16

Why did Dumbledore tell Harry there were 6 Horcruxes when he already knew Harry was a horcrux?

DVK's answer is correct. The asker even commented thanking DVK. We all know it is the answer. But the asker forgot to accept it (the "check" button), and this is one of those users that doesn't seem will ever come back to the site (last seen: December 2012, just to make the only question he/she ever made).

It of course makes sense if the asker is the only one who can accept answers, but in this kind of situation it isn't very nice when everyone knows that the asker already acknowledged that the given answer is correct.

Is there something we should do about it? Can a moderator accept the answer etc?

Ya know, there is this itch you feel when you see something that should be some way but, well, it isn't :P

1
  • 1
    In all fairness, the user didn't "forget" - they simply never returned back to SFF.SE (from the user profile: seen Dec 8 '12 at 3:27, which matches up to when the comment was made)
    – DVK-on-Ahch-To
    Commented Jan 17, 2013 at 23:18

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
21

The only way to get an answer marked as accepted is if the asker does it. This is not possible, not even for moderators, not even if the asker's account has been deleted.

This has been requested (many times) on the main meta, but met strong opposition, mainly because

  • this would require moderators to decide whether an answer is true, which is explicitly not part of their role;
  • this would run against the spirit of accepting an answer, which is to indicate that it personally helped the asker the most.

Don't worry about it. If you think the answer is good, upvote it and move on.

2
  • 4
    I think Omega's question was for the cases where the user explicitly acknowledged via a comment that both (a) the answer is true and (b) it personally helped the asker most (and was the only answer). This situation would resolve both of the worry points. But yeah, "Close your eyes and think of England" seems to be the best solution for such rare occurances :)
    – DVK-on-Ahch-To
    Commented Jan 17, 2013 at 23:21
  • 1
    @DVK meta.stackexchange.com/questions/109773/… and I'm sure I've seen others addressing that case.
    – user56
    Commented Jan 17, 2013 at 23:35
4

We all know it is the answer.

And that's why this doesn't matter. The accepted answer denotes the answer the user found most helpful and nothing else; there's no reason for you to care :P. Use things like reading and votes to determine what the community's "accepted answer" is.

5
  • 2
    Yeah, but it feels "incomplete" if you don't see a shiny "check" next to it XD
    – Saturn
    Commented Jan 18, 2013 at 0:05
  • 4
    Not just that, it's also that you can search for "unanswered questions" on the site, and things like this gives false positives. It's just frustrating when you want to help, but it turns out the correct answer is already there, just not marked as such.
    – Mr Lister
    Commented Jan 18, 2013 at 7:27
  • 1
    @MrLister No they don't. Any question with at least one answer of +1 or more is considered "answered" and does not shown up on the unanswered page.
    – Matthew Read
    Commented Jan 18, 2013 at 16:22
  • Sorry, my bad, I meant when searching for questions with hasaccepted:0, not the "Unanswered" tab.
    – Mr Lister
    Commented Jan 18, 2013 at 18:47
  • @MrLister Hmm, good point; there's no good way to search the Unaswered tab. I've offered a bounty here asking for that.
    – Matthew Read
    Commented Jan 18, 2013 at 19:55
2

As Gilles points out answers can only be accepted by the original author of the question (which is a good thing). However, if you think an answer deserves to be be accepted but the original asker does not, you can always offer a bounty for the respective question and award it to the answer you think is right. That's the closest you can get to "accepting" an answer to a foreign question.

2
  • Ima giving none of my precious points to a complete stranger!!!... Alright I will.
    – Saturn
    Commented Jan 18, 2013 at 0:11
  • @Omega: Not that DVK will even notice 50 rep, but well :)
    – bitmask
    Commented Jan 18, 2013 at 0:26

You must log in to answer this question.

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