<p>One <a href="/questions/tagged/feature-request" class="post-tag required-tag" title="show questions tagged 'feature-request'" rel="tag">feature-request</a> we keep seeing is users want <a href="http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1659/please-show-us-when-we-lose-an-accepted-answer">to be notified when someone <strong>un</strong>-accepts an answer</a>, so a few questions that follow are how often should these notifications be seen, under what conditions, and how should they be presented?</p>

<p>Using <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/users/13249/nick-craver">myself</a> as a high activity user (~6,300 answers), we see the following over the course of a year:</p>

<ul>
<li>4,110 <em>total</em> accepted answers</li>
<li>520 <em>total</em> <strong>unaccepted</strong> answers</li>
<li>201 <strong><em>still</em> unaccepted</strong> answers (answers that weren't later re-accepted)</li>
</ul>

<p>So that means approximately every other day (201/365) I'd get a notification of an unaccepted answer.  Now, compared to a more closer-to-average activity-volume user, <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/users/17174/sam-saffron">we'll use Sam</a> (836 answers):</p>

<ul>
<li>267 <em>total</em> accepted answers</li>
<li>22 <em>total</em> <strong>unaccepted</strong> answers</li>
<li>10 <strong><em>still</em> unaccepted</strong> answers</li>
</ul>

<p>Granted this is over a period about twice a long, so we'll say Sam would get a notice about once every 1-2 months.</p>

<p>Compare these counts to yours and you can get a rough idea of the counts you'd see personally,<br>
<strong>would this volume of notifications be helpful, or noise?</strong></p>

<p>Too much? <strong>What if we reduced the volume?</strong>  For example we <em>could</em> skip notification in some circumstances:</p>

<ul>
<li>Question owner changes the accepted answer to one of their own.</li>
<li>Answer is subsequently re-accepted.</li>
<li>You deleted your accepted answer. </li>
<li><em>other</em> cases?</li>
</ul>

<hr>

<p>Also, how should these notifications be presented in the UI?</p>

<ul>
<li>The reputation report</li>
<li>A message bar (appears at the top of the page, like the site welcome message)</li>
<li>An inbox notification</li>
<li>A new tab on your profile <em>only</em> visible to you?</li>
<li><em>other</em> ideas?</li>
</ul>