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I see that some people sometimes take advantage of putting a bounty on a question.

Sometimes they get multiple answers of point-hungry StackOverflow users just answering to try to get the bounty points. The bounty could be set for a question that is too broad or just opinionated, making the person who started the bounty act like an a-hole by saying things like: "This does not answer my question because of something". This effect gets amplified when the bounty is higher. I know you can flag the question but the person who starts the bounty could be different from the person who asked the original question.

So how do I flag a bounty in case it has unrealistic expectations? I'm thinking there's no such feature. If that's the case, will that feature ever be available?

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  • 1
    possible duplicate of How to handle off-topic questions with bounty?
    – Shadow The GPT Wizard
    Mar 18, 2014 at 18:47
  • @ShadowWizard: This isn't just about wanting to close a question with a bounty on it, but if it was, aren't there better dupe targets?
    – Martijn Pieters
    Mar 18, 2014 at 18:52
  • @MartijnPieters there were quite a few, but all with the same conclusion: flag and explain what's wrong.
    – Shadow The GPT Wizard
    Mar 18, 2014 at 19:38
  • The dupe you linked to only discusses how moderators can handle flags on bountied questions, and is as such not very helpful here.
    – Martijn Pieters
    Mar 18, 2014 at 19:39
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    OK, guess we can live with this one standing on its own. :)
    – Shadow The GPT Wizard
    Mar 18, 2014 at 19:39

1 Answer 1

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You'd flag the question; use other and explain why you think a moderator should look into the bounty. I recently flagged a bountied question with:

This is clearly off-topic, but I cannot VtC; can the bounty be removed and the question closed please?

and a moderator refunded the bounty and closed the question.

It doesn't matter if the bounty was started by someone else, it is still the question the bounty is attached to. It doesn't matter if this is about the question itself or the behaviour of the person who set the bounty.

Do note that it's still the bounty-setters prerogative to set the conditions for the bounty. If they wanted to waste their reputation by setting unrealistic conditions, then that's mostly their problem. You don't have to dance to the tune played by the fiddler.

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  • Yeah but sometimes the person who starts the bounty acts like an a-hole so I just want to bring up the behavior of that person to the moderators.
    – Rico
    Mar 18, 2014 at 18:09
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    @Rico: you still flag that post. Explain to the moderators why they need to look into the behaviour.
    – Martijn Pieters
    Mar 18, 2014 at 18:09
  • @Martjn_Pieters Hmm, I guest there's just no feature for flagging a bounty specifically.
    – Rico
    Mar 18, 2014 at 18:12
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    @Rico: no, there isn't. But there is this option to flag the question with an 'other' option.. You are merely alerting the moderators, the fact that the flag is attached to a question does not tarnish the question itself or affect the OP of the question.
    – Martijn Pieters
    Mar 18, 2014 at 18:13
  • @Martijn_Pieters cool, thanks.
    – Rico
    Mar 18, 2014 at 18:14

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