

It doesn't appear to be documented as an existing feature.

This question is to discuss whether such feature would be useful.

Motivation

Sometimes a featured question is difficult and can only be resolved with a sufficient amount of coding or research effort (up to a few days). But I'm reluctant to do so, because the bounty is commonly just <=150. The point in multiple users supporting a single bounty is to motivate effort needed to resolve a challenging problem.

Possible implementation notes

During the first 2 or 3 days of a 7-day bounty, people may sum up some of their reputation to increase its value. The time limitation would be to avoid the bounty value going insanely high as the deadline is approaching.

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  • 6
    How is this superior to multiple users awarding individual bounties?
    – Michael Mrozek
    Commented Dec 26, 2011 at 3:57
  • @Fezziwig see update please.
    – user173505
    Commented Dec 26, 2011 at 4:34
  • @gry: Questions that would require a lot of coding to be answered are usually pretty localized and thus unlikely to receive "bounty support" from anyone but the OP.
    – Dennis
    Commented Dec 26, 2011 at 4:45
  • @Fezziwig: As it is, you cannot start a bounty on a question if the question already has a bounty.
    – Dennis
    Commented Dec 26, 2011 at 4:49
  • @Dennis Who/what is OP?
    – user173505
    Commented Dec 26, 2011 at 6:19
  • @gry: OP is "original poster", i.e. the person who asked the question
    – Mat
    Commented Dec 26, 2011 at 6:28
  • Found it here meta.stackexchange.com/questions/79804/… ... and you responded too.
    – user173505
    Commented Dec 26, 2011 at 6:30
  • How would you coordinate between these bounty contributors?
    – Oded
    Commented Dec 26, 2011 at 8:51

2 Answers 2

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I would rather go about this from the other end, with collaborative answers. I wish it were possible for several people to work together on an answer and have all of them receive reputation points.

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2

No, such thing is currently not supported and personally can't see any reason to support this.

If something deserve large bounty, we have enough high rep members who can give 500 reputation easily.

Usually it doesn't really matter if it's 150 or 500 - bounty is enough to draw more attention and make people try harder.

If question requires few days of research then it's more likely the person has to hire a programmer and pay with solid coin, not with virtual reputation.

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3
  • This works well if the work will be useful to the asker only. However if it's a software idea for which there is not a more specific forum, it may be ok to work for it on SO.
    – user173505
    Commented Dec 27, 2011 at 0:29
  • Never said it shouldn't be posted on SO just it's unlikely people will spend days just to gain some reputation no matter how much of it.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Dec 27, 2011 at 8:01
  • 1
    +1 I came in search of questions on multiple bounties and this answer convinced me it was a bad idea!...
    – nickhar
    Commented Apr 22, 2013 at 0:45

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