Minimum waiting time to accept answer

Question

I have been seeing answers accepted a very short time after being posted.

Waiting less than 24 hours means that people in some time zones may not have the opportunity to read a question before an answer is accepted. This does not explicitly prevent an answer but I think it can discourage both reading of the question and posting of additional answers.

If users intend to accept the first good answer, as soon as possible (or less than 1-2 days after posting), or need some answer instantly, I think it should be considered an unusual use case and the posters should be encouraged to state the high-speed intended use of the question. Otherwise it can turn the site into a race instead of a forum that produces slower, more thoughtful answers.

Examples of very fast acceptance:

less than 1 minute delay: Prove that the numerator of $H_{p-1}$ in reduced form is a multiple of $p$ for $p$ an odd prime

less than 3 minute delay: Proving that $k[a,b,c,d,e,f]/(ab+cd+ef)$ and $k[x_1,x_2,x_3,x_4,x_5]$ are not isomorphic

This happens frequently; there is nothing unusual about those two links except that I knew them from having participated as an answerer.

EDIT: 24 hours seems like a canonical minimum waiting period, but the exact number is less important. It is not uncommon to see one correct answer, then a better answer an hour later, and a really excellent answer two hours after that, and I am primarily raising the question of whether acceptance of the first answer within minutes is something that should be discouraged. Whatever the reasons are for discouraging it, would probably also support a minimum waiting time measured in hours.

Answer 1

I'm not convinced that there's a problem to solve here, and the proposed solution has the potential to lower the utility of the site for everyone.

Yes, sometimes an asker accepts an answer without taking time to think it through, but where's the real harm in that? There's an answerer who will get 15 perhaps undeserved rep points, but really, so what? It's only points.

On the other hand, blocking an asker from accepting until some arbitrary waiting period has passed will effectively disable the main function of the accept mark, namely to let everyone know that the asker considers his problem to be solved. That will make the site harder to use for answerers wanting to economize with their time.

And really, do you think a first-time asker will check back after 24 (or whatever) hours to accept an answer, perhaps long time after he's completed his proof or turned in his homework or whatever? He'll have no incentive to do so -- except for 2 rep, which will be irrelevant for a casual user. Thus, the likely result would be that almost every question would remain showing as "no accepted answer", until -- perhaps, eventually -- the asker has enough open questions get an accept rate calculated and start to be bullied about that.

That likely outcome isn't going to help anyone.