Can I assign bounty rep one day after the 7 days period

Question

This is the first time I am using bounties, so I am a noob in this department.

The problem is this: I didn't have time to check my SO question today and now I don't see any buttons for assigning a bounty anymore. Since it was not my question originally, I can't even accept an answer. Does this mean no one gets the rep?

The answers which I appreciate arrived yesterday, shortly before the 7 days period expired.

Does this mean I really need to have my bounty page open in my browser for the last several minutes of this period, and then quickly select the last answer, or is there a way to have some time to actually examine these answers?

Answer 1

EDIT: Bounties now have a 24-hour grace period for being awarded, so things like this shouldn't happen anymore.

Yes, you lost out. (Well, the answerer did, at any rate.) Sometimes you can get a few extra minutes or hours (EDIT: the bounty expiration check is an hourly task) to award the bounty after the seven-day period expires, but that time period is random depending on when the script runs.

Looking at that question, there are no answers with score of two or greater. So you are right, no bounty points will be awarded to anyone. If someone had posted an answer after you offered the bounty and earned a score of at least two on that answer, the system would have auto-awarded half the bounty to that person.

A proposal for fixing this exact sort of situation was made at this question (and several dupes).