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My feature request (or anti-feature-request perhaps) is the following:
Let's stop displaying a user's accept rate.

For those of you who know "Fawlty Towers", the whole issue of a visible accept rate and our behavior towards it starts to feel like "Don't mention the war!".

We generally seem to agree that harassing a user about it is not appropriate and that our decision to answer a question should not depend on it, yet we display it in varying terrorist-threat-levels of color. Yes dear users, please don't pay any attention to the brightly orange colored percentage you see there. And whatever you do, don't bring it up.

But as long as you're displaying the accept rate, people will comment on it, criticize users for it and possibly reconsider answering because of it. And while I'm of the opinion that a low accept rate should not stop you from answering (we're here to make the internet better after all) and that the possible reputation gain (or lack thereof) should not factor in either, I can't blame users for considering it. It's in their face after all. And we're only people.

So let's take the issue off the table. Or at least partially. Information about a user's acceptance behavior can still always be gathered from the profile. But at least that would be less in-your-face.

"But it helps me to see if a user is a help vampire!"
I'm still wondering if those are of the sparkly variety as well, but I digress. So what? If the question is bad, downvote it. Evaluate a question on its individual value. There is no need to take a user's history into account. There might be a correlation between the quality of a question and a user's accept rate, but there doesn't have to be. And if there is, the bigger problem is the question's quality.

"Exactly! A user with a low accept rate might indicate there's a problem!"
I'm not arguing we should get rid of the accept-rate value within SO/SE. After all, this Q&A works based on up and downvotes, as well as the acceptance of an answer. But why not use it behind the scenes to (very occasionally) nudge the user with a statement like:

"You have received several answers to your questions, yet have not accepted an answer as correct or helpful in a while. You might want to evaluate them and where possible accept them as correct or helpful".

After all, in the various questions with regards to comments on low accept rates, if any comments are encouraged at all, then they are of this soft variety. So why not let the system take care of that?

I feel this would take the whole issue of accept rate off the table, while still providing the user with the information he might have missed or needs. (As a bonus, it would reduce the frequency with which the topic is brought up here on Meta) And those users who would ignore this information are most likely not convinced by a displayed percentage either.

My feature request (or anti-feature-request perhaps) is the following:
Let's stop displaying a user's accept rate.

For those of you who know "Fawlty Towers", the whole issue of a visible accept rate and our behavior towards it starts to feel like "Don't mention the war!".

We generally seem to agree that harassing a user about it is not appropriate and that our decision to answer a question should not depend on it, yet we display it in varying terrorist-threat-levels of color. Yes dear users, please don't pay any attention to the brightly orange colored percentage you see there. And whatever you do, don't bring it up.

But as long as you're displaying the accept rate, people will comment on it, criticize users for it and possibly reconsider answering because of it. And while I'm of the opinion that a low accept rate should not stop you from answering (we're here to make the internet better after all) and that the possible reputation gain (or lack thereof) should not factor in either, I can't blame users for considering it. It's in their face after all. And we're only people.

So let's take the issue off the table. Or at least partially. Information about a user's acceptance behavior can still always be gathered from the profile. But at least that would be less in-your-face.

"But it helps me to see if a user is a help vampire!"
I'm still wondering if those are of the sparkly variety as well, but I digress. So what? If the question is bad, downvote it. Evaluate a question on its individual value. There is no need to take a user's history into account. There might be a correlation between the quality of a question and a user's accept rate, but there doesn't have to be. And if there is, the bigger problem is the question's quality.

"Exactly! A user with a low accept rate might indicate there's a problem!"
I'm not arguing we should get rid of the accept-rate value within SO/SE. After all, this Q&A works based on up and downvotes, as well as the acceptance of an answer. But why not use it behind the scenes to (very occasionally) nudge the user with a statement like:

"You have received several answers to your questions, yet have not accepted an answer as correct or helpful in a while. You might want to evaluate them and where possible accept them as correct or helpful".

After all, in the various questions with regards to comments on low accept rates, if any comments are encouraged at all, then they are of this soft variety. So why not let the system take care of that?

I feel this would take the whole issue of accept rate off the table, while still providing the user with the information he might have missed or needs. (As a bonus, it would reduce the frequency with which the topic is brought up here on Meta) And those users who would ignore this information are most likely not convinced by a displayed percentage either.

