Are we allowed to award bounties on questioner's other answers?

Question

If I greatly like an answer on SE, I can reward it with a bounty.

However, if I greatly like a question on SE, I can at best upvote it (yes, I can award the bounty to that question, but helps the answered, not the asker).

Is it against the rule for me to:

• Find who the user posting the question is
• Find a good answer by that user (unrelated to the question that I liked)
• Post a bounty on that answer, with an explanation that this is a good answer on its own merits, but the bounty is really for question XXX

Again, the assumption is that the answer the bounty will be posted to IS a good answer.

?

Answer 1

I would consider this abuse of the system and, on the sites I moderate, would likely refund the bounty. However, there is nothing stopping you from lying about the reason for the bounty and pretending that the answer is worthy of it.

The problem lies in the fact that a bounty is not a standalone event that simply gives rep to someone. (If it were, it would be much more easily abused.) The question gets bumped. The minimum 24 hour waiting period before awarding the bounty means that the question will appear on the Featured tab for that long, garnering extra view and votes for itself and its answers. Other users may be encouraged to post new answers. Doing all of this to something entirely unrelated to the focus of your bounty seems quite inappropriate.

Consider also that it is likely by design that you cannot offer a bounty on a question. Questions are a means to an end — getting a problem solved, i.e., getting answers. Stack Exchange is about solving problems, not about presenting problems, and that's why you get half rep from an upvote on a question compared to an upvote on an answer (among other things).