I am facing a recurring problem on Stack Overflow that goes like this:
Someone asks a question. I answer, and we chat until their problem is solved. Then they leave the site, forgetting to upvote answer or mark it accepted. This, sort of thing discourages answering.
Is there a way we can tackle this problem? Or, should I just ignore questions from new users, since I'm not sure whether they will accept my answer?
Accepting an answer is purely voluntary and there's no obligation to do so.
A lot of us participate here because we want to be helpful. If you're after reputation and green checkmarks, you might find it difficult to deal with the fact that there's nothing we can or should do to force people to vote or accept answers.
We already encourage voting and accepting answers via pop-ups when upvoting, prompts in the questions list, etc. Beyond that... it's all status-bydesign.
accept rate helps us remember to mark questions as answered or to answer our own questions when we get the solution. I personally answer when I think I can contribute. But when the answer requires time and the accept rate of the user is too sketchy then I put that to the back of my todo queue.
I'm quite a new user on Stack Overflow but I already know what you mean. It can get really frustrating, especially when you donate 2h of your time and somebody doesn't show the smallest form of appreciation.
Today, when thinking about this I came up with an idea. What if every user could have a blacklist to which he/she could add the users who behave this way, and next to the reputation and badges there would be an extra thing with the number of users who put the person on their blacklists?
The way I see it, seeing a question asked by a person with a high blacklist number, the community would be more aware of who's asking the question. On the other hand there could be alerts like "careful, over 5 people have added you to their blacklists - you should consider accepting the relevant answers to your questions". At the same time, after the user accepts them, the ones who put the person on their blacklists would get an alert like "User X is getting to know how things go and has accepted 5 answers today", which would be a signal to take the person off their list.
I think the system would give the asking people the opportunity to learn how things go and prevent the users on the forum to engage in an activity that doesn't bring them any good.
And yes, I'm aware of the fact that ideally, users should just contribute because of being good :) and that the general idea of answering is not the prize, but the contribution. On the other hand, things in general are far from ideal in this world and this behavior discourages many people from contributing and maybe having such a system could somehow fix the issue.
What do you think about the idea?
If one sees an answer and upvotes, one is showing appreciation of that answer.
As the FAQ states
Reputation is a rough measurement of how much the community trusts you; it is earned by convincing your peers that you know what you’re talking about.
Don't go around bothering people to accept answers, let the votes from users of the community work. If your answer is good, the community will show their appreciation in time.
Patience and humility.
It aint no race.
Just "a second thought" on the subject:
If you really care about the green button, then think the next case:
The OP has a nickname user124684 that he can't even remember and then more than a few hours has passed from the post. He possibly will never login again if he already got a comment. He possibly will not remember his nickname to login again. If he find again the question he will be happy just to read the answer but not to remember his password to login or not to press buttons (he didn't even made the effort to select a username).
If you don't care if your answer will be accepted the community will gain from you anyway
Don't spend a long time answering a question that gives you no other benefit. Answer only questions you can answer reasonably quickly, or for which you also need to know the answer. Then you will not be disappointed if the asker does not accept your answer.
A question that takes a long time to answer suggests two possible problems
Not sure why nobody has suggested this yet, but:
... I answer, and we chat until their problem is solved. Then they leave the site
if they're a new user, take advantage of the chat session to explain "how things work around here", i.e. thank them for commenting but remind them that if your update of the answer, or your clarification, resolves the problem - then they don't need to say so in words, but can simply accept the answer, and possibly upvote. Don't just wait for them to disappear.
