Is it desirable to have the community award "acceptance" to answers on abandoned questions?

Question

There are many questions like this one:

Identifying a story about a girl named Sarah who finds out she is a robot

The pattern is the same:

1. User (usually new one) asks a question.

   Often, it's their only question on the site

2. Someone produces an unequivocally correct answer.

   "Correct" as evidenced by one or all of the following:

   • High upvotes

   • Agreement between many high-rep users on chat/meta

   • Special formal vote on Meta

3. User disappears from SF&F SE forever (as evidenced by "Last seen" timestamp), without accepting the answer as correct.

   More often than not, the account creation date==disappearance date.

We are left with a question with no accepted answer that nevertheless is 100% (as much as we can tell) correct, but is somewhat mis-leadingly not accepted.

Questions:

• Does anyone else feel that this is detrimental?

• Is it desirable to have the community be able to cause "Acceptance" on such questions?

Clarifications:

• This is only intended to apply to questions where one answer is crystally clear correct, based on some fairly stringent pre-defined measure.

• The exact mechanism by which this can be achieved (if it's deemed a good idea) is out of scope for this question

• The question of whether this is even possible to do (if it's deemed a good idea) is out of scope for this question

• The linked example question is not the absolutely best example of "100% sure that the answer is correct" - merely the first I found.

Answer 1

This has been discussed many times on the main meta site, in particular:

• Would it be possible to have a “community accepted” feature? (+30/-20, answers largely opposed, status-declined)
• Moderators accepting answers on user's behalf after a certain time period (+9/-15, answers largely opposed)
• Auto-accept unaccepted but correct answers after some time (+9/-7, answers largely against)

Answer 2

As one who specializes in story ID questions, I'd find it very useful to have all of the correctly answered ID questions so marked. DVK mentioned three kinds of evidence for an "unequivocally correct answer". Let me mention a fourth and even more unequivocal kind: when the OP accepts the answer verbally in the form of a comment, without formally accepting it. This has happened to me 3 times in the 3 months I've been a member:

Here, the OP came back and commented "That's the one... awesome, thanks!" and even posted a second comment "Yes, it was an older book when I read it. Some of my recall was a admittedly a little off. In any case, this has nagged me for years, so thanks again for your reply" without accepting (or voting but that's beside the point).

Here the OP commented "Thank you so much, that was precisely the one I was looking for. I had almost given up ever finding it." without accepting or voting.

And here the OP's comment "The interwebs are truly amazing. I wondered what the name of the story was for 35 years and you answered the question two minutes after I uploaded it. Thank you Jeff." was appended to the question and addressed to Jeff, who did not answer or comment on the question but who edited the title. Again, no acceptance or vote.

Perhaps, in cases like this, the moderators should be empowered to mark the answer as "accepted" without awarding points.

Or maybe, on the Ounce of Prevention theory, a better way could be found to inform new or one-time users about the custom and mechanics of marking accepted answers? One time (maybe on another stack exchange site) when I was answering a question for a brand new user with 1 rep point, I tried to take matters into my own hands and ended my answer by saying something like "if you find this answer satisfactory, you may consider accepting it by clicking on the check mark on the left" but of course someone came along and edited it "deleting hint to accept". Would a "hint to accept" in the form of a comment be kosher?

Answer 3

An important thing about acceptance: it doesn't mean the answer is right.

It only means, has only even meant, will only ever mean that the OP accepted it as right.

How do you know the OP made the right choice? You don't. Indeed there's a badge (a gold badge) for answers that are much better than the accepted one.

And if acceptance doesn't coffer magical correctness, then there is no pressing reason to insure that every questions has an accepted answer. Aside for the bit where I want my fifteen points, of course.

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Acceptance also doesn't mean that the question is somehow over: questions don't close, but remain available for better answer to be added in the furture. Indeed there are a couple of badges just for that. Four if you included the ones that reward editing old posts under some assumption that this encourages improving old answers.