This post is based on [this thread][1].

I am not for nor against of auto-accepting bounties.
Both sides have their advantages and weaknesses.

I see that the main weakness in the bounty system is **its implicit acceptance of an answer with most votes**. 

If the system auto-selects something, it should inform the user that the answer with most upvotes will be accepted by the system in a given time. The system only informs the user at the moment that 

> [your bounty is going to expire in a given period]

I propose to change this to


> [the given answer will get the Bounty on your question in a given period]

which in practice may be

> VonC's answer may get your bounty on "To fix a bug in OS X Screen" in 10 hours

This would remind me, for instance, that the answer of the person, who has great skills in Screen/Git, has some flaws before I can accept it. I may then choose either to add comments to the answer or to edit it to fix minor mistakes which were initially confusing.

My aim **is to decrease the number of similar answers such that people improve more confusing parts and typos in the existing answers with great ideas.** This can be done either by comments or directly. The indication of the username with most upvotes in the notifications would 

- give credits to the right person if the answer is excellent by advertising the username
- encourage me to fix confusing parts in the excellent answer which I did not understand the last night
- encourage me to add an own answer if the user with a bad answer is going to be accepted

---

There are sometimes three other problems which you need to solve before you can understand the answer. 

For instance, I needed to study Screen, OS X's internals and Vim's internals in trying to understand one answer to my question about a bug in OS X's Terminal.app with Screen. It took me 3 days to study the basic functions and terms before I could get an insight to the answer. I finally forgot the whole  question for a month, since the problem opened other problems which I needed to fix first. The following presents how similar problems can be minimized.

I see the message which informs you the expiration of your bounty rather annoying at the moment. I do not pay attention to it if I need to solve other problems related to my bounty first. It would be much more useful if it reminded me about the current top-voted answer. This would help me in prioritizing my time more efficiently.

**Please, make the auto-selection of bounties more explicit.**


  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4508/please-do-not-auto-select-answers-on-bounty-questions