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This might be an easy question but I simply dont know the answer.

The bounty is described in this link: https://math.stackexchange.com/help/bounty

Probably to many not surprisingly, it says "You do not need to be the asker of the question to offer a bounty on it.".

But from my understanding, it does not say who will actually distribute the bounty in such case?

The description says "Simply click the bounty award icon to award your bounty to the answerer". Who is you (probably the one who paid it I guess and not who owns the question)?

Then it says "If the bounty was started by the question owner (afk) we assume the bounty owner liked the answer they accepted and award it."

So what if it was not started by the question owner? Does it mean if the question owner accepts the answer, it may not get the bounty by the bounty offerer?

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The one who offers the bounty decides who gets the bounty.

(I have offered a couple of bounties on questions not my own.)

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  • $\begingroup$ "If the bounty was started by the question owner (afk) we assume the bounty owner liked the answer they accepted and award it." Does that mean if the question owner accepted an answer, it may not get the bounty by the bounty offerer? $\endgroup$
    – emcor
    Jun 30, 2014 at 20:22
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    $\begingroup$ @emcor: No, if you offer a bounty on a question, then you are completely free to decide who is to receive the bounty. $\endgroup$
    – Thomas
    Jun 30, 2014 at 20:23
  • $\begingroup$ If you don't manually award the bounty, then there are rules to determine who will automatically receive (part of) the bounty. $\endgroup$
    – Thomas
    Jun 30, 2014 at 20:24
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    $\begingroup$ yes thanks, the system says I can only accept this answer in 2 more minutes.. $\endgroup$
    – emcor
    Jun 30, 2014 at 20:28
  • $\begingroup$ So, it is possible that the OP accepts answer A, while the bounty goes to answer B. I wonder whether this happens much. $\endgroup$
    – Gerry Myerson
    Jul 1, 2014 at 5:43
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    $\begingroup$ @Gerry: Currently 5 out of 13 bounties I have awarded have gone to answers other than the one OP accepted. But for me a desire to draw attention to an answer I found better than the accepted one is one of the motives for awarding a bounty in the first place. Therefore that piece of statistics may not be in line with the site average at all. $\endgroup$
    – Jyrki Lahtonen
    Jul 1, 2014 at 6:08

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