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I am relatively new to the MSE community. I wanted to know that if a person asks a question and then doesn't care to accept any particular answer, can a moderator accept an appropriate answer?

This would be helpful as people visiting the question would directly see the best answer and the answerer who has put effort into writing the answer will also be rewarded with reputation.

If this feature isn't there should it be implemented? Are there any negative points to it?

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    $\begingroup$ This has been asked before many times. $\endgroup$
    – Qudit
    Commented Feb 28, 2018 at 7:38
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    $\begingroup$ If you feel the feature isn't appropriate, please explain why. Don't just leave a downvote. $\endgroup$
    – Aditya Pratap Singh
    Commented Feb 28, 2018 at 7:39
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    $\begingroup$ Absolutely not. Moderators occasionally need to step on a few toes. Out of necessity, or because there's no empty floor space. We don't need to add this to the "god-like" powers of mods. It would be a recipe for acrimony, bitterness, allegations of mods playing favorites and all that. I personally would not want to have this "privilege". And there are several questions I would be ill-qualified to judge (and even less desire to arbitrate). Not interested. $\endgroup$
    – Jyrki Lahtonen Mod
    Commented Feb 28, 2018 at 8:19
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    $\begingroup$ And the main reasons have been discussed earlier. See accepted-answer (Hmm. Looks like the most recent ones have been deleted, or had another tag. My search-fu is weak today.) Selecting an accepted answer is the one supervote left to the asker alone. No one else can creep into their mind, and decide what they find "useful". $\endgroup$
    – Jyrki Lahtonen Mod
    Commented Feb 28, 2018 at 8:22
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    $\begingroup$ This older discussion is related and has some links: Allow the community to accept answers to abandoned questions $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Commented Feb 28, 2018 at 11:10
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    $\begingroup$ Some related posts from the main meta: Force Accepted Answers on Questions by Inactive Users, Would it be possible to have a “community accepted” feature? and Moderators accepting answers on user's behalf after a certain time period. $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Commented Feb 28, 2018 at 11:13

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Moderators do not have this ability, no one but the OP has (with the obvious exception of somebody that can "hack" the SE database directly).

As a rule, moderators are not judges about the mathematical substance of posts. Thus, it is not their role to decide which answer is best.

As mentioned in comments what to do about questions that are answered well yet do not have an accepted answer is a recurring issue, but moderators are not the most natural choice for this.

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