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Possible Duplicates:
Force Accepted Answers on Questions by Inactive Users
Encourage users to select ‘Accepted Answer’ for old Questions

Many users ask questions, and community members, out of the goodness of their heart (and a desire to help others) answer them.

Here is the problem: many users forget to select a best answer to their question, thereby depriving the answerers of well-deserved rep.

I'm the type of person that likes to present a solution when I mention a problem. So here goes:

Increase the rep for selecting a best answer to 3 or 4
This is a no-brainer. The more you get for doing something, the more likely you are to do it.

Automatically select a best answer when the following criterion are met:

  • The question is older than 7 days
  • There are 2 or more answers to the question

The answer with the most upvotes is then selected.

Any thoughts or suggestions on this?

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2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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Disagree for automatic selection of answer

There is Don't forget to accept reminder already, it should be fine.

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  • Why do you disagree? Some people don't even visit the site on a regular basis.
    – uɐɯsO uɐɥʇɐN
    Mar 19, 2010 at 1:11
  • 2
    True, but for some questions there is more than one best answer, some most voted answer not always the best for OP, and forcing to accept by bot is not good idea. So, let's OP choose their choice.
    – YOU
    Mar 19, 2010 at 1:14
  • Okay. Now we're getting somewhere. How can we encourage OPs to choose the best answer? Do they need an incentive?
    – uɐɯsO uɐɥʇɐN
    Mar 19, 2010 at 1:19
  • @George, Yeah, we could encourage them by explaining in comments and also they would see that "don't forget to accept" reminder.
    – YOU
    Mar 19, 2010 at 1:37
  • No, I have the solution now! Let's get moderators to pick the best answer.
    – uɐɯsO uɐɥʇɐN
    Mar 19, 2010 at 1:40
  • @George - see above comment. The highest voted answer is not always the one that works best for the OP; in fact, sometimes there may not even be an answer that works for the OP
    – a_m0d
    Mar 19, 2010 at 1:49
  • @George - If I am not wrong, moderators couldn't mark as the answer for OP, may be its by-design. marking by unrelated persons could be biased and argumentative among other members too, so marking by moderators is not so good idea too.
    – YOU
    Mar 19, 2010 at 2:08
  • Then is this the unsolvable problem?
    – uɐɯsO uɐɥʇɐN
    Mar 19, 2010 at 2:10
  • Scratch that. I still think we could increase the rep earned for picking a best answer.
    – uɐɯsO uɐɥʇɐN
    Mar 19, 2010 at 2:11
  • @George, you know, if you unmark the answer and select to another after period of time, you could get another rep, if 3 or 4 points, some people could try to game the system to get reps, thats not a good thing. Well, In My Honest Opinion, its not a problem, but its just a personal matter, cheers.
    – YOU
    Mar 19, 2010 at 2:38
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While I agree that the more accepted answers the better, I do not agree with your proposed solution.

I would not be happy for the system to pick the best answer based on votes as this is not a good indicator of if that answer solved/answered the question.

I have asked questions and intentionally not marked any as answered because none solved my problem.

I don't have a better solution to offer, but this is not the right one IMHO.

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