48 hour accept own answer delay wastes other answerers' time

Question

I have read all the discussions around the 48 hour delay on accepting ones own answers. To quote Jeff Atwood:

You must wait 2 days from the time you originally asked your question before you can accept your own answer. This gives other users a chance to answer the question in good faith, and earn the accepted answer.

Let's suppose you ask a question. You finish typing it out, but don't press Post Your Question. Instead, you go off and do a bit of research. You find a solution. Instead of discarding the question, you decide to share your new knowledge with the community because you're just that type of person. So you check Answer your own question after reading that it is explicitly encouraged. You enter your answer and submit both the question and answer.

Knowing that your answer solved the problem, you try to accept your own answer to indicate as much to everyone. You are then confronted with

You can accept your own answer in 2 days.

Now, your intention is to come back in two days and accept your answer.

You come back two days later, but in the meantime, others have provided answers in the hope of getting accepted. However, your intention has always been to accept your own answer because you know it is correct. You have just lured them into wasting their time providing answers that you already know will not be accepted. You accept your own answer and that's that. But not quite... you get annoyed when you realise that your effort to share knowledge has been sabotaged by your correct answer not appearing at the top.

Can we have the system changed to work like this:

• Provide an additional "Answer and accept your own question";
• Always keep the accepted answer at the top, no matter whose answer it is;
• Don't count votes on the question or answer toward the user's reputation.
• If the user decides to accept another person's answer after the fact, allow votes on the question only to affect the user's reputation.

If you're going to say that you encourage users to ask and answer their own question, you should not sabotage their efforts to do so by demoting their answer. It's just pointless. You already have measures in place to prevent gaming, such as not counting the answer towards the user's reputation.

Answer 1

The person who asks the question does not always have the best answer. For example, this is an example where I suspect the OP already had the answer in mind when posting the question, but it turned out to be a bad answer (and bad question).

Had others not stepped in, we'd be left with a QA pair that would poison the Internet.

Yes, self answering is encouraged but should not be done blindly and narcissistically (that's what blogs are for). The 2 day hold period encourages others to contribute to the content, and the best answer should be ranked higher no matter who posted it.

Placing a less ideal answer on top wastes the time of unsuspecting visitors who come by looking for and answer.

Answer 2

Who cares if the answer doesn't get accepted? That's only a check mark and 15 reputation. If they have a better answer than you and they want to put the time and effort into writing it, chances are that it will generate them upvotes like any other answer. I wouldn't consider that wasting their time. Plus, keeping the question marked as not having an accepted answer will also keep more visitors flowing through it. If there's a brand new question with an accepted answer marked already, how many people do you really expect to visit it?

Anyone can see that your question and answer were posted at the same time and that it's likely that you will accept your own answer. That shouldn't discourage them from posting their own answer if they have further or better information. Like has been said so many times: the accepted answer only marks the one that helped the OP. In your case, your answer helped you. Good job. But, maybe there's that ever-so-slight chance that theirs will be more helpful. You never know.

Answer 3

Remember that these sites are not some help forum, but intend to build libraries of high-quality questions and answers. Keeping that in mind, why do you think your own answer is the only or even the best solution to your question? Surely the folks who posted additional answers think their answer has some merit too.

So, no, I think the 48 hours is required to ensure more people read the question and give it some thought. Only then we get the best answers.

your intention has always been to accept your own answer because you know it is correct

That reads to me like: I know I always have the best answer and don't want to learn about other options. That's fine, but that is still not what these sites are about.

Answer 4

You have just lured them into wasting their time providing answers [..]

I disagree with this one completely (though it's cited a bit out of context). Instead I'd say you just encouraged someone to contribute potential valuable information that might help future visitors (and the OP if he is interested).

This is very useful sometimes, even if it's not the most helpful answer for the OP. Here is a real-world example of mine. His answer was posted later, but imagine he found that way 5 minutes after posting the question. He would have accepted his answer and I would have skipped the question because it's marked as solved in the question list. Instead I answered and provided an answer that helped a lot of people over time (given the votes), though not the OP directly.

Overall, I have to say you are never sure that your answer get's accepted when you answer someone elses question. This is not a special thing relevant for this scenario. In the end the goal on SO is to trick people into contributing valuable information for others. Rep is one way, but not the only one. This change would reduce the amount of information contributed, just for a slightly faster individual rep gain. I'd say this is a net-loss for the community.