9

I asked a question today that was accurately answered very quickly, which was more or less expected, as it was a fairly binary question. I hit accept so quickly I discovered there is a minimum amount of time you have to wait between asking a question and accepting an answer.

Did I give the answer a fair amount of time to be viewed by the community before accepting it? If not, what's a good general time to wait before accepting? And should the nature of the question (ie binary vs broad-but-answerable) affect that time?

Please feel free to retag as appropriate, I'm still hopeless at parsing meta tags.

1
  • I would wait on accepting an answer unless you doubt that a better answer is possible/likely. If you accept an answer then it deters other people from posting an answer.
    – Aequitas
    Commented Nov 30, 2015 at 2:00

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
14

Accepting an answer is entirely up to you, as the question asker. You can accept whenever you want, though accepting an answer early may prevent other answers from arriving (due to the fact that the question will show as answered and the fact that the extra 15 rep is no longer up for grabs).

Keep in mind that accepting an answer is not a locked in decision - if a later (and better) answer arrives, you can move the accepted checkmark to the new answer.

5
  • Actually, I believe there's a catch: if you have accepted an answer, after a certain timespan you cannot change your accepted answer unless that answer is edited. I know I haven't been able to change my own accepted answers on other exchanges after a certain time.
    – Nzall
    Commented Nov 19, 2015 at 21:00
  • 1
    Odd. I just swapped the checkmark an a question of mine from 2011 and it was allowed.
    – au revoir
    Commented Nov 20, 2015 at 2:32
  • 1
    @NateKerkhofs the timing issue is only for upvotes and downvotes - you can't switch a down or up vote to the other after a while unless the answer has been edited. You can always move the check.
    – gatherer818
    Commented Nov 21, 2015 at 2:50
  • Furthermore answers on own questions can accepted only after 2 days I think.
    – h0ch5tr4355
    Commented Nov 25, 2015 at 8:40
  • Are you saying if you move the check the 15 points are not deducted from that person and added to the other person?
    – Aequitas
    Commented Nov 30, 2015 at 1:59

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .