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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.

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  • You phrased well enough. Same thing happened to me this week. – Linus Kleen Jan 27 '11 at 10:58
  • The leftover bounty is given to some dude named Community♦. If you find that dude, downvote his post. Do it! Do it for me. But seriously, why throw hard earned reputation down a black hole (The Community♦ dude is never gonna have more than 1 rep, no matter how much bounty you feed him). After a bounty expires, divide it (equally?) between the most upvoted new posts. Currently only half the bounty is awarded to the most upvoted post and the rest is handed over to Community♦(or flushed away, it means the same) – abel Jan 27 '11 at 14:09
  • To the down voter, would you mind telling me why? – Manatherin Jan 27 '11 at 16:47
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    @abel: Don't be too harsh on Community♦, it just bumped this post to get it some more attention. It needs answers too. – yhw42 Feb 26 '11 at 13:00
  • +1 The same thing happened to me. The person answered my question within the bounty time. However, I was not notified of the answer until after the bounty ended. The answers also had no up votes. I would have like to have given him the bounty, but didn't see the answer until I signed in later. – Scott Feb 26 '11 at 16:23
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There can only be one bounty running on a question at any time. A leftover bounty would block anybody else from renewing it, possibly putting more reputation on the plate.

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  • You could have something like only the bounty remainder put up by the question asker is given to the accepted answer (which can only be chosen by the question creator anyway I believe) and even then it wouldn't stop the asker renewing a bounty it would simply mean if the question gets a accepted answer during the 2nd bounty the answer would be awarded the 2nd bounty and the remainder of the 1st, or if both expires and then a accepted answer appears it would get the remainder of both previous bounties. – Manatherin Jan 27 '11 at 11:09
  • I suppose another option is to keep track of any bounty remainders and add it onto any future bounties – Manatherin Jan 27 '11 at 11:10

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