How to deal with own question which should be deleted with an open bounty?

Question

I have a question on stack overflow:

Oracle DB, Glassfish, Hibernate and character encoding

After setting a bounty and further testing I discovered that I was indeed getting the right data from the DB and that the problem is in the test.

The question does not make any sense anymore since the solution is already in the things I have tried and are in the question.

The only answer was not really relevant since it is for another DB.

But in any case: it would make sense to delete the question since nobody will ever be able to answer it and it will not benefit anyone.

But it cannot be deleted since there is open bounty.

• should I wait?
• or should I answer it myself telling that it makes no sense?

Answer 1

What you've got is a well written, well thought out question.

It is entirely plausible that someone will be in the same situation as you, caused by the same problem (ahem, your own stupidity mistake)... so why not add the "solution" to the question as an answer, to help any future people!

You won't be able to award the bounty to yourself, so you can either let it go un-awarded and expire, or be generous and award it to someone else (the other dude who tried to help?)

If you're still intent of deleting it, flag your own question for moderator attention and tell them what happened (even include a link to this question in the message if you do so desire). They will be able to refund the bounty and delete the question.