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I hate the new popup "you can accept an answer in 10 minutes". Can you please remove it and let me accept an answer immediately?

I can unaccept it later if a better one appears.

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  • 4
    There's a real pattern going on regarding impatience and feature requests on Meta.
    – Super Long Names are Hilarious
    Apr 22, 2010 at 9:46
  • Why do you want to accept an answer in short span?
    – Gopi
    Apr 22, 2010 at 10:22
  • 1
    -11 versus +44 -- I think the current Discourage questions being marked as answered within an hour or so of being posted wins...
    – Arjan
    Apr 22, 2010 at 12:48
  • @Length: haven't you heard? we're in the "me me me, now now now" generation.
    – Ether
    Apr 22, 2010 at 14:51
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    @Length - sometimes you just know an answer is right. stackoverflow.com/questions/2689607/… If I can't accept it now, I might forget about it altogether and never accept this answer.
    – ripper234
    Apr 22, 2010 at 15:08
  • 3
    @ripper234 - If your memory can't last 10 minutes, I think you have bigger problems.
    – Super Long Names are Hilarious
    Apr 22, 2010 at 17:31
  • @ripper234 - Next time you ask a question and some guy tells you to work on your accept rate, you can go back and accept your answers :p
    – Aren B
    Sep 24, 2010 at 23:42
  • Your accept rate is updated only once per day, so what difference will a few minutes make?
    – Yi Jiang
    Jan 17, 2011 at 7:30
  • @Yi Jiang I did not know that ;)
    – IAdapter
    Jan 17, 2011 at 7:37
  • 3
    "I promise to accept only one answer per question." You can only accept one answer per question anyway.
    – George Claghorn
    Jan 17, 2011 at 13:51
  • 1
    this question is actually rather good, why downvote it?
    – Lucas
    Aug 25, 2012 at 23:34
  • Some consider patience still a virtue.
    – Xan-Kun Clark-Davis
    Feb 23, 2018 at 16:29

5 Answers 5

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It is our strong belief that if you accept an answer in less than 15 minutes after asking the question, you have not given the community an adequate chance to fully answer your question before rushing to accept.

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    Well, it took me 8 months to accept this one :)
    – ripper234
    Jan 30, 2011 at 15:38
  • That one really got me philosophical there for a moment :-)
    – Xan-Kun Clark-Davis
    Feb 23, 2018 at 16:28
  • 10 or 15 minutes is too short a time anyway. I have seen answers accepted that were technically correct, but less efficient than another answer, apparently accepted simply because the OP was grateful for the first quicker answer.
    – Mark
    Oct 12, 2021 at 19:53
13

You can barely test most answers in 10 minutes. Why not wait it out? It's not that hard. If you accept an answer, the interest in that question will most likely drop sharply, so you might lose answers that could have been better.

There's a reason why the 10 minute rule is there. Just be patient and accept the answer after the time expires if it really solved your problem.

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9

Your +15 score for better answer is not really appealing enough for someone to write a good answer that will beat an already accepted one.

What matters is upvotes from other people. And the people enter the question with an accepted answer less frequently than without one.

This partly is due to the motivation why people up/down-vote. It is one of the means of expressing their opinion what answers deserve/don't deserve to be accepted. But if you already marked an answer, then there's no reason to express an opinion: you've already decided what's correct.

So by early acceptance you just get worse answers and your question gets abandoned quickly. Or turns into a flamewar, if you accepted garbage, having no time to check if it's correct.

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5

I can't even begin to estimate the number of questions that I could have answered (at least potentially) better than the answers already there, but didn't bother because the OP had already accepted one of them. This happens almost every day when I get up, since I'm in the UTC-8 timezone and am only starting my day when the peak of SO activity is already waning.

Almost all the questions in the tags I monitor are asked while I'm asleep, so I salute any and all encouragement to slow down on accepting answers.

I suppose it all comes down to who the site is trying to primarily serve -- those asking the questions, or those coming along later with similar questions*. If the former, then people should be able to accept answers ASAP. Otherwise, the site is best served by encouraging more answers and more details in them.

* (I'm not even going to assume it's people like me, people who answer far more questions than they ask).

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    "If the former, then people should be able to accept answers ASAP." -- just out of curiosity, how does it help them?
    – P Shved
    Apr 22, 2010 at 16:56
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Just because you think the answer is right doesn't mean it is. Here is an example from an hour ago where the accepted answer was wrong on both counts. If the OP had given more time for other answers to appear, it might not have been the accepted answer. Unfortunately the OP might already be off writing code that makes assumptions based on the wrong answer, and may not come back today, tomorrow, or ever to realize they've been led astray.

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1
  • Indeed. And also, even if a wrong answer somehow helps the question asker, these Q&A sites are about being good resources for future visitors who have the same question as well. For them, a wrong or less-than-perfect accepted answer is not good.
    – Arjan
    Jul 13, 2013 at 12:42

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