Removing bounty from answers that are not worthy? [duplicate]

Question

I have created a bounty on a question. None of the answers I believe are adequate because they do not address my questions. My problem has been asked many times before so I was kind enough to link ALL of the previous none answer questions in my question and make a big bounty for someone to answer it.. but this is what happened:

FYI the question is here: A faster route to deploying static content in Magento 2? Dev to Live etc?

1. One of the answers is someone actually even clearly saying that they are making a general comment
2. Another answer was someone saying they are not an expert in the field but this might work.

Clearly both are absurd answers. The other answer was someone who made an attempt but it was a hack and even suggested so. All are poor answers - well not even considered as answers in my view!

I have flagged to have the question moved the more associated Meta (to gain more response) a few times but no response.

Since it has had views and interest - it is not fair to reward the answer or auto reward the bounty to someone as the answers are poor. I am happy to give the bounty to someone worthy as I want a good answer. Those people who have posted have clearly shown no respect and it is not fair to all the people who have bookmarked my question, voted my question higher as it is a need within the Magento commnuity for them to answer:

1. Why do you need to turn a live production website off to deploy new code? Possibly loose sales
2. Why do you need deploy all static cache files to make one change to CSS which takes 35-45mins

Answer 1

If none of the answers address your question it might be caused by the question itself. Either because it is not clear what you're looking for or by not limiting the acceptable scope for answers.

By putting a bounty on a question you are able to raise the attention for your question. It puts your question in the spotlight. That spotlight can result in an, from your point of view, adverse effect: You get answers that you didn't imagine to be acceptable as valid.

These answers happen all the time: You ask a question and you get a completely different answer. Don't forget that sometimes an question requires an outside-of-the-box solution.

That your bounty didn't result in that one and only neat trick that you need to foo the bar is not something the users that answered could foresee. The community voted on your question AND the answers in a positive way. So although you'll not accept any of the answers given, from the community point of view the bounty did its job: A question got a positive scored answer, and awards some of that bounty to the highest scoring answer. I don't see how that is unfair, you still have your own votes and in this case your accept vote to signal which question is best.

Let's suppose that the real answer to your question is what you want is not possible. In the end that answer will get your accept-vote, the other answers can then be seen as hacks/work-arounds. But as you are so passionate about it I hope it the future someone will post the foo the bar answer.

Answer 2

Bounties are not auto-awarded to questions with low scores. When you add a bounty to a question, you gain attention for the question. This might bring you new answers, upvotes for the question, or upvotes for deserving answers. In addition, you may award the bounty to an answer, or the system may auto award half the bounty to an answer.

This is the risk you take: if the questions have gained new answers with scores of 2 or more, then those answers are deemed worthy by the community and may be autoawarded the bounty. You have some small control over this with your own downvote, but if they have a score of +2 or more then at least 3 other people think they have value. They might then earn the bounty.

Answer 3

As already stated, Bounties do not guarantee correct or high-quality answers. Bounties simply highlight your question and therefore can lead to more exposure and better answers.

Can I retract/refund my bounty?

The first place to look for should be the bounty help page for you.

It very clearly mentions that:

All bounties are paid for up front and non-refundable under any circumstances.

That should make it clear that you cannot take back the bounty because it was paid right when you started the bounty and will not be refundable no matter what are the circumstances.

What if my bounty does not result in good answers?

The help page also makes it clear that Bounty does not guarantee good answers, it only provides you a place in featured tab:

Part of what you’re “paying for” with the bounty is to get additional attention for your question, over and beyond what a normal question gets. A bounty does not guarantee a response, however, and reputation refunds are not available if no answers are received as a result of the bounty.

Okay, what if I don't award it at all?

Since it appears that you did not manually award the bounty, the help page answers for that scenario as well:

If you do not award your bounty within 7 days (plus the grace period), the highest voted answer created after the bounty started with a minimum score of 2 will be awarded half the bounty amount. If two or more eligible answers have the same score (their scores are tied), the oldest answer is chosen. If there's no answer meeting those criteria, no bounty is awarded to anyone.

If you do not award it yourself, it falls on the community to judge the answers for the bounty. The answer which was awarded the bounty has a score of three and therefore fulfills the criteria for the automatic award.

So the simple answer is, you cannot remove the awarded bounty from answers which you deem unworthy. Community has judged the said answer and found it helpful. You simply do not get a say in it if you do not award it yourself or accept an answer yourself (In which case the answer you accepted would have been awarded the bounty).

Is it unfair?

You paid for 7 days of a slot in featured tab, you got the slot and exposure. The answerers answered to win the bounty and community found two of them helpful so the one which received more votes got the bounty since you did not care to award it yourself within the grace period. What's unfair there? Only thing unfair would be if people got the option to retract the bounty because that would then serve as a loophole. Start a bounty, get exposure, get more response and then retract the bounty. Can you understand how it is unfair and messy?

Sense of entitlement

Also, it is evident from some of the comments there that you were acting in a very unnecessary, aggressive and entitled manner there. Always keep in mind that everyone is a volunteer here, no one is getting paid to help you. Offering a bounty does not mean community owes it to you to provide good, correct or even bad answers. If they are bad answers, that's what the downvotes are for but apparently community disagrees with you and thinks they are good/helpful answers. There is a sense of entitlement here which is wrong and misplaced.