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I know that moderator can manually refund a bounty, maybe even old one.

However I could not find any documentation explaining what happens when a question that had bounties set on it is being deleted.

I'm not talking about active bounty set on the question in the time it's deleted, but rather old bounties that were set, expired and granted in the past on that question.

From my own recent experience (deleted question on http://movies.stackexchange.com), the bounties I had set there have been refunded but I can't see if manually by a moderator prior to deletion, or if it's automatic process.

Update: Deleted just now old question I had here on Meta with old bounty as well and I got full refund. So this is automatic process. Would still be nice to get official response explaining if this was always the case, or if it's some new behavior.

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  • This (the accepted answer) seems to indicate a moderator has to do so manually before closing: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/103373/…
    – Bart
    Aug 29, 2012 at 18:35
  • 2
    @Bart no, this one is talking about question with active bounty. In my case they are old bounties expired and granted long time ago. (And yet refunded when the question has been deleted)
    – Shadow The GPT Wizard
    Aug 29, 2012 at 18:37
  • Ah, I didn't get that distinction. Actually surprised they get refunded.
    – Bart
    Aug 29, 2012 at 18:38
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    @Bart cheers, tried to clarify by a small edit. :)
    – Shadow The GPT Wizard
    Aug 29, 2012 at 18:39

1 Answer 1

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As moderator, on questions where the bounty is already assigned, I don't see any link that allows me to refund the bounty; that is true for the question for which the bounty was offered, and for the answer to which the bounty was given.
During the period the bounty is open, there is a link to remove the bounty.

The only explanation is that the bounty is automatically removed when the question is deleted, although I would not expect it to happen. It could be a developer removed the bounty, but I don't see why a developer would do that.

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  • It is automatic, see my latest edit. This question had old bounty of 200 points, I deleted it and got it back.
    – Shadow The GPT Wizard
    Aug 29, 2012 at 20:07
  • Might it be that the bounty reputation at that point is simply seen as "reputation lost" as a result of that question. Then, once the question gets deleted, the reputation is returned as a result. Just guessing though.
    – Bart
    Aug 30, 2012 at 15:41
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    I wonder what would happen when you undelete the question. It would be a major bug/hole if you keep the refund.
    – user138231
    Mar 19, 2013 at 21:01
  • @Chichiray nothing happens - just undeleted question which had bounty of 200 and was deleted by myself a while ago. Bounty was refunded when deleting the question and not taken again now that it's undeleted.
    – Shadow The GPT Wizard
    Mar 20, 2013 at 13:13
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    @Chichiray hot update: after a while the 200 reputation points were reduced so all is good, there's probably some failsafe job that is taking care of those edge cases.
    – Shadow The GPT Wizard
    Mar 20, 2013 at 13:30
  • It takes 5-10 minutes for the bounty rep change to show up, in either direction (as of today).
    – Monica Cellio
    Nov 29, 2016 at 22:01

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