Are you using "Accept an answer to a question (7 days after the question was asked)"?

Dear all (who have a 500+ rep),

Some of you certainly thought about it for a few years already, so I thought that I would ask.

Thank you and best regards,

Cedric

EDITs:

• Just found the following http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/42263-when-to-accept-an-answer-for-someone

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

Many or most posters don't know that you can even Accept an answer, so often you'll see comments like "Thanks - it worked beautifully!" but no indication that it was marked as Accepted. So in that case, the OP stated that it solved his/her problem but didn't know about "Accepting" or forgot to do it, so in that case I see no problem with others "Accepting" for the OP.

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

I don't use it very often. When I do, I have usually wandered across an old posting that I can see has a perfectly valid Answer if the Question was mostly unambiguous.

If it wasn't clear what the Question was asking, then if I Accept an old answer, it has to be one that my intuition tells me addresses what the person wants to know. (I have a couple of decades of answering Usenet questions, and have developed a "Third Eye" about questions.) If I have significant doubts about the meaning of the Question, I do not Accept any of the Answers.

I almost never Accept my own old Answer.

Answer 3

[Cedric]

Thank you all for your input (including Wendy who posted here). I thought about it over night and here are my 2 cents..

A rep. of 500 indicates that we came here a little more regularly than just "occasionally to ask a question and answer a few others". It doesn't indicate that we are really serious or dedicated to the forum (yet) though. 500 seems therefore a bit low to get a privilege that could potentially allow people to favor their own answers over the others'.

I agree with Wendy though, who says that threads with an "Answered" status set by whoever can legitimately recognize valuable answers (whether it is the OP or other members) provide more valuable information than unanswered threads (which may look suspicious), and rise hence the global value of the forum. Now the "legitimacy to recognize valuable answers" and "having a large number of people with the right to accept answers" are quite opposed.

Re-bouncing on James' and Wendy's comments, I would say that these situations where there is no feedback at all could be fought a little more actively, e.g. by enforcing people (even with a daily email after 7 days) to come back and at least click on [ Accept ] or write a comment explaining why replies are not fully answering their question. When there is absolutely no feedback and when I know that I am proficient enough on the matter, I have to admit that I would have no problem accepting an answer (that is not mine, but maybe even mine if I provided the only answer.. I'm still unsure about this last point though) after adding a short comment explaining the situation.

I've seen Walter mentioning "janitor" type of work on the forum, and I think that a 500 rep. should allow people to do this kind of work actually, if they have time and energy for this (and if they are trusted; I'll develop this below). It is obviously tricky to give enough privileges to perform janitor work without giving all privileges, but it is certainly worth working on finding a solution.. in the sense that currently you have to be a high rep. member to spend your time on e.g. formatting questions instead of answering them (..).

Jan posted lately a question about formatting and I commented mentioning "trustees". I think that it is meaningful in the sense that active people in the top 10 rep. know roughly who is answering questions and have an idea about the quality of the answers; in other words, I think that privileges would be better distributed by a mechanism involving rep. points but more importantly a sponsorship/trustee mechanism involving these top 10 rep. active people.

Mixing this idea and the "janitor" type of work mentioned above, I believe that it would be quite interesting if members hitting 500 rep. points, and defined as trustees by top 10 members, would get a limited privilege for editing questions (maybe more interesting than giving a privilege for accepting answers). To illustrate, a logic could be:

• Rep. points provide recognition as they should, but no privilege. These are separate aspects of the "life" on the forum.
• Rep. points + the sponsorship/trustee flag provide privileges. E.g. 500 pts + trustee provide "janitor type of work" privileges. People with these privileges are thought to be able to know when/where they are proficient enough to accept answers, and hence have the privilege to accept answers. They can also edit questions without having the full editor privilege, which could be defined as: adding/deleting spaces, underscore, stars, and CR/LF. This would allow performing most of the formatting tasks, without leaving the possibility to change the content (addressing hence Jan's concern in his post mentioned above). It would be relatively easy to implement the check: after removal of these characters in both the original and the modified text, the strings must match.

Cheers,

Cedric

[Jan]

As soon as editors get the power to unaccept answers, this topic might be less critical. Then even a "wrong" accepted answer looses its effect. TMW does not speculate about future features to avoid any impression of vaporware. But there is no doubt, that this feature is wanted by the answers team also.

[Daniel Shub]

While in general I don't like the idea that a single user can make irreversible changes, I also think 500 rep is sufficient to indicate "trust" as it takes a lot more than "just occasionally to ask a question and answer a few others" to get to 500 rep. I cannot imagine to many 500+ rep users who I would not "trust".

[Jan]

@Daniel: Experiences in this other forums seems to show the opposite. I did not trust all users with a reputation equivalent of about 500 points.

[Daniel Shub]

@Jan where would you draw the trust line? Looking down the rep list it isn't until the 550 range that I start to see names I don't recognize and wouldn't give a "trust" vote to and I am guessing that is because I have been less active lately. Where would you draw the line?

Answer 4

[Jan]

I do not frequently read threads, which are older than 2 weeks. I've done this once after a discussion with another user about the missing acceptance of sufficiently matching answers. I've looked in some hundreds old threads and finally I've felt depressed. I've accepted many dozens of answers, and a lot of them got even comments like "Thanks, problem is solved now".

Another situation when I read "old" threads is, when I check, if one of my answers has be helpful finally, or if I had overlooked a detail. I do not accept my own answers, because this would conflict with the nature of accepting: Of course I think, that my answers are good enough, but this is not a reliable marker of quality.

[James Tursa]

I have similar feelings as you and the others. E.g., I have been tempted to accept my own answers on some posts when there has been absolutely no feedback from the OP, mine was the only answer, I am confident my answer was correct, and a sufficient amount of time has elapsed. But for "ethical" reasons I haven't done it. See these posts for just a couple of examples:

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/66677-memory-leak-with-mex

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/66317-in-a-mex-file-a-for-loop-goes-beyond-the-relational-expression

Absolutely no feedback or follow-up from the OP, so what to do?

I am not in this for the points, but I suppose they DO on some level motivate me (and others I presume) to keep coming back and giving more answers where I can help. (Quite frankly, I would not hold it against any of the regular posters from accepting their own answers from time to time. I mean, given the amount and value of their contributions over the years, why the heck would I mind them getting a few "points" in cyberspace and accepting their own answers occasionally?)

My response is to give all of you 1 vote for this topic!

[Walter Roberson]

My understanding is that no points are given if one accepts one's own answer.

[Randy Souza]

Walter is correct, you do not get reputation points for accepting your own answer.

[Jan]

@James: I agree, that the answers in the two linked threads are such helpful, that they can be accepted. And I've accepted them. Sometimes editor powers need to be applied.