I just answered the question of a very active member of http://stackoverflow.com but he's kinda gone AWOL after posting the question.

I went to look in his history to check his typical activity on his questions, and to my horror he has never accepted or voted on a single answer.

It's distressing to me that such a well established user could be so uninvolved in the process.

Is there anything in place to ping such a user with a motivating message or the like?

  • there isn't, and that's good. The best you can do is comment on a post of his and hope he checks the email he associated Stack with.
    – Patrice
    May 3, 2016 at 15:08
  • @Patrice You're saying that it's good that there isn't a notification? At some level I agree, I have a handful of questions with incomplete answers, I don't want to be pinged about those. But at the same time, my history establishes a trend of community involvement. This user's history... doesn't do that.That's what I was hoping to key off of. May 3, 2016 at 15:11
  • 3
    No, I'm saying it's good you can't ping random users. Imagine being Jon Skeet if you could. The issue is you can't enable one without enabling the other, so I think it's better that you can't.
    – Patrice
    May 3, 2016 at 15:11
  • 2
    There are thousands of problems on the site more serious than this. It's perfectly fine for someone to not accept answers to their questions. The site can function perfectly fine without anyone accepting answers, let alone without any one user not accepting answers. Far, far, far more problems have been caused by users being badgered or pressured into accepting answers than by users not accepting answers at all.
    – Servy
    May 3, 2016 at 15:15
  • Yes, the comment section.
    – Kevin B
    May 3, 2016 at 15:21
  • @Servy Sounds like stuff like this has been attempted before huh? That's probably the right answer to my question as everyone seems to indicate, just comment and move on. May 3, 2016 at 15:23
  • 1
    @JonathanMee Don't even comment. There's very little to be gained and much to be lost. Don't even pay attention to it in the first place. If you happen to notice that someone isn't accepting answers by chance then ignore that piece of irrelevant information and continue whatever you had been doing.
    – Servy
    May 3, 2016 at 15:24
  • @Servy Aren't we all about this being a user based site? If the users don't at least use comments to encourage good behavior, who will police it? Upvotes and accepts do matter, it seems like ignoring this would be to say that they do not in fact matter. May 3, 2016 at 15:28
  • 1
    @JonathanMee Again, you're assuming, as a premise, that it's bad behavior to not accept answers. I'm rejecting that premise. It's not a problem at all to not accept answers. It is not something to be policed. That you think it is is far more concerning to me than that this user hasn't accepted an answer. The fact that people are able to upvote and accept posts when they wish to express the appropriate feedback is important, that people are pressured to do so when they have no interest in expressing said feedback is very harmful, both for the posts being voted on, and to that user.
    – Servy
    May 3, 2016 at 15:31
  • 4
    Asking 110 questions and never once accepting an answer requires truly admirable dedication to the quality of the Q+A at SO. Not so sure the Qs are up to snuff however. Well, you posted a link to this meta post, that ought to suffice. May 3, 2016 at 15:37
  • @HansPassant the hint is really helpful (the user did accept some answers though -- edit: my apologize, he didn't. Some of his answers were accepted). I am tempted to post a link now, but that would clearly be "clearly in conflict with what the OP intend" and thus be rejected. Arrgh!
    – Ian
    May 3, 2016 at 16:19
  • 1
    "...he has never accepted or voted on a single answer." They accepted an answer on April 27th. (Hover over the checkmark for the timestamp.) Perhaps the user just has very rarely found an answer fitting enough to accept, as is their right. And perhaps they just don't feel like voting, up or down, on anything. (Or, perhaps they find everything on Stack Overflow so mundane in quality that it deserves neither an upvote or downvote.) That is also their right.
    – Kendra
    May 3, 2016 at 16:24
  • 2
  • @Ian You're right I missed that one he accepted. 1/110 accepted... At least he knows how to accept. I'm not sure if that's more or less insulting. May 3, 2016 at 17:01

2 Answers 2


I'm not sure why you'd want to bother.

The user is entitled to vote on and accept whatever answers they wish to, as well as the contrary - they don't have to vote on anything that they don't want to, either.

It may be a bit of a surprise to see that a user like that doesn't accept or vote on content, but take solace in knowing that it's an outlier; there are very few people that use Stack Overflow that routinely do that.

If they're well-established and they haven't bothered doing it by now, I have very little faith that your well-meaning comment will spur them to action.

But above all, it doesn't exactly matter. As I said above, they're free to vote (or abstain) however they wish to, so long as they're not actively commiting voting fraud.

  • The more I think about your answer the more this makes sense. If this behavior became the norm, then yes we'd need to spur people to action. But spending time worrying or trying to coral disengaged users isn't a big deal when they represent such a small segment of an otherwise healthy population. May 3, 2016 at 16:56

Let's look at it like this.

People ought to vote on questions and answers where appropriate, and people ought to accept the most helpful answer to their questions. That's clearly an important part of the site, as it steers people towards good content and away from bad content. And if everyone suddenly stopped doing these things, the site would be worse off for it.

So we can classify the behavior from this person as "not good".

But that doesn't make it bad.

This person clearly is not using the site in the best way possible. But that's OK. We've got plenty of other people voting and accepting answers. So if someone doesn't want to engage, that's their business.

It's not good behavior from them. But it's not detrimental to the site for any particular person to abstain. As long as they are posting questions of reasonable quality, their actions are serving the most basic needs of the site.

If their behavior isn't bad, if it is not actively damaging to the quality of the site... let them do as they wish.

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