55
votes
Accepted
Do we want accepted answers unpinned on Math.SE?
(Note: this is my opinion as a user; my moderator hat is off.)
I am in favor of ordering answers by number of votes only.
The green check is supposed to indicate that the author of the question found ...
- 27.4k
39
votes
Accepted
Is it the best to post an answer to my own question and accept it?
The Question part is for questions, and the Answers part is for answers. So if you have an answer to your question, add your own answer. If you think it is a complete answer (and the best answer given)...
- 90.6k
32
votes
Accepted
Allowed time between receiving an answer and upvoting and accepting
Take as long as you want or need.
It's good to remember what the actual purpose of upvotes and accepts are. An upvote is much more than simply a "thank you" or a way of giving imaginary internet ...
- 90.6k
30
votes
Accepted
How good is an answer without any explanation? And how far should an explanation go?
A couple of things to answer your question:
1) Good hints belong here. Bad hints do not. If you want to make a good contribution to the site as an answerer, do the problem out always. It does not ...
- 138k
30
votes
Do we want accepted answers unpinned on Math.SE?
I dislike this proposition, for one reason: For many questions, the highest voted answer is simply the oldest. This is especially true of questions that appear on the "Hot Network Questions"...
- 15.1k
28
votes
Accepted
showing gratitude for a very helpful / detailed answer?
Also when writing a comment it explicitly states to avoid comments like "thanks" or so.
Based on what I've seen, it's more a warning because some popular questions would net hundreds of such comments ...
- 42.1k
23
votes
Accepted
Should I tick the correct answer or the answer that was helpful?
I would go with the answer that was more helpful to me to understand the subject of my question. How do you even know that the other answer was "technically more correct"? Would you have arrived at ...
- 1,068
21
votes
Accepted
Accepting incomplete helpful answer, vs posting my own complete answer
My own feeling is that a post that allows you to finish the problem yourself is the very best that can happen. I get disappointed when it becomes clear that the OP (the person asking) is not willing ...
- 138k
20
votes
How good is an answer without any explanation? And how far should an explanation go?
Here is a partial answer to your question. More of a general comment about hints belonging to the comments or not.
Hints should sometimes go to the comments, and sometimes to the answers.
First of ...
- 390k
20
votes
Accepted
Accepting one answer if several answers form a partition of a full answer
If you would like to do a great service to later visitors, then you can write a complete union answer so that there is truly a single, great answer. Or at least an answer indicating for later viewers ...
- 90.6k
20
votes
Accepted
Which answer to approve?
Accepting an answer is the decision of the asker alone. Apply criteria that you find reasonable. It sometimes can make sense to communicate your decision in a comment. Also, you can still up-vote all ...
quidMod
- 41.9k
20
votes
Accepted
When do we upvote or accept an answer?
While I'm not the most active on this site, my experience on other SE sites would suggest a simple piece of advice: upvote answers that are helpful, and downvote answers that are harmful. You get a ...
- 3,509
19
votes
Accepted
Can I edit a question making it more specific then change the accepted answer?
Because this is a case of progressive insight resulting in a substantially refined question (an algorithm isn't very sensible if no such number exists), I would consider a follow-up question a better ...
- 17.7k
19
votes
Etiquette Question: OP answers based on the answers of others
If OP gets a very brief if not incomplete answer, and then adds their own answer which is a more complete version, who should be marked as Answering the Question.
Whichever answer the OP finds most ...
- 90.6k
18
votes
Accepted
Someone's answer is completely copied and pasted from my answer, and their answer got accepted.
As mentioned in the comments, you must raise a flag in these situations, and the moderator team will handle it.
PedroMod
- 121k
15
votes
Requesting for like or best answer
It depends.
I've seen some occasions where a user posts a 'thank you, this helped' comment under my answer. If it's a user who is new to the site, and hasn't accepted any answers yet, I usually reply ...
- 3,955
15
votes
Do we want accepted answers unpinned on Math.SE?
I think the best solution would be to allow users to choose between sorting strictly by the number of votes, and putting the accepted answer at the top. Right now, there are three ways of sorting the ...
- 18.8k
12
votes
Accepting answers
There is a check mark next to the answer. Select it.
See How do I accept an answer? for details.
At any given time you can only have accepted one answer per question (you can change which one ...
quidMod
- 41.9k
12
votes
Accepted
How to mark that a question has been solved?
The only mechanism to mark a question as "solved" is for you to accept an answer. This is because Stack Exchange exists as a Q&A site, so the only reason we'd want to mark that a question has been ...
- 60.5k
12
votes
Accepted
Timeline of an answer; acceptance
You seem to be correct that the acceptance time does not appear to be shown anywhere in the timeline. However, you can see it directly on the answer itself by hovering over the checkmark that ...
- 326k
11
votes
Accepted
"Enlightened" Badge wrongly awarded
If you look at the reputation tab of the author of the currently accepted answer
you can see that the answer was today first unaccepted (11:04:00), and later re-accepted (11:05:36).
It is very ...
- 205k
11
votes
Accepted
A comment provides an answer and later answer is provided
It's fine to accept the solution. The commenter couldn't have had an expectation of getting anything by putting a solution in the comments, so nobody should feel like anything is lost.
Accepting the ...
- 152k
10
votes
Why does the acceptance of an answer not imply an upvote?
An answer can be technically correct without being particularly helpful or useful, and the question asker should be allowed to acknowledge that as well. For example, there was a question recently on ...
- 6,250
10
votes
When do we upvote or accept an answer?
In my opinion, you should be quicker to upvote than to accept. You can undo an upvote and you can undo an accept, but, speaking only for myself, I'm more willing to see an upvote reversal kindly than ...
- 14.6k
10
votes
Accepted
What do I do if I got two equally good answers for a question that say basically the same thing, and I don't know which one to accept?
Various people have given various suggested criteria in the comments -- including accepting the first answer, the one posted by the lower-rep user, and other ideas. If both answers are truly "...
- 45.5k
10
votes
Timeline of an answer; acceptance
To supplement Eric Wofsey's answer:
Answers accepted less than three days ago are shown as
The question owner accepted this as the best answer [X hours ago]/[yesterday]/[2 days ago].
rather than the ...
- 26.8k
9
votes
Accepted
What to do with old questions whose only 'complete' answerer gives no clarification?
No, you should not accept answers which do not explain all your doubts.
If you want a better, clarified answer, but feel like you're annoying people with too many comments, edit in the question the ...
- 13.8k
9
votes
Allowed time between receiving an answer and upvoting and accepting
I would instead think of a waiting period before accepting any answer. Upvote as soon as you read it and are convinced it's a good answer. But wait to see if other people give perhaps better answers, ...
- 629
9
votes
There should be a badge for sufficient number of accepted answers
When proposing a new badge, it's always a good idea to check which kind of good behaviour it promotes that currently is not sufficiently awarded. I don't see any; the answer being accepted already ...
- 3,955
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible