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I'm not quite sure why someone would offer a bounty on Server Fault and never return to mark an answer or assign points. Shameful. I mean, really!!

Do you think this was some sort of misunderstanding of the process? Perhaps the FAQ is unclear?

How often does this happen on Stack Overflow?

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  • This is looking more and more like a thinly veiled disguise to get everyone to feel sorry for you and go upvote your stuff so you can pass Evan. really, how can people her know the motivations of random people on the internet ?
    – user9517
    Commented Nov 19, 2014 at 7:06
  • @Iain It's actually weird behavior compared to how things used to work on the Stack Exchange sites. Times are changin'
    – ewwhite
    Commented Nov 19, 2014 at 12:43

2 Answers 2

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Good question. Maybe they got the answer they needed and didn't feel the need to stick around to tick any of our boxes? Member for 4+ years with 156 rep - even as stingy with votes as we are, that doesn't strike me as a user that's terribly invested in SF in general.

Bounties are kinda strange... as much as I like collecting free internet points as much as the next geek, I've never tried harder to answer a question because of one. I've either had a useful answer to someone's question and the time to type it up, or I haven't.

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  • 2
    True.. I have another larger bounty that I've been waiting on... And neither have been marked, so maybe I'm just wondering if people stopped caring. Or if there's some confusion about how it all works. (or if I'm a sucker!)
    – ewwhite
    Commented Nov 4, 2014 at 13:19
  • 2
    A little from column a and a little from column b: They're not sure why it works and don't care enough to find out as long as some sucker answers their questions anyway ;-)
    – Rob Moir
    Commented Nov 4, 2014 at 13:20
  • 3
    You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it smart.
    – HopelessN00b
    Commented Nov 4, 2014 at 14:37
  • 5
    The OP is [more] active on SO. The 100 rep Association Bonus is basically disposable income on other SE sites.
    – jscott
    Commented Nov 4, 2014 at 17:06
  • 1
    They likely see the "bring more attention to this question" option hoping it will somehow blink lights around the question with an enticing siren's song to lure in experts and get a quick/decent answer. Like @jscott it's disposable points they don't care about on the other sites.
    – TheCleaner
    Commented Nov 14, 2014 at 18:27
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Life happens.

I have created one bounty in my entire time at SF ... and ended up not "paying" it. I hit the site several times a day during the first 3-4 days of the bounty, and no workable answer was given. Then, something came up, and I ended up travelling for a couple of weeks. During that time a great answer was given, but I was otherwise busy and was not checking in at SF.

When I returned to the site and found the great answer, the bounty had expired. I had to apologize to the guy!

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  • And no one else upvoted that answer?
    – Nils
    Commented Nov 13, 2014 at 22:29
  • As of now it has 6 upvotes. I think mine was the first upvote, back in 2009 when I wrote the "oh man" comment. But I'm not sure. And I dunno when the others rolled in. A lot of StackExchange code has been modified since then, I'm sure. They're continually tweaking things in hopes of encouraging better behaviors.
    – quux
    Commented Nov 18, 2014 at 8:23
  • @quux Naw, it just happened to me again. Not quite sure what's up with that.
    – ewwhite
    Commented Nov 19, 2014 at 5:20

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