There are a number of great answers out there that have never been accepted as the answer for whatever reason. Would a new feature that allows high-reputation users to vote to accept the answer after a certain time period has elapsed be helpful?

I'm not going to argue for any specific reputation level or time period, but I would throw out 30 days and 3000 reputation. If, say, 3 users with voting ability vote to accept the answer, it gets accepted.

It seems to me this would be helpful in that readers would have more assurance that the answer was super solid. I realize that the number of upvotes gives some assurance, but that green checkmark means something, or else it wouldn't be there to begin with.


While it might look like a good idea at first this has been suggested multiple times on the stackexchange meta:

The consensus seems to be that the number of up votes show the communities approval of the answer.

The actual accepting of the answer should be left to the asker of the question to show it solved their problem which is impossible for the community to test.

  • ...which is sometimes impossible to test. There are also questions like, "what are the downsides of doing this," that can't really be tested by anyone. Don't paint all questions with the same brush. – Tony Hinkle Feb 17 at 18:29
  • 8
    @TonyHinkle please understand that the meaning of "answer acceptance" on Stack Exchange is very specific: "Accepting an answer is not meant to be a definitive and final statement indicating that the question has now been answered perfectly. It simply means that the author received an answer that worked for them personally.", thus you cannot force something out of OP's action. – Andrew T. Feb 18 at 10:36
  • 10
    We should all vote to accept this answer 😀 – Paul White Feb 19 at 0:26
  • 1
    There is also one or more meta post, about not letting a poor accepted answer sort above much higher voted answers. Which is arguably a bigger issue. – James Jenkins Mar 8 at 19:02

You must log in to answer this question.

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