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I had a bounty of 100pts offered on https://stackoverflow.com/questions/236865/what-are-some-best-practices-for-large-scale-development-in-python, with a detailed description of why and what would be expected.

The bounty however somehow got deleted (before expiration), with no notice, I was refunded the 100pts, and the bounty description now disappeared into nowhere.

I have contacted SO support with the following answer:

Stack Exchange Team (Stack Exchange, Inc.) Oct 16 11:36 (EDT) It looks like the bounty was refunded by a moderator. I'm not sure why off-hand. The best place to ask would be on Meta Stack Overflow. Doing so will allow the moderator who took the action to comment and explain what happened or why. Please let us know if you need anything further.

It would be nice to at least know what happened. I really want to help improve the answer, and hence the bounty.

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  • 8
    I'm surprised the moderator didn't also close the question while at it.
    – Mysticial
    Oct 16, 2013 at 16:08
  • 2
    @Mysticial We'll just need to resolve that for him.
    – Servy
    Oct 16, 2013 at 16:09
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    Side note, the bounty reason doesn't really make sense here. It's a polling question. It's not possible to have a canonical answer to a polling question. That's one of the main reasons we don't like polling questions here.
    – Servy
    Oct 16, 2013 at 16:11
  • 4
    @Mysticial - I removed the bounty. I didn't close the question myself, because I wanted to give the community a chance to weigh in on it. I like to give people the opportunity to vote on well-asked questions like this one that may or may not fit the format here.
    – Brad Larson
    Oct 16, 2013 at 16:20
  • @BradLarson Ah. Makes sense. Thanks for weighing in. :)
    – Mysticial
    Oct 16, 2013 at 16:22
  • The meta effect kicks in. The question was closed within minutes, and now there seem to be requests to reopen it!
    – devnull
    Oct 16, 2013 at 17:08
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    @oberstet, It was wrong of them to remove the bounty instead of letting it run its course. I cast the first vote to reopen, we'll see if you get lucky.
    – Lance Roberts
    Oct 16, 2013 at 17:44
  • @LanceRoberts: Ok. FWIW and as a note: I still think the bounty description sufficiently narrowed down the original Q - which I also find too broad. But I now won't touch/vote on anything, since I guess it would be bad style to do so. It'll be a learning experience for me to see what happens;)
    – oberstet
    Oct 16, 2013 at 18:27
  • @oberstet, yeh, it probably won't get the reopen votes it needs.
    – Lance Roberts
    Oct 16, 2013 at 18:29
  • 3
    It won't get reopened because it's off-topic <eyeroll>
    – LittleBobbyTables - Au Revoir
    Oct 16, 2013 at 18:52

1 Answer 1

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I flagged the post, requesting the bounty be removed, because it should be closed as a primarily opinion-based and overly broad question. It is, by today's standards, off-topic.

My flag message read, in full:

This is an old 'personal experience' polling question; someone put a bounty on it to draw attention, so now I want to VTC it as primarily opinion-based. But, hey, that bounty.. Can a moderator please remove the bounty so this can be closed?

The flag was marked as helpful and the bounty was refunded, after which I voted to close the post. It'll be in the Close Vote queue now, but you may well have accelerated that process by drawing attention to that question here.

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  • 3
    It's also way too broad.
    – Servy
    Oct 16, 2013 at 16:10
  • Looks like it only had 1 vote until this question, now it is about to be closed
    – psubsee2003
    Oct 16, 2013 at 16:10
  • @psubsee2003 Well a bounty is to draw attention
    – Richard Tingle
    Oct 16, 2013 at 16:12
  • @psubsee2003: And that one vote was mine; I checked while writing the answer, making sure I had not accidentally forgotten to VTC.
    – Martijn Pieters
    Oct 16, 2013 at 16:12
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    @RichardTingle Questions cannot be closed while they have a bounty on them.
    – Servy
    Oct 16, 2013 at 16:12
  • I don't know Python, but is the "example" answer a real answer, or a pseudo answer to show what the OP here was looking for in the bounty answer?
    – psubsee2003
    Oct 16, 2013 at 16:12
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    @Servy I was joking, I doubt the OP put the bounty on with the intention of attracting close votes
    – Richard Tingle
    Oct 16, 2013 at 16:13
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    @psubsee2003: That is indeed not an answer; flagged as such.
    – Martijn Pieters
    Oct 16, 2013 at 16:13
  • @MartijnPieters I figured that.
    – psubsee2003
    Oct 16, 2013 at 16:13
  • I appreciate your quick response and accept: you are moderators. I don't agree however: it is - in my view - not a poll. Also: please see my bounty description which narrowed down the scope and made it more concrete. And it seems to be interesting to quite a lot of Python developers.
    – oberstet
    Oct 16, 2013 at 16:17
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    Don't confuse 'interesting' with 'on-topic'. There are many interesting questions in the world, but only a small subset is suitable to Stack Overflow.
    – Martijn Pieters
    Oct 16, 2013 at 16:18
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    @oberstet Note we are not moderators, some people here just have enough reputation to cast close votes
    – Richard Tingle
    Oct 16, 2013 at 16:19
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    If you had a narrower (on topic) question, you could have posted that as a new question instead.
    – Martijn Pieters
    Oct 16, 2013 at 16:19
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    I removed the bounty in response to Martijn's flag to give the community a chance to vote on whether the question was appropriate or not. As I explained above, I didn't outright close the question myself because it was a well-asked question, and I like to allow members of the community to decide for themselves if a question like this is appropriate. The bounty prevented the chance to even vote, so it didn't give that choice.
    – Brad Larson
    Oct 16, 2013 at 16:26
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    Thanks! That resolves the "mystery";) The only thing that nags me is that my original, quite lengthy description of the boundy is lost. Anyway. I can live with that;)
    – oberstet
    Oct 16, 2013 at 16:29

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