Imagine a situation where you want to reward an exceptionally good answer to a question, with an additional bonus bounty. Why don't we have the ability to specify which answer it is in the first place, so it'll get the bonus automatically at the expiration of the bounty?
The FAQ says
- If you do not award your bounty within 7 days (plus the grace period), the highest voted answer created after the bounty started with at least 2 upvotes will be awarded half the bounty amount. If there's no answer meeting that criteria, the bounty is not awarded to anyone.
Question: Does that mean that if no new answers were created after the bounty was started, the bounty won't be automatically awarded to any of the pre-existing answers, and will go completely to waste?
I can see the reason for such behaviour for bounties which solicit new answers, but the whole reason for this bounty in the first place was to reward a pre-existing answer?!