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I just posted an answer where:

  • The question is 3 year old

  • The main accepted answer has 30+ upvotes

  • However, the answer was heavily (50% to 100%) invalidated canonically by EU material published after the answer was posted.

  • I posted the correct answer.

Is it acceptable to post a bounty on a question (and award to my own answer) to highlight it and draw attention to the correct info?

I'm going to assume that the poster of the accepted answer won't be so kind as to delete his own 30+ answer just so we don't have incorrect information shadowing out the correct one :)

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    I'm almost certain you can't award your own bounty to your own answer, and since the accepted answer has more than 2 votes, it will wind up with 50% of your bounty if you don't assign it to someone else's answer.
    – Beofett
    Aug 27, 2014 at 12:09
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    @Beofett I'm pretty sure that's not how the auto-assigning if bounties works. To qualify, it needs to be a post made after the bounty started, and which then got a net of 2 up votes or more.
    – user1027
    Aug 27, 2014 at 14:20
  • @Keen Oops. Misread the help center. You are correct: the highest scoring answer posted after the bounty with 2 or more net upvotes. However, I'm still pretty sure you can't assign the bounty to yourself, and in any case DVK already posted the answer, so it wouldn't be eligible anyway. So, in this case, it would be wasted unless someone else also posted a new answer
    – Beofett
    Aug 27, 2014 at 14:23
  • @Beofett - well, it would attract attention to the Q&A, even without being awarded. Then again, attracting attention to Q&A for now got the now-incorrect answer 5-6 new upvotes :(
    – DVK-on-Ahch-To
    Aug 27, 2014 at 14:53
  • Have you asked the OP to consider withdrawing the acceptance? Have you asked the existing accepted answerer to consider deleting their (wrong) answer?
    – Valorum
    Aug 28, 2014 at 18:00
  • @Richard yes and sort of, respectively
    – DVK-on-Ahch-To
    Aug 28, 2014 at 18:31
  • @DVK - And what happened?
    – Valorum
    Aug 28, 2014 at 18:47
  • @Richard - OP changed the acceptabce. Other answer wasn't deleted (nor did I really want it to be). OTOH, the fact that the other answer picked up 8 NEW FRESH upvotes since I posted my answer AND a comment indicating that answer is no longer correct (and the answer wasn't any great quality - no canon quotes or references), is extremely troubling.
    – DVK-on-Ahch-To
    Aug 28, 2014 at 19:24
  • @dvk - I find it most annoying when you find an old question, post a well-sourced answer that canonically answers that question and are then forced to languish below an older incorrect answer just because it came first. I take solace that over time, the "right" answer will usually gain more votes, especially if you keep adding to it, in order to periodically bump it.
    – Valorum
    Aug 29, 2014 at 12:48
  • As long as the accepted answer is switched, I see no problem with that. I mean, this voting system is all wrong anyway, but within its (flawed) context, switching acceptance seems like the best result.
    – o0'.
    Aug 31, 2014 at 14:11

1 Answer 1

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Consensus on meta.stackexchange.com seems to indicate that yes, you can use bounties to draw attention to your own answers.

There was concern about this being used as a way to game the system, by gambling reputation in the hopes of earning enough upvotes on a late answer to make a net gain, but this has been addressed by setting increasing minimum bounties

As noted by Robert, this has come up recently. Posting a bounty is a perfectly reasonably thing, a good thing (with badges too!). However, when applied repeatedly to a question it does start to represent abuse.

To help minimise this, but while leaving open the option of offering a subsequent bounty when you really, really are looking for another option we will be implementing a change here, where subsequent bounties have a higher minimum offering. This means you can't place 6 "cheap" bounties of 50 rep, to keep your answer on the bounty board to get lots of pass-by upvotes, as subsequent bounties probably1 will not cover your "spend".

Also:

Another related change has been mentioned by Sam Saffron:

  • If you are placing a bounty on a question you answered, your minimum spend is 100
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    The risk seems to be, if I post a bounty to draw attention to my (better) answer, will I incur heavy downvoting for looking like a rep-whore.
    – Valorum
    Aug 29, 2014 at 12:52

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