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I've noticed that there are only a few questions that are marked as answered in GIS SE.

Can we announce something on the main website? My guess is NOT. But how to warn users that they can mark questions as answered? I know that the core of the website already tells you that..but it doesn't seem enough?

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5 Answers 5

Reset to default
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I don't think we need to change anything at this time.

I tend to hold out on accepting an answer for awhile to give time for more ideas to come forth. On re-visits the little % accepted indicator under my name reminds me to go have a look and see if I can bump up that "score" a little.

If we see someone with a lot of questions and no accepts we can drop a small comment to encourage them to do so.

Besides, is it really so bad if there isn't an "accepted" answer in the eyes of the questioner? It's pretty clear what answers the community think are most correct, and often they're better than the accepted answer anwyay.

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  • 3
    Agreed - I just keep an eye out for high-rep, low-rate users and give them a little poke in the right direction. No point in worrying about the drive-by questioners, but once somebody has been around for awhile it's in our interest and theirs to encourage a little compliance with the norms.
    – Matt Parker
    Aug 30, 2010 at 18:48
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This site is still young. We don't want to discourage hard questions from being asked.

Maybe later if this is still an issue, we could start shunning. Shunning plays an important role across all traditional societies: the loud mouth sitting around the campfire asking questions - but listening to no answers - would eventually be shunned.

For questions that have an upvoted answer that are older some specified time could be presented with an option to "shun this questioner". Users exceeding the shun vote limit would be blocked from asking new questions until they accept an answer, which would clear all shun votes accumulated for that question.

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We could Also have an Option presented to the Questioner (after x days), on why he or she hasn't marked a Question as Answered. Possible options could be:

  • None of the Answers work
  • Answers works Partially,
  • Answer was found elsewhere
  • so on and so forth
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  • there seems to be an inordinate number of answers that I would probably select (if it were my question) remaining unselected. It is hard to know if this is because of laziness, dis-interest, or the answer is not the perfect one. I have had the third condition on at least one question. Can we convert this to a community wiki (or merge with another and brainstorm ideas (nice ones) on how to encourage answer selection?
    – Brad Nesom
    Dec 7, 2011 at 15:33
  • I find myself as an everday user losing interst in answering questions for users I know will never select ANY answer. It is easy enough to downvote a bad answer... Why can't we have built in incentives (or dis-incentives [repercussions]) for leaving questions hanging on the vine? Perhaps a phased acceptance? ... testing, partial acceptance, etc. maybe badges for acceptance?
    – Brad Nesom
    Dec 7, 2011 at 15:33
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There seems to be an in-ordinate number of answers
that I would probably select (if it were my question) remaining unselected.
It is hard to know if this is because of laziness,
dis-interest, or the answer is not the perfect one (or one you want).
I have had the third condition on at least one question.

Can we convert this to a community wiki (or merge with another
and brainstorm ideas (nice ones) on how to encourage answer selection?
I find myself as an everday user losing interst in answering
questions for users I know will never select ANY answer.

It is easy enough to downvote a bad answer...
Why can't we have built in incentives (or dis-incentives
[repercussions]) for leaving questions hanging on the vine?
Perhaps a phased acceptance? ...
testing, partial acceptance, etc. maybe badges for acceptance?

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  • 1
    Some relevant discussion about these issues is here and here and here.
    – whuber
    Dec 10, 2011 at 18:32
  • I particularly like the first of those discussions whuber pointed to. Choice quotes: "Answer the technical question. No one should care who asked it or why." and "There is no maximum value to the number of points you can get from an excellently answered question. Of that infinity, only 15 points are related to being "accepted", (and please do carry on to reading the source. My selections are not enough).
    – matt wilkie
    Dec 14, 2011 at 6:11
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Perhaps Admins could periodically check through unanswered Qs that are older than X days and either close them or from looking through the answers/responses from author, decide on who has answered it? (could be subjective).

At the moment I have two questions that I think I have answered (user has said, thanks - this has answered my Q) but have not got the credit for answering the Q.
Both Qs are the same user = Can we alert this user with some automated reply? How do the other StackExchange sites do it? here & here

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  • it would be inappropriate to close the questions. Closing is reserved for questions which can't be answered satisfactorily or deemed otherwise inappropriate. Nobody but the asker can mark an answer 'accepted', mod's can't force it. You are getting credits for most correct answers from the community, who are seeing the correct answers and up voting them. This particular user appears to be having difficulty with the web user interface. I'm not sure how or why. English is probably not his/her first language:"Sorry,But I click the green button next to your name.Should I do other work?"
    – matt wilkie
    Aug 30, 2010 at 19:01
  • think the admins have enough to do....
    – Mapperz Mod
    Dec 9, 2011 at 16:46

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