27
votes
Accepted
People answering to bounty just for the prize
If the answer is of very low quality, flag it as such. Other users will review this flag, and if necessary, the moderators will intervene.
If you see a pattern of this behaviour in some users, or if ...
- 401k
21
votes
Accepted
I made the best answer to my own question after posting a bounty on it. Now I'm losing $50$ points when I haven't done anything wrong. A bit unfair?
No. Not unfair.
If you put an ad in the paper, looking for a carpenter, say, to do some work. But then you decide to buckle down and do the thing yourself. Do you ask for a refund on your ad from the ...
- 401k
20
votes
Accepted
A rule on subtracting reputation points
The timeline of this post reveals that you started a bounty worth 100 points on that date. The bounties are deducted from the rep tally immediately.
- 138k
19
votes
Should we discourage bounties that encourage "clever" but unclear answers?
I would not want such things to occur too much. If all posts had such a bounty, it would turn into chaos. But I don't think anything is wrong if you do this on occasion. I don't want to say that all ...
- 151k
19
votes
Accepted
Is there a 'polite amount' to put up as a bounty for someone else's question?
It is fine to place a small bounty on someone else's question. The principal way* that doing so affects the author is that they might suddenly get a bunch of notifications about their question, which ...
- 61.6k
18
votes
A rule on subtracting reputation points
I will just mention that on the very page you linked you can see that the reputation decrease was due to the bounty, together with name of (and link to) the relevant post.
- 55.1k
17
votes
Accepted
Is there any force to award the bounty?
Yes, there is an automatic process that will take care of the bounty if you do not award it yourself. From the help-center:
If you do not award your bounty within 7 days (plus the grace period), the ...
- 42.6k
16
votes
Etiquette of bounty on PSQs.
Please don't put a bounty on a PSQ. It is MSE policy not to answer PSQs until they are improved and no longer PSQs. A bounty on a PSQ works against this policy goal.
A better approach in this ...
- 71.1k
14
votes
Accepted
Why not allow closing of bountied question by normal users when they are in bounty stages?
It is important to keep in mind that a question cannot be bountied immediately. It first needs to "survive" for some time on the site.
I think there is some point to preventing closures of ...
- 42.6k
13
votes
Accepted
1/2 of question answered by different people
In terms of reputation, one way to minimise the difference between the two answers is to upvote and accept the answer (by ticking it) you think is the most clear and of higher quality. This would gain ...
- 27.2k
13
votes
Accepted
Invalidate an answer when starting a bounty
The bounty reasons are the same throughout the network. This bounty reason is easy to understand on sites like Stack Overflow: Releases of new versions of a software package can make answers referring ...
- 210k
13
votes
Accepted
Etiquette of letting a bounty expire on a question with an upvoted but incomplete answer?
Welcome to the meta site!
You are entirely within your rights to let the bounty expire. Personally, I think of bounties as a sort of 'custom order'. When you post a question on the site, you're de ...
- 8,214
12
votes
Accepted
Can't close duplicate bounty questions with exactly same "accepted" answers
This is an unusual situation. The main problem is the repost of the question by the asker. This is not admissible. Somehow this went unnoticed. That they then got both bounties is an astonishing twist....
- 42.6k
12
votes
Bounties don't last long enough
At present, I earned 371 bounties. My experience suggests the following. Although I agree with you that (bountied) questions can be hard. In extreme cases we wrote (partially) answering papers, for ...
- 102k
12
votes
Accepted
How do we know if there's someone working on my question?
Keep in mind that Readers pay attention to your Questions on a voluntary basis, so there's no better mechanism beyond asking a good Question to promote attention.
I'd expect the person who posted the ...
- 37.4k
12
votes
Accepted
Number of bounties offered by a user
For any user, you can go to their profile and under activity you can choose the bounties tab. One of the things you can see there is the list of offered bounties.
If you want to see how many bounties ...
- 55.1k
11
votes
Please help me improve question on Cauchy's Integral Formula
Take a look around and look at well-received questions. They look different. I will give a list of concrete suggestions, but first I would like to talk about the bigger picture. MSE is a place for ...
- 33.9k
11
votes
Starting a bounty on another user's question
Sure, I do it all the time. Just make sure you leave a comment explaining what you want from the new answers.
- 27.5k
11
votes
Accepted
Are there any users who have invested more than what they presently have?
As already mentioned in comments, SEDE can be used for such queries.
I took the query showing the users with most bounties awarded and I have sorted it based pm percentage of the reputation given away ...
- 55.1k
10
votes
Accepted
Should moderators be allowed to assign given bounty
When a bounty is not manually awarded, the system will automatically award it to the [earliest] highest-scored answer that was posted within the bounty period. But an automatic award is only half of ...
- 401k
9
votes
Accepted
How do I start a bounty?
From the Meta Stackexchange Bounty FAQ:
If you have already offered a bounty on the question before, the minimum offer is double your last offer (see below).
You previously offered a bounty for 200 ...
- 338k
8
votes
Why can't I start a bounty? (More than three bounties.)
You already have three currently running bounties. Three is the maximum number.
Once one of those bounties is awarded, you can place another one.
For reference see the final point in this ...
- 42.6k
8
votes
Accepted
Question does not gain answers in Math Stack Exchange. Would a migration to StackOverflow be a solution?
The bounty was only placed somewhat recently. There might still be hope.
As you speculate I assume there are not that many users familiar with Singular on the site. I doubt that Stack Overflow would ...
- 42.6k
8
votes
When is it appropriate to bounty a "contested question"?
If I think it's a terrible question that should be closed and deleted as fast as possible, then I'm very annoyed if someone tries to delay the inevitable by setting a bounty.
If I think it's a fine ...
- 183k
7
votes
Accepted
Clarification of meaning of $3$ badges
A full list of badges with clarifications can be found here: What are the badges I can earn on each site, and what are the exact criteria for earning each badge?, but let me answer your specific ...
- 3,975
6
votes
Bounties to reward not answers, but questions
Personally, if someone places a regular bounty on my question, I'd be very pleased, and that in itself is the true joy of earning bounties as well (at least for me).
Not to mention, questions with ...
- 75.9k
6
votes
Accepted
The error message "Unable to load popup -please try again" when I start a bounty
Copying my answer from MSE:
Thanks for reporting this. It has been fixed across the network now and you should be able to add bounties until your heart is content.
Thanks to balpha who ...
- 101
6
votes
Accepted
What happens to questions with bounty when OP was suspended for more than 8 days?
A suspended user cannot award the bounty. See
Will bounty rolled back if user removed or suspended?
Thus, what will happen is that same as if the user just would not show up during the relevant period ...
- 42.6k
6
votes
Accepted
How to search for bounties awarded to my answers?
On the Activity tab of your user page, click on Bounties (in the string of buttons below the reputation graph and Newest/Next Badge information). That string starts with Summary and ends with Votes, ...
- 37.4k
6
votes
Protocol for cross posting when question did not receive any response.
You asked about choosing a set of four parameters for processing some accelerometer data, with the goal of minimizing disagreement between the accelerometer measurements prediction of location and ...
- 37.4k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible