Should your Accept rate only be known to you? [closed]

I don't know:

On one hand accept rate bothers me a lot, it is a one-dimensional metric that does not really give me enough information about how upstanding a user is in the community. It is used frequently to bully users and leaves a horrible taste.

On the other hand, introducing accept rates heavily increased the amount of accepted answers in the system. Which in turn helps close loops and motivate the community.

When we introduced the accept rate stuff we were careful not to add too much of a value statement. On hover we do not say "horrible user, never accepts answers".

Going forward I would much prefer that we retired accept rate in favor of a more general metric that covers a variety of "citizenship" metrics that do not result in rep.

• Does the user vote?
• Does the user accept answers?
• Does the user answer questions?
• Does the user edit or suggest edits on questions?
• Does the user flag stuff?

I don't know, perhaps we should go the other way and show a tagline of honor for the top N percent of users.

That said, I do not think it would be beneficial to simply retire accept rate if there is no replacement offered.

My only problem with accept rate is the pressure that it puts on people to take actions that aren't really appropriate. I've seen dozens of flags from users asking for perfectly good questions that have not received acceptable answers to be removed, just because the user wants to increase their accept rate but can't select an acceptable answer on several questions.

I also think some people are a bit too harsh with what is considered an acceptable rate. 60% or more from a user who joined just a month ago (to me) is perfectly acceptable. There is absolutely nothing wrong with leaving your proverbial line cast in the water a little longer in hopes that a new and better answer may emerge. Sure, the top answer might seem awesome to you and I, but perhaps the question author is looking for a more in depth explanation, example code that matches their problem better, or something else.

Still, hiding that value from everyone but the OP is not going to solve the problem you describe, it's just too easy to look at the user's profile and see for yourself. I remove all 'accept rate noise' on sight. The kind of user that we want asking lots of questions will hear crickets chirping as tumbleweed blows by and wonder if that orange number under their name has anything to do with it.

I can't support an idea that puts more work on users that want to answer questions. It's an important metric to many people, I'd rather that folks spend time on questions they feel good about rather than researching a metric. We encourage people to answer whatever interests them, but some people are reluctant to do that when certain rewards seem unlikely. There's nothing we can do about human nature.

Edit

If you think you've spotted a help vampire, flag one of their posts as 'other' and let us know with every detail you can provide. We will look into it. We might not always agree, but we will look into it. We want to keep leeches out, but we also have to be friendly to new users at least to a point (even with guard rails in place). Stack Overflow is quite unique to someone coming from a forum, and that is exactly the kind of user we hope will eventually become a constructive member of our community. At least until the point that it's obvious that they just don't, or can't 'get it'.

The negatives of the feature I see are:

• (as above) Where users are deciding not to help other users out
• Continue rubbish/noise comments about Accept-rate values
• A general negative view or feel both for the site and the user

This is the core of your argument against showing accept rates. So consider this.

A low accept rate (defined as ~25% or lower) is indicative of one of the following:

• A user who does not know how to use the site.
• A user who does know how to use the site, but is either neglectful or malicious.
• A user who has not gotten good answers, which may be indicative of:
  • Bad questions (bad questions can lead to bad answers)
  • Lack of user interest in these questions.

A user who does not know how to use the site is a user who needs to be educated. Informing them of how accepting questions works is neither "rubbish" nor "noise comments". It is vital information that the user in question may have missed. Informing them of this creates a positive view of the site for that user (assuming the information was appropriately phrased. IE: not condescending or coming off like rep trolling). And some people don't want to waste their time with users who couldn't be bothered to read the FAQ; that's their right.

A user who is using the site neglectfully or maliciously is not a user who needs to be here. So I have no problem with seeing their questions downvoted and/or filled with "rubbish/noise comments about Accept-rate values" and/or not being helped. Stack Exchange requires give and take. There are responsibilities placed on the person doing the asking just as there are on the answerers. Someone who isn't pulling their weight is a drag on the site.

A user who has not gotten good answers due to asking bad questions is someone who needs to start learning what good questions are. Bad questions contribute "rubbish/noise" questions to the site, which is far more damaging than someone posting a comment on a question about accept rate. The whole point of the site is questions, after all; comments are just a supplement. And if the user who asks bad questions has a negative view of the site, then hopefully that will help them improve or leave the site. Either way, the site gets better.

A user who is asking questions that nobody either knows how to answer or wants to answer is generally unlikely to fall afoul of a low accept rate. The reason being that unanswered questions don't count towards accept rate. In low-traffic tags/subjects, you are more likely than not to have a few experts drop in to comb through them for easy accepts/up-votes due to being experts in a specialized field. In low-traffic tags, you get a disproportionately higher rate of answerers who know what they're talking about.

That being said, there will be some idiots who think they know what they're talking about and don't. It happens. But does it really happen 3 out of every 4 answered questions? I'd want to see some statistics on that before I can be sure.

So no, I don't see a problem per-se with providing accept rate information to users.

This all being said, I do wish that people would only confront someone about their accept rate if it is actually low (no, 65% isn't low). And they've looked through the question history and have seen something disconcerting (ie: good answers not being accepted). Most people who have low accept rates don't have that many answered questions, so it would only take a minute or two to look through their history.

However, the fact that some users are jerks about accept rate does not mean that having the accept rate itself is a problem. It simply means that some users need to be educated about what bad accept rates are.

The absolute most I would accept would be something where only an accept rate beneath a certain threshold (say, 40%) is shown. That way, you deal with jerks talking about people who are in good standing accept rate-wise.

Even if you hide it, nothing will prevent someone using SEDE to calculate it¹. In fact I guarantee that in the 10 minutes following this functionality's removal, someone will ask exactly that here on meta :)

^{1. I haven't checked, but there's a good chance it's there already!}