New user. Very dumb. Don't really understand technical stuff very well.
I've gotten this comment "Have you considered accepting an answer or starting a bounty for this question?" on my...uhm...page, and I don't know what that means. Could you tell me, or point me to a link that could tell me?
Sorry to bother you
Randy
Accepting an answer means clicking the check mark button next to one of the answers to mark it as the "accepted" answer which "solved your problem". One purpose of this is to act as a signal that no further assistance is required, so answerers can focus on other questions. Another is to give a 15-point reputation bonus to the answerer that helped you the most.
Starting a bounty means clicking the "start a bounty" link underneath one of your questions and selecting an amount of reputation that you would like to post as an additional reward for those answering the question. This can be done to encourage people to post better answers in order to earn the bounty (typically if you feel the existing answers aren't good enough), or to reward an answer that was already posted (typically if you felt that answer was exceptional).
The reason this notice appears is that, in theory, we should strive to get an accepted answer on every question eventually. So if you have a question with no accepted answer, that implies you either forgot to accept an answer, or none of the answers were good enough (in which case you may wish to try a bounty).
None of this is required, it's just there to encourage the behaviors described above.
You get this notification automatically when you've asked a question without accepting an answer.
If someone has answered your question correctly, in a way that solves the problem you had when you asked it, you're encouraged to accept it. However, this is not mandatory, and if nobody has answered your question to your satisfaction, there is no obligation to accept an answer anyway.
If you haven't received any satisfactory answers, and you have more rep than you know what to do with, you can also start a bounty on your question by offering a rep incentive to anyone who answers it correctly. However, note that by doing so, you lose that amount of rep whether or not somebody answers the question and receives it.
Really, you don't have to pay any attention to this automatic message, as long as you know how to accept answers (which evidently you do, since you have accepted answers on a couple of your questions). It's automatically generated by the system, and will go away in a month. Consider it a reminder to check through your question list and see if there are any accept-worthy answers you've forgotten to accept, not a decree telling you that you must accept more answers.
