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A simple question: What's the best way to encourage askers to mark accepted answers to their question?

Of course, some truly have not been resolved. For some, the original question was resolved but new questions are unanswered. And some the answer might be there, but there was no follow-up.

But it seems relatively few are marked. Or does it not matter?

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  • Yea it matters incredibly. This software has little support, which is the main problem, and many of the answers are not solutions, or incorrect, incomplete, or guesswork. If I get a working solution from a question I mark it up immediately.
    – P a u l
    Apr 22, 2016 at 5:45

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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As soon as an answer gets one upvote, SE considers the question to be "answered". Put another way, the Unanswered Questions lists only those with no accepted or upvoted answers.

While it's annoying when the person who asked a question doesn't bother to accept the right answer, some upvotes on your answer basically amounts to the same thing. In terms of rep, an acceptance is worth 15 points and an up-vote is worth 10, so 2 up-votes is better for your rep score than an acceptance.

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  • Ok, so effectively it doesn't matter.
    – Ben
    May 18, 2015 at 23:14
  • Yea, moral of the story, vote!
    – Coleman
    May 19, 2015 at 13:32
  • Well, it would help when reviewing questions to know that the questioner at least is now satisfied. Plus it gives an answerer a nice feeling of fulfillment, not to mention a few reputation points. But I don't know of a good way to encourage it gently. Once we get out of beta we could put a custom block on the site in the right column to encourage this 'thanks'.
    – Joe Murray Mod
    May 25, 2015 at 18:37

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