My question is this, when a bounty is added to a question and expires (giving half the bounty to the highest up voted question) why is the rest of the bounty lost?
I recently had a post which I put a bounty on and did not get a satisfactory answer to whilst the bounty was in place.
After the bounty expired I received a answer which I found fixed my issue. Personally I would have liked to have given the rest of the bounty to the user who helped me after the bounty was gone (I did mark the users response as the accepted answer). I was wondering why stack exchange sites don't allow this e.g. after the bounty expires why not make it so the question is no longer displayed as a question with a bounty but when a answer is marked as the accepted answer the remaining bounty amount is awarded to the creator of the accepted answer.
Hope this makes sense to people, not sure I've phrased the question very well.