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Would it be useful to remind users to choose an answer when a question received one or several answers but the question was not marked as answered?

This would prevent questions from remaining "unanswered", when the user who posted the question intentionally waited to mark the question as answered to wait for further answers and forgets about it.

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    One issue would be distinguishing "unanswered" questions with answers from "unanswered" questions with (at least one) satisfactory answer(s). I, for instance, have asked a question that received an answer with upvotes, but the answer is not what I am looking for, and I would not want to mark it as accepted. I am hoping someone might still answer the question to my satisfaction. Of course, an occasional reminder wouldn't bother me that much; I could just ignore it. But this situation might be more widespread, and it might bother others.
    – Adam Liter
    May 28, 2014 at 21:19
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    @AdamLiter -- if the answer isn't what you're looking for, you could comment to that effect, being specific (if possible) about why it isn't. maybe even edit the question in light of the answer, to be more specific about what you're looking for. that would indicate that at least you're paying attention.
    – barbara beeton
    May 28, 2014 at 21:55
  • @barbarabeeton I've done both of those things, but thanks for pointing out some good practices! :-)
    – Adam Liter
    May 28, 2014 at 22:01
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    @AdamLiter And don't forget about bounties. Even the smallest one (50 rep) is a good advertisement for your question ;)
    – yo'
    May 29, 2014 at 8:44

2 Answers 2

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There are a number of ways this is dealt with on the site:

  1. We have a text building block for this kind of thing - typically used in comment to the OP:

    Since you have some responses below that seem to answer your question, please consider marking one of them as ‘Accepted’ by clicking on the tickmark below their vote count (see How do you accept an answer?). This shows which answer helped you most, and it assigns reputation points to the author of the answer (and to you!). It's part of this site's idea to identify good questions and answers through upvotes and acceptance of answers.

    The network, however, considers up-voted answers as answers to questions; that is, a question is removed from the list of unanswered questions once it has at least one up-voted answer.

  2. For questions where there are no answers, we have an "Answer the Unanswered" session once a month in chat. This was originally scheduled for the Wednesday of every month between 1900-2100 GMT. However, it seems to have fallen on weekends lately.

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  • But will I as a user who forgot about the own old questions be notified? If the text building block is inserted as a common comment I assume I will get notified, as it is the case with other user's comments.
    – Dohn Joe
    May 28, 2014 at 22:30
  • @DohnJoe: You should get notified when a comment is posted to your question, since the author is always notified regardless of whether a user @replies specifically or not.`
    – Werner Mod
    May 28, 2014 at 22:49
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You don't get notified per se that you have forgotten to give a tick and I wouldn't consider such passive-aggressive functionality good, there used to be Accept Rate with sort-of similar effect, but it has been removed in early 2013.

However, the question appears in the list of question without the green box around the number: https://tex.stackexchange.com/users/23871/dohn-joe?tab=questions This grabs my attention when I visit my profile, and I sort it out instantly. As well, it is not rude if the person who answered your question asks you to mark it as accepted, therefore they can do so to receive the deserved 15 rep points.

(And as Werner pointed out, these questions don't appear in the unanswered list.)

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    So long as the green tick doesn't go to DPC, I agree. ;-)
    – egreg
    May 29, 2014 at 16:42

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