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I quite often find the solution to my problem alone (writing down the question helps, comments also help!), and when it happens, I usually end up writing an answer the same day.

Now, Stack Exchange forces me to wait for 48h after I posted my question before I can accept my own answer.

I get it: the system is designed so that you leave other people time to write their own answers, and not hastily accept your own and ignore others'.

The drawback is, I easily forget to accept my answer after 2 days have passed. I don't want to set a reminder on my phone or whatever for this.

Shouldn't Stack Exchange issue a notification when you have written an answer to your own question, and the 48h have passed?

Alternative suggestion: if there is any answer to your question (yours or someone else's), suggest to accept an answer after 48h.

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I would love this! I was about to request a feature like this. Getting tired of setting up calendar reminders for 2 days ahead to accept my own answer.

I have posted several questions with answers of my own, Q&A style. I would like to remove any ambiguity for the reader as to whether the answer is good enough. Yes, it is good enough, and just like any other good enough answer, deserves an "accepted" checkmark!

Do you consider such an email as "noise"? Then this feature should be turned off by default in the settings. I will be happy to turn it on, and save myself some time later. :)

FAQs

When you are writing a self-answer, it's almost always clear from the content alone that the answer provides an adequate solution and would be a candidate for the accept mark.

It is clear if your read the names of the authors of both the question and the answer. If they match, then you make a connection in the brain - and voila! It is clear. But who does this? Scroll back and forth, match, think! That's why we have the green checkmark!

The OP's own answer to the OP's question was not marked as accepted. Even worse, there are a few other answers, all with zero or -1 score, and nothing is accepted. What is this?

Maybe the OP abandoned this post (most likely), and it has been overgrown with weeds. Or maybe the OP meant to accept their own answer as the best one, but forgot. Or maybe they meant to accept someone else's answer. We may never know - without the checkmark, that is!

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    the box with the author's name has a different color, even in the answers section. That's how I can tell, even without a checkmark.
    – Esther
    Commented Jun 23, 2022 at 21:01
  • And what would be the downside to not have an accepted answer? There are tons of questions, with multiple great answers even, that don't have an accepted answer. The green checkmark to me, personally, carries very little value.
    – Luuklag
    Commented Jun 23, 2022 at 21:03
  • @Luuklag: The green checkmark often matters to me. In my field (bioinformatics) I often see a few answers with not many votes. Give me something, I then cry in despair! At least the green checkmark! Please. :)
    – Timur Shtatland
    Commented Jun 23, 2022 at 21:07
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    Sounds like you need more active participants to evaluate the answers ;). At least you can help those coming after you by voting. The green checkmark also doesn't have to be a correct answer, but I guess you already know that ;)
    – Luuklag
    Commented Jun 23, 2022 at 21:15
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    @Luuklag The indicator that one of the answers is accepted is great when scrolling though the list of questions looking for something to answer. Chances are higher that a post without accepted answer lacks a good solution and might benefit from adding an answer. Of course this is not always true, but given a basically endless supply of questions, this makes searching for something to answer more efficient.
    – samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz
    Commented Jun 24, 2022 at 10:05
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I don't see the benefits of this. Accepting an answer is an easy-to-apply sign that the author of the question is fully satisfied with one of the answers to the question. The alternatives for this (commenting, editing the answer or the question) would be too noisy; upvoting is anonymous and doesn't have this 'sign' function. As an additional benefit, accepting an answer provides reputation for both the author of the question (+2) and the author of the answer (+15).

When you are writing a self-answer, it's almost always clear from the content alone that the answer provides an adequate solution and would be a candidate for the accept mark. Accepting doesn't provide a bonus in this case, and is therefore superfluous. So why would you want to be reminded of this? For me, such notifications would just be noise.

As an alternative, you can check this SEDE query to see if you have any self-answered questions without accepted answer. (I didn't bother to take the 48 hour rule into account - SEDE is only updated once a week anyway.)

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    Accepting an answer, even my own, is very important IMO. When I google through Stackoverflow questions, the first thing that catches my attention is whether an answer has the green check mark; this helps me spend less time on the page trying to find out if the content will be helpful to me or not. A single answer left unaccepted, makes me dubious as to whether the answer did actually solve the problem. The fact that the answer comes from the OP is not immediately visible, and makes me use more brainpower to find out if the problem was actually solved or not.
    – BenMorel
    Commented Sep 17, 2019 at 14:43
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    @Benjamin Unfortunately, that's not really the purpose of the accepted answer. What you are describing is supposed to be fulfilled by the top-voted answer by the community (is this good information selected by the peer group). The accepted answer only describes what that one person (the author) felt helped them specifically. For its intended function, I think it is already overly conspicuous, in my opinion.
    – Robert Cartaino
    Commented Sep 17, 2019 at 14:57

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