My feature request (or anti-feature-request perhaps) is the following:
Let's stop displaying a user's accept rate.

For those of you who know "Fawlty Towers", the whole issue of a visible accept rate and our behavior towards it starts to feel like "Don't mention the war!".

We generally seem to agree that harassing a user about it is not appropriate and that our decision to answer a question should not depend on it, yet we display it in varying terrorist-threat-levels of color. Yes dear users, please don't pay any attention to the brightly orange colored percentage you see there. And whatever you do, don't bring it up.

But as long as you're displaying the accept rate, people will comment on it, criticize users for it and possibly reconsider answering because of it. And while I'm of the opinion that a low accept rate should not stop you from answering (we're here to make the internet better after all) and that the possible reputation gain (or lack thereof) should not factor in either, I can't blame users for considering it. It's in their face after all. And we're only people.

So let's take the issue off the table. Or at least partially. Information about a user's acceptance behavior can still always be gathered from the profile. But at least that would be less in-your-face.

"But it helps me to see if a user is a help vampire!"
I'm still wondering if those are of the sparkly variety as well, but I digress. So what? If the question is bad, downvote it. Evaluate a question on its individual value. There is no need to take a user's history into account. There might be a correlation between the quality of a question and a user's accept rate, but there doesn't have to be. And if there is, the bigger problem is the question's quality.

"Exactly! A user with a low accept rate might indicate there's a problem!"
I'm not arguing we should get rid of the accept-rate value within SO/SE. After all, this Q&A works based on up and downvotes, as well as the acceptance of an answer. But why not use it behind the scenes to (very occasionally) nudge the user with a statement like:

"You have received several answers to your questions, yet have not accepted an answer as correct or helpful in a while. You might want to evaluate them and where possible accept them as correct or helpful".

After all, in the various questions with regards to comments on low accept rates, if any comments are encouraged at all, then they are of this soft variety. So why not let the system take care of that?

I feel this would take the whole issue of accept rate off the table, while still providing the user with the information he might have missed or needs. (As a bonus, it would reduce the frequency with which the topic is brought up here on Meta) And those users who would ignore this information are most likely not convinced by a displayed percentage either.

My feature request (or anti-feature-request perhaps) is the following:
Let's stop displaying a user's accept rate.

For those of you who know "Fawlty Towers", the whole issue of a visible accept rate and our behavior towards it starts to feel like "Don't mention the war!".

We generally seem to agree that harassing a user about it is not appropriate and that our decision to answer a question should not depend on it, yet we display it in varying terrorist-threat-levels of color. Yes dear users, please don't pay any attention to the brightly orange colored percentage you see there. And whatever you do, don't bring it up.

But as long as you're displaying the accept rate, people will comment on it, criticize users for it and possibly reconsider answering because of it. And while I'm of the opinion that a low accept rate should not stop you from answering (we're here to make the internet better after all) and that the possible reputation gain (or lack thereof) should not factor in either, I can't blame users for considering it. It's in their face after all. And we're only people.

So let's take the issue off the table. Or at least partially. Information about a user's acceptance behavior can still always be gathered from the profile. But at least that would be less in-your-face.

"But it helps me to see if a user is a help vampire!"
I'm still wondering if those are of the sparkly variety as well, but I digress. So what? If the question is bad, downvote it. Evaluate a question on its individual value. There is no need to take a user's history into account. There might be a correlation between the quality of a question and a user's accept rate, but there doesn't have to be. And if there is, the bigger problem is the question's quality.

"Exactly! A user with a low accept rate might indicate there's a problem!"
I'm not arguing we should get rid of the accept-rate value within SO/SE. After all, this Q&A works based on up and downvotes, as well as the acceptance of an answer. But why not use it behind the scenes to (very occasionally) nudge the user with a statement like:

"You have received several answers to your questions, yet have not accepted an answer as correct or helpful in a while. You might want to evaluate them and where possible accept them as correct or helpful".

After all, in the various questions with regards to comments on low accept rates, if any comments are encouraged at all, then they are of this soft variety. So why not let the system take care of that?

I feel this would take the whole issue of accept rate off the table, while still providing the user with the information he might have missed or needs. (As a bonus, it would reduce the frequency with which the topic is brought up here on Meta) And those users who would ignore this information are most likely not convinced by a displayed percentage either.