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On the entire SE network there is a huge number of questions that are unaswered and where the author doesn't use the system anymore, usually is a user that has a score of < 100 and that will not act on any comment added to the question.

I would like to propose a feature for requesting a question takeover, so you can become the author so you can accept one of the existing answers.

Clearly this should not be available on all questions, but it would extremely useful because it would allow people to repair broken stuff.

This will prevent creating almost-identical new questions or other similar problems caused by the lack of interest from the original question author.

What do you think about this?

Look at 4th question, which happens to have a real valid answer but which is still listed like one question that does not have an accepted answer, definitely a sign that probably the answer is not good.

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I don't think this is necessary. If the question doesn't have enough information from the original author to answer it, it should be closed. If it does have enough information, it can simply be answered. There is no reason that every question on a Stack Exchange site must have an accepted answer by the original poster. An upvoted answer is enough to take the question off the "unanswered" list.

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  • Here is an example that we can use as a use-case. Can we find a solution for this kind of problem? superuser.com/questions/532784/… -- Having votes clearly does not indicate it as answered. You can look at this screenshot.
    – sorin
    Commented May 11, 2014 at 17:50
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    @sorin What exactly is the problem there?
    – Bill the Lizard
    Commented May 11, 2014 at 17:52
  • I updated the question, the problem is: questions that do appear as not being answered and which do really have answers. While browsing them it's confusing because, one would assume that the answers were not good, when in fact the only reason is that the original user lost interest. I would call it the "temporary account syndrome".
    – sorin
    Commented May 11, 2014 at 17:55
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    @sorin The problem is really in assuming that the answer might not be good just because it's not accepted. An accepted answer can be wrong, and an answer that's not accepted can be perfectly good. The extra bit of information from an answer being accepted really isn't necessary, just nice to have. I don't think we'd gain much by taking over old questions just so someone can accept answers.
    – Bill the Lizard
    Commented May 11, 2014 at 17:59
  • I would not say this, I would say: if the author does not react (ever, or a long period of time) to anything that happens to a specific question, we can assume that he will never react. This can happen for a huge number of reasons: death, lack of interest, temporary accounts, ... What I would consider in cases like this is that SE could try to notify the author asking for an update, and if it does not respond, the question could be considered abandoned (so somebody else could take it over).
    – sorin
    Commented May 11, 2014 at 18:02
  • You're still failing to explain why this is needed.
    – Lightness Races in Orbit
    Commented May 21, 2014 at 9:11

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