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Previously, accepting an answer to bounty question award the bounty amount to answerer.

But now, accepted answers are in different box, so just accepting it won't award bounty.

Some people already had this problem, OP just accept it but didn't choose bounty amount.

See fpr's comment on blog

I have just answered a question with a bounty, OP did accept it but didn’t awarded this bounty, propably because he didn’t know that he should do it separately.

And another possible candidate here

OBSOLETE - Build an app with Soapi.JS and gain praise and adulation. And some rep

OP just accepted the answer, and looks like away from the site after that. If he didn't back to site before it expires, only half bounty will get awarded.

So, I think, Adding a popup alert box to choose bounty award when accepting the answer on bounty question for OP would be nice, or something alternative would be great.

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  • 12
    Maybe if the bounty times out and there is an accepted answer, that answer should get the full bounty..
    – Blorgbeard
    Commented Jun 21, 2010 at 15:09
  • @Blorgbeard I'm a bit ambivalent about auto-award targetting the accepted answer, because we need to consider when the bounty is assigned by someone else (acceptance is technically irrelevant) or when a bounty is placed on a question that already has an answer accepted (the answer shouldn't be eligible).
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Jul 6, 2010 at 13:30
  • 3
    Placing a bounty on this because it happens all the time that users don't grasp the separation of acceptance and bounty. Something needs to be done
    – Pekka
    Commented May 5, 2011 at 15:10
  • 2
    @Pekka, I was suprised that this still havn't implemented yet.
    – YOU
    Commented May 5, 2011 at 15:13
  • @YOU +1, It happened recently to me here. OP was really thankful but he forgot to assign the bounty for some reason.
    – systempuntoout
    Commented May 5, 2011 at 20:10
  • Indeed, it happened to me too.
    – nathanvda
    Commented May 10, 2011 at 9:56
  • @Blorgbeard can you add your suggestion as an answer so I can award the bounty to it?
    – Pekka
    Commented May 10, 2011 at 10:29
  • @Pekka done. I would say just award it to your answer, but you can't do that, right?
    – Blorgbeard
    Commented May 10, 2011 at 12:48
  • marking this effectively completed because of accepted answer, which obviates need for this
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Jun 21, 2011 at 9:23
  • I spent a lot of time answering a question with a bounty because I thought I would get the points. My answer is accepted on time and has multiple upvotes, yet I don't get the bounty. Bye Stackoverflow. It was fun while it lasted.
    – Charlie Martin
    Commented Jun 1, 2017 at 22:15

5 Answers 5

Reset to default
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Blorgbeard's suggestion is implemented now, and Grace's caveats (see comments to the question) are taken into account:

Citing Jeff:

If ...

  • the bounty was started by the question owner
  • the question owner accepts an answer during the bounty period
  • the bounty award period expires without an explicit award

... then we assume the question owner liked your answer when they accepted it, and it gets the full amount of the bounty at time of bounty expiration.

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  • Incidentally, it would be nice to have a "status-now-obsolete" tag; "status-completed" would be misleading here, but still the best fit.
    – Hendrik Vogt
    Commented May 16, 2011 at 15:13
  • Aye, this method does in fact solve both of the problems I had, and really those were the big ones I was concerned about. This should go lengths to amend the scenarios where people forget that they have to apply the bounty directly, without being too meddlesome.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented May 16, 2011 at 15:19
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Yeah. I nearly overlooked that today.

I like Blogbeard's suggestion very much: Auto-award the bounty to the accepted answer if there is one.

Wording suggestion for the pop-up:

Remember that the bounty is awarded separately

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Blorgbeard's suggestion is excellent. If the OP accepts an answer, then it makes sense that, in the absence of any other activity, the full bounty should be awarded to that answer. I would be against imposing any awards before the expiration time, though: perhaps the OP wants to maintain the bounty until the last minute, waiting for a better, more complete response.

Grace had two important points against this:

  • answers could have been accepted previously to the bounty
  • the bounty could have been placed by somebody else

The first case do not really apply here, since there is no acceptance action during the bounty. Thus, the default 50% award should be maintained in this particular case. That is, of course, unless the OP changed which answer is accepted during this time frame.

On the second case, the bounty placer can receive a notification stating that the bounty question has an accepted answer, and inviting the user to evaluate awarding the bounty, e.g., in this question, if YOU accepted an answer, then Pekka would be notified. Pekka may then award the bounty to the accepted answer, another answer, or not award it at all. If not, then the default procedure remains.

Yoda states that "Automatic bounty awards are always a bad idea". I do not agree with that sentence, mostly because it is very unfair for users that spend time researching an answer to not receive any reward if the OP does not show up in a week or just forgets about the bounty. Furthermore, I do not see how this new scheme would be any different in that respect: if not manually awarded, bounties now are awarded in an automatic way at the end of their period. Changing the awarding rules does not make the procedure more or less automatic. After reading all the comments, Yoda's meaning seems to be "automatic award to the accepted answer is a bad idea" instead. I believe his example is the only situation in which the 50% award rule is the intended outcome, and I see it as a very unlikely (or, at least, rare) situation, without sufficient merits to support this ruling system. I do not have a definite position really about the voting for the bounty. It could be fair, but it's quite a complicated scheme.

Last caveat: The logic path seems a little more convoluted this way, but it's nothing that a couple of if/then blocks in the script could not solve.

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5
  • re "it is very unfair for users that spend time researching an answer to not receive any reward": Noone's suggesting that nothing is awarded. What yoda meant is that he doesn't like the idea of tying answer accepts to bounty awards, and on that I agree with him. He doesn't object the automatic award of half of the bounty amount.
    – Hendrik Vogt
    Commented May 7, 2011 at 10:00
  • @Hendrik I do not have a definite position really about the voting for the bounty (this I did not comment about that). It could be fair, but it's quite a complicated scheme. Even after the edit, I don't clearly see how one set of automatic rules is good while another is bad. I believe his example is the only situation in which the 50% award rule is the intended outcome, and I see it as a very unlikely (or, at least, rare) situation. Lastly, tying acceptance to award would be only in the absence of a manual award.
    – Aleadam
    Commented May 10, 2011 at 18:49
  • I mostly agree with what you say. The main point in my first comment was to point out that your formulation "it is very unfair for users that spend time researching an answer to not receive any reward" doesn't reflect yoda's intentions.
    – Hendrik Vogt
    Commented May 10, 2011 at 18:55
  • @Hendrik you're right about that. Reading through all the comments in his answer I can see that the point is other. I will try to reflect that in an edited answer later today.
    – Aleadam
    Commented May 10, 2011 at 18:58
  • Thanks! (One purpose of that comment discussion I started on his answer was finding out if I should post my first comment to your answer ... :-))
    – Hendrik Vogt
    Commented May 10, 2011 at 19:00
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Perhaps, in the situation where an OP accepts an answer but does not choose a bounty amount, when the OP next logs in, they would see a message that lets them know that they have an outstanding bounty with accepted answer. Sometimes a gentle reminder may do the trick.

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  • How about OP accept the answer a day or less than a day before bounty expires and he can't back to online ontime on next day like this?
    – YOU
    Commented May 5, 2011 at 16:41
  • I think this is now implemented. Isn't it?
    – systempuntoout
    Commented May 5, 2011 at 20:11
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+500

I suggest that if the bounty times out and there is an accepted answer, that answer should get the full bounty.

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  • 4
    ...but only if the bounty was set up by the OP!
    – Tobias Kienzler
    Commented May 12, 2011 at 12:51

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