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I was accused of being a total jerkface because I put on a bounty a question that was recently reopened via a discussion on meta. I did not realize that putting a bounty on a question makes it ineligible for closing and upsets people during a semi-active discussion on a vote-to-reopen/vote-to-close discussion on meta. I did wait about 12 hours after my question was successfully reopened, and I thought this amount of time was reasonable, apparently it was not. I had no intention of being a "total jerkface", but alas, I was.

All of that being said, newish users like myself are not aware of social faux pas in this community and a small change to the site would help to avoid this.

Feature Request

A question should not be eligible for a bounty within 48 hours after being reopened, just as a question is not eligible for a bounty within the first week of posting.

Edit: As pointed out in the comments - A question is not eligible for a bounty within the first 48 hours of being posted, not a week as stated above.

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    I hope you were not literally being accused of being...well..what you just said? That would be inappropriate no matter the cause.
    – Bart
    May 16, 2013 at 12:52
  • No, i was not accused of being a jerkface, just called out on "badform" because they thought I did it on purpose to protect the question. But "jerkface" makes for a more dramatic read.
    – Scott
    May 16, 2013 at 12:52
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    Seems like a good idea. Though I thought questions were eligible for bounty after 2 days, not a week?
    – TronicZomB
    May 16, 2013 at 12:54
  • @TronicZomB, you might be correct that is two days, I couldn't remember, but thought it was a week.
    – Scott
    May 16, 2013 at 12:54
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    @Scott Nope, 48 hours meta.stackexchange.com/questions/16065/…
    – Bart
    May 16, 2013 at 12:55

2 Answers 2

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I don't think this is required...

The questions that, usually, go through multiple, swift, close/reopen cycles are those that are currently being discussed on meta or new ones, i.e. those that are not yet eligible for a bounty.

The cases where a user bounties a question that is currently being discussed on meta are minimal in the extreme and it is always possible for a moderator to refund the bounty. Should a user want to vote to close a question that is currently being discussed on meta they can either raise a custom flag or comment to one of the, inevitable, moderators who are involved with the meta post.

What this change would do is stop a user, who's worked in order to get their question re-opened, getting some necessary additional advertising. It provides a bad UX for them.

Having said that, to reduce the instances of being a "jerkface" even more maybe going halfway would be okay? Enforce a 24 hour window between a question being re-opened and being eligible for bountying.

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    The problem I ran into is exactly what you described. I worked hard to get my question re-opened and after what I thought was a reasonable amount of time, I put a bounty on it to get more attention to the question and gain addition answers(which it did). This was followed by me getting called out for badform and others agreeing. A 24 hour bounty limitation seems good to me - the time period agreed upon by the community works for me, but the overall goal of the feature request remains the same.
    – Scott
    May 16, 2013 at 13:41
  • @Scott - there are lots of excitable people around here, especially when it comes to having questionable questions that aren't closed/deleted. I wouldn't worry about it, plain and simple.
    – Adam Rackis
    May 16, 2013 at 15:07
  • @Scott: I honestly don't understand why it should be bad form? If a question is re-opened (and especially if it was reopened half a day ago), then it should have all the possibility of a question that was never closed in the first place (otherwise it would be reopened-but-not-quite, and that's too much of a mouthful). I'd be interested in the arguments for it being bad form, I simply can't imagine them.
    – Joachim Sauer
    May 16, 2013 at 15:19
  • It does stop the community from voting to re-close @Joachim and there's no guarantee that after 12 hours meta has stopped discussing the question... As I say though as a moderator can just refund the bounty anyway I really don't think it matters (at all) or that Scott should be worrying about it as Adam says.
    – ben is uǝq backwards
    May 16, 2013 at 15:21
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    I do understand why people think it is bad form, it locks the question from being closed. In my case, the question was reopened, then reclosed, then reopened again. Had I put a bounty on it the first time it was reopened it would have ended the meta-discussion almost immediately and that would have been bad for the community. A better argument for the bounty delay could be to rephrase the question as: What is the difference between a new question and a reopened one? Why is there a bounty restriction on one and not the other? Should a bounty be a usable tool to make a question harder to close?
    – Scott
    May 16, 2013 at 15:31
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I can see some sense in this, but I don't think it happens enough to warrant something codified. If a question is going through a rapid cycle and attracts a bounty that is not a deliberate move to keep the question open, then we have even more compelling evidence that the question is worth something and probably should stay open. I have seen cases where bounties have been used to duck the initial closing, but that's a little different.

If it's the other scenario, moderators have the ability to refund a bounty at their discretion, and they have this specifically for these circumstances. Chances are, if something is going through a tailspin, at least a few moderators are watching it to begin with.

What you did wasn't bad form - you just did what the system let you do. A few of our features can be used in somewhat juvenile ways, but 'fixing' that tends to diminish the feature - something we'd rather not do unless it was a rampant problem at hand.

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