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On Ask Different especially, a significant proportion of questions are asked by unregistered users who are then unable to accept an answer to their question as correct. This is a massive disincentive to answering questions from unregistered users, given that the probability of reputation gain from that answer is significantly lower.

I have one such answer that has been left un-accepted despite receiving 35 upvotes (and 0 downvotes) because the OP is unregistered and thus has no means of accepting it.

Could there be a way to automatically accept answers to unregistered users' questions once they reach, say, +5 votes? This rule would remove the disincentive of answering many of Ask Different's questions, and get users well-earned reputation points.

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  • Auto-accepting is an interesting idea. Thanks for asking this question!
    – Ian C.
    Jan 17, 2017 at 22:10
  • @IanC. You're welcome—you'd just have to decide the cutoff.
    – owlswipe
    Jan 18, 2017 at 0:15
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    If you are here for the rep, you might be here for the wrong reasons :-) Upvotes give 10 rep, accepts 15. So good answers will benefit anyway...
    – nohillside Mod
    Jan 18, 2017 at 6:20
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    Anyway: see meta.stackexchange.com/questions/83295/… etc for a lot of reasons why this may or may not be a good idea
    – nohillside Mod
    Jan 18, 2017 at 8:23
  • And actually the user asking the question you refer to seems to be registered. They just never came back after asking the question (last seen date/time is equal to question date/time)
    – nohillside Mod
    Jan 18, 2017 at 9:51
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    @patrix If you load the desktop version of Jenny's profile page you'll see they are unregistered. And it's not just for the rep :D!
    – owlswipe
    Jan 18, 2017 at 12:05

1 Answer 1

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Short answer, no.

You would need to ask for this change on the main stack exchange meta to change the code across the entire site.

Long answer - people voting for useful answers gives 10 rep to the people so the +5 for the tick mark is a little like a cherry on top of the sundae. Voting, putting a bounty on a really great answer are much more meaningful to give rep and draw attention to useful answers regardless of the OP coming back to participate. Voting up the question also helps others find the good answer you voted up.

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