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I'm a new user, I've only been around for two days. I just found out that I could accept answers, because I was curious about those green tick things. At first, I did not know what they were. Now I know, but it was not immediately apparent to me.

I think that providing a little more information when questions are asked would go a long way towards solving the problems of questions with unaccepted answers.

I would add a little notice below the "Notify [email] daily of any new answers" message to say that I can come back and click the tick to accept an answer. For example,

The tick lets you choose / accept the answer that was most helpful.

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    Given the upvotes, it seems people agree. But like The Renamed Exception explained, it's actually in the FAQ. Do the upvoters really want things to be more explicit?
    – Arjan
    Commented Feb 18, 2011 at 15:15
  • @Arjan: Hard to say. I have found that upvotes on questions on meta sometimes still do mean "You raise a good point" not necessarily "I agree". Also I think this question had 3 upvotes before I answered. I personally didn't vote at all... I would have upvoted because it was a new user asking a good question but downvoted because I disagreed, so I didn't vote either way.
    – The Unhandled Exception
    Commented Feb 18, 2011 at 15:27
  • I still feel that it could be just a little more obvious, like changing the back ground color of the ticks to hi-light them. They can be a little difficult to see. My initial point is that it was not entirely obvious what they were the for and what they did.
    – nelaaro
    Commented Feb 21, 2011 at 6:35
  • I see there is a little message now that pops up when I up vote on some items. I am satisfied. Thanks for listening.
    – nelaaro
    Commented Feb 25, 2011 at 14:01
  • Thanks for all the effort put into providing solutions and fixing up this little issue. The notices, and bigger tick have made a difference in my life.
    – nelaaro
    Commented Aug 3, 2011 at 12:57

1 Answer 1

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When you hover over the ✔ mark/icon, a tooltip pops up:

tooltip

Click to set this answer as your accepted answer; click again to toggle

If you didn't click the accept button but instead upvoted, you would get a little box that says

don't forget you can mark this as the accepted answer by clicking its check mark

(The system stops showing this reminder after a certain rep threshold.)

Also, you'd see a lot of other questions on the site having big green checkmarks, so I think that's another clue you could accept answers.

It's also mentioned in the Help Center:

What should I do when someone answers my question?

Decide if the answer is helpful, and then...

  • Vote on it (if you have earned the appropriate voting privilege). Vote up answers that are helpful and well-researched, and vote down answers that are not. Other users will also vote on answers to your question.

  • Accept it. As the asker, you have a special privilege: you may accept the answer that you believe is the best solution to your problem.

To accept an answer:

  • Choose one answer that you believe is the best solution to your problem.
  • To mark an answer as accepted, click on the check mark beside the answer to toggle it from greyed out to filled in.
  • You may change which answer is accepted, or simply un-accept the answer, at any time.

Accepting an answer is not mandatory; do not feel compelled to accept the first answer you receive. Wait until you receive an answer that answers your question well.

Because all these things exist, I have always thought that the additional clarification you ask for isn't needed... I've answered meta questions stating this before. I used to be very steadfast in my position... however you as a new user bringing it up makes me rethink my position... I have always seen longer term users complaining that new users didn't know how to accept, and thought they were wrong. Now that I see a new user saying "I didn't know how to accept an answer", I think that maybe I have been wrong.

On the other hand... you did figure it out on your own, without the need for additional help :-)

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