Should I edit out an offer of financial reward?

Question

https://serverfault.com/questions/124057/how-to-remove-extensions-from-and-force-the-trailing-slash-at-the-end-of-urls

I would very much appreciate any help. And to first person that gives me the solution, I'll send two $50 iTunes Store gift cards for US store. If this offends anyone, I am truly sorry and I apologize.

This guy offered $100 of iTunes US gift vouchers to whoever can answer his question. I feel that this kind of goes against the grain of the good nature of SOFU. Now I certainly wasn't offended about his offer, but I felt my 'edit' finger begin itching, begging to remove the statement, knowing full well that he would get an answer with or without the incentive.

I left it in, because it's really none of my business (I don't live in the US so the additional bounty is useless to me anyway), but let's pretend that I DID remove it. Would you be outraged, or feel that this was acceptable?

Answer 1

I think it should be edited out.

There's always the possibility that the offer isn't even genuine. But assuming it's legit, it's essentially hiring someone to solve a problem. The place for hiring someone isn't within a question, it's elsewhere.

That being said, I don't have a problem if the question asker wants to offer something extra for an excellent answer, but it should be done outside the construct of the site, as a reward for a good answer, not a motivation to give a good answer. We already have bounties for that (although in this case the user is new/low-rep, this situation could potentially apply to anyone).

Answer 2

It's spam! Die die die!

Well, not so much. But I'd be worried about the legal aspects of bartering for services on SOFU, so I'd remove it.

Edit (Chacha): I believe this picture explains what should happen to it quite nicely:

Answer 3

I think that you should edit it out. There is a bounty system in place, extending it into real things is a decision for the site owners.

Leaving in external bounties would encourage people to offer further inducements to answer questions - which if they were not then actually produced then the site offering them would be blamed as much as the person offering the bogus bounty.

Also would people eventually start offering those 'free' computers and other spam like hooks?

Answer 4

I must disagree here. Let me go through what appear to be the objections and rebut them:

• It's "illegal" (against rules/TOS).
• SO is not a place to hire someone
• Such behavior provides incentives for behavior detrimental to SO
• It's against the "spirit of SO"

With the possible caveat of "assuming this does not pose legal issues for SO parent company", this is:

• Not against any of the stated rules.

  I will delete this post and STFU if someone will point me to proof that this is against the written rules.

• SO is not a place to hire someone

  SO is a place to have people answer questions other people ask. The answerers are already compensated - the rep has some utility value, even though it's not directly monetized. (personally, a large incentive for me to asnwer questions is the fact that getting rep for them might provide me with bonus points on future job searches).

  The only difference between offering a rep bonus and a monetary bonus is the fact that the former is enforced by the system, but the latter is not. (this is really the ONLY way in which "not a place to hire" is true - AFAIK such offers would not constitute a legally binding contract and can't be legally enforced).

• Such behavior provides incentives for behavior detrimental to SO

  How so?

  Would prohibiting such an offer prevent someone from posting their question on SO? No.

  Would prohibiting such an offer cause someone to change their asking or answering behavior on other questions? No.

  The only difference in behavior that such an offer would elicit would be a potential effort by someone to try and answer the question which is so difficult that nobody would otherwise bother wasting their time on it - with the only net effect being a complicated question getting an answer, thus adding to useful content of SO

• It's against the "spirit of SO"

  This one is kind of subjective, but I feel it's objectively supported by bullet points above.

Answer 5

My advice would be to let it be.

The 2 questions that I've posted so far on SO were so difficult that on one, we spent a week on the phone with Microsoft. The other one appears to be related to the group policy enforced lock down of the internal clients when combined with https.

For either of those questions, offering $100 might have got an answer faster, and sure would have been cheaper than the efforts needed to get an answer.