3

The option sounds simple enough. I assume it indicates that the bounty starter wants an answer that draws from or is supported by canon. But the description underneath it seems odd. It reads:

The question is widely applicable to a large audience.

How does that relate to wanting a canonical answer? The rest of the description is also a bit confusing.

A detailed canonical answer is required to address all the concerns.

Maybe I'm reading too much into the word choice here but couldn't "to address all the concerns" simply be "to answer the question"? How does a question having a lot of concerns relate to wanting an answer that is supported by canon?

1
  • Note, you can always add in your own custom text when starting a bounty.
    – Alex
    Commented Mar 23, 2020 at 22:33

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
4

Bounty “types“ and their descriptions are the same throughout the network. As far as I’m aware there is no way to customise a bounty type/description on a per site basis (though to be fair I’ve never really looked into it). Bounties then originate from the network’s origins: Stack Overflow. Think of the bounty description in the context of SO and it makes total sense with what it’s saying. Take for example the NullPointerException canonical question on SO:

  • it is applicable to a large audience
  • a detailed answer covers more points than perhaps just the one mentioned in the question and gives information on how to fix them
4
  • Thanks. Is this the question you're referring to? That makes a bit more sense, though the bounty description still seems to address two different, albeit related, problems within a question. Hopefully it will make more sense the longer I stay on SE.
    – creative-username
    Commented Mar 23, 2020 at 13:45
  • @creative-username That's the Java one at least yeah. There had to be a limit on number of bounty reasons and I suppose combining two that sort of make sense together in the context of SO was fine. There are a lot of things around the network that are tailored to SO, for obvious reasons, and don't necessarily make total sense on a different site. Bounty reasons are in a large part generic anyway, you can add a custom message if you really want to say why you're offering a bounty.
    – TheLethalCarrot Mod
    Commented Mar 23, 2020 at 13:48
  • This has been helpful but there’s one more thing I’m missing. What does canon mean in reference to programming? I don’t know anything about code and have only heard ‘canon’ in the context of books and film.
    – creative-username
    Commented Mar 23, 2020 at 23:03
  • 1
    @creative-username this SO meta post would probably be helpful for you to look at.
    – TheLethalCarrot Mod
    Commented Mar 24, 2020 at 7:26

You must log in to answer this question.

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