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If I have answered a question and it has significantly more upvotes than any other answer, but the asker has not selected it as the chosen answer, is it ok after some time to respectfully (maybe by leaving a comment on the question) remind the asker to choose?

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  • What if (as in my case) the asker has a 0% acceptance rate, despite asking several dozen questions? Is there a way to automatically accept an answer?
    – Shmuel
    Dec 5, 2011 at 4:03
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    @ShmuelL, I'm pretty sure there is no way to get an answer accepted except by the will of the asker. (Unless, perhaps, you send someone with access to the servers — which is none of the community moderators — some homemade chocolate-chip cookies.)
    – msh210 Mod
    Dec 5, 2011 at 4:05
  • @msh210, would the mods accept the kashrut of those cookies? :-)
    – Monica Cellio
    Dec 5, 2011 at 21:17
  • @MonicaCellio :-) As I said, though, it's not the community mods who can be swayed. I don't know whether any of the mods who have access to the servers worry about kashrus (though it's certainly possible).
    – msh210 Mod
    Dec 5, 2011 at 21:19
  • @msh210, oh, oops, you're right; I misunderstood you. Good thing it wasn't a serious question. :-)
    – Monica Cellio
    Dec 5, 2011 at 23:09

2 Answers 2

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I don't see anything wrong with leaving a polite comment to that effect, asking whether there's something missing from all answers to date. On the other hand, in my opinion, the community's opinions regarding the relative worth of answers (via voting) is more valuable in the long run than the asker's (via accepting one answer).

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While there clearly isn't anything prohibited about leaving such comments, not everyone appreciates them, and being sensitive to what bothers other users seems to me a valid metric to take into consideration.

To quote Monica Cellio in chat:

Accepting an answer is not mandatory. I think there's a difference between reminding/educating new or low-rep users on the one hand, and leaving "please consider accepting" comments on questions from experienced users.

If an answer was heavily edited the OP might not have seen that, so a comment pointing out major edits seems fine.

The comments about accepting answers feel to me like "please vote for my stuff" even if that's not the intent. They leave a bad taste for me, and I imagine that's true for others too.

If a user has indicated that a given answer has fully answered their question, then it seems appropriate to prompt them to accept it, as was done here.

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