Own answers should be possible to be accepted after some(?) votes of commited tex.se users

Question

I really do not vote up for own questions, own answers and own everything else where voting or any kind of a counted positive commenting is applicable. Theoretically, given that I won't rethink my personal attitude against self-voting, and no more answers than my own -- to own question(s) -- will be provided, this can lead to a question (e.g. How to apply alternate row coloring in a longtable in LyX?) which will never receive an accepted answer!

Of course, this is unlikely to happen for questions of high importance that concern a lot of people. But does this really matter? What about questions that won't gain much attention?

I do think that all usefully answered questions, should be paired with accepted answers. This, however, is not a strong(er) argument for me to re-think my skepsis about not voting up for own posts.

Would it be useful to give-away my voting right in this occasion to others? Maybe a mechanism could be activated and automatically accept an own answer to own question, if, this (own) answer has received some(?) votes by high-rep users (--who is considered a high-rep user anyway?) or committed tex.se users that have earned specific badges.

Answer 1

I don't think this is a good idea (not to mention it is unlikely to ever be implemented by the Stackexchange powers that be).

First, as has been mentioned in the comments, accepting an answer is not the same as upvoting an answer, so when you accept an answer (even your own) no vote it conferred. Consequently, you can't ever vote for your own answer, but you can (and should) accept it if it is the answer that helped you. (See How do you accept an answer? for some more discussion on accepting answers.)

Second, if there are multiple answers to a question, the answer with the most upvotes is not necessarily the best answer for you as the questioner (or generally). So any system that would automatically accept high voted answers is not a good idea.

Third, a new answer might be added later, and even with a few votes, this answer may well be one that you would like to accept, even though it has fewer votes. Again, having any kind of automatic system would interfere with this.

So the bottom line is: it's perfectly fine to accept your own answers, because you don't gain any reputation from doing so, but the site improves because accepted answers are a sign that the answer worked (at least for someone).

Answer 2

Pretty much by definition you should accept the answer that helped you the most. If that answer is your own answer then you should accept that. Thus your attitude against accepting your own answer is against the spirit of the site.

Note that you can never upvote your own question and won't get any +rep from accepting your own answer. You might however get the self-learner badge. You might also have to wait some amount of time before being allowed to accept your own answer (this is to give others the chance to write better answers and to keep people from gaming the system).

Again: answering your own questions is explicitly encouraged and you should always accept the answer that best solved your problem.

Answer 3

[Note: the following answer is a combination of explanations and arguments provided by Alan Munn, Caramdir and others.]

By definition, one should always accept the answer that was mostly helpful in solving a problem. If the most helpful answer is one's own answer, then it should be accepted. Answering (and accepting answers for) own questions doesn't gain any reputation. Nevertheless, the site improves because accepted answers are a sign that answers were helpful (at least for someone). Therefore, answering own questions and accepting them is explicitly encouraged. In contrast, the attitude against accepting own answers, contradicts, in a way, the spirit of the site.

Keep in mind that one:

• cannot upvote own questions
• cannot vote for own answers

• has to wait some time before allowed to accept own answers (this is to give others the chance to write better answers and to keep people from gaming the system, see also Accept Your Own Answers at SE blog)

• can (and should) accept own answers that helped

• won't get any +rep from accepting own answers
• might, however, get the self-learner badge

Detailed argumentation:

Implementing the suggested mechanism is probably not a good idea (not to mention it is unlikely to ever be implemented by the Stackexchange powers that be). First, as mentioned in the comments, accepting an answer is not the same as upvoting an answer, so when one accepts an answer (even his/her own) no vote is conferred. Second, if there are multiple answers to a question, the answer with the most upvotes is not necessarily the best answer for the questioner (or generally). Third, a new answer might be added later, and even with a few votes, this answer may well be one that the questioner would like to accept, even though it has fewer votes. Consequently, having any kind of automatic system that would automatically accept high voted answers, is not a good idea as it would interfere with the above mentioned points.

See How do you accept an answer? for some more discussion on accepting answers.

Answer 4

Well, if the title of this question is your real concern:

Own answers should be possible to be accepted after some(?) votes of commited tex.se users

Then the answer is simple: You can accept your own answer, just you have to wait 2 days before the system allows you to do so.

Answer 5

As clearly expressed in the question, I consider that some number of positive votes casted by committed tex.se users, could activate an accepting-answer mechanism when:

1. both answer and question belong to the same user
2. there is strictly no up-vote from the OP for both own question and own answer
3. the question itself receives some minimum of up-votes (e.g. 10, regardless the reputation of the users)
4. no other answers are given to the question
5. in case other answers are given and they receive(d) less votes than the answer of the OP
6. specific number of positive votes given by high(er)-rep users or users with specific badges (no clue yet which!)
7. no flagging has been applied at any time
8. (more restrictions to think... ?)