As someone who frequently finds Stack Exchange answers via Google, this is a huge issue for me personally (and I suspect anyone else who regularly is finding Stack Exchange threads for questions).

My workflow is:

1. Check thread and see if question is same (via error message, etc)
2. Check answers.
3. Immediately check accepted answer (if any)

If there is no accepted answer, one of two primary things happened:

• User asking question went MIA or didn't accept
• No one answered the actual question (regardless of upvotes on answers)

Now, this would not be a problem if all 'non-answers' which are still valid didn't get upvoted frequently (or even sometimes accepted...). I don't like trying to figure out which of those two scenarios is the case as it is not a whole ton different than parsing a forum/email thread because normally you have to read comments to figure out what is going on, etc.

The example of this which is most frustrating for me is here. The accepted (and highest voted) answer didn't contain the actual answer for several years until it was edited.

I like Stack Exchange because it minimizes the steps from "error to resolution" by removing the parsing of forum threads, parsing of multiple answers, reading tons of text, and puts the ANSWER immediately when I find a matching question.

Answers showing as "accepted" is a huge part of that.

My point is that I emphatically believe YES there should be incentive for accepting answers.

The point of a Q/A site is to be, well, a question answer site.

As someone who frequently finds Stack Exchange answers via Google, this is a huge issue for me personally (and I suspect anyone else who regularly is finding Stack Exchange threads for questions).

My workflow is:

1. Check thread and see if question is same (via error message, etc)
2. Check answers.
3. Immediately check accepted answer (if any)

If there is no accepted answer, one of two primary things happened:

• User asking question went MIA or didn't accept
• No one answered the actual question (regardless of upvotes on answers)

Now, this would not be a problem if all 'non-answers' which are still valid didn't get upvoted frequently (or even sometimes accepted...). I don't like trying to figure out which of those two scenarios is the case as it is not a whole ton different than parsing a forum/email thread because normally you have to read comments to figure out what is going on, etc.

The example of this which is most frustrating for me is here. The accepted (and highest voted) answer didn't contain the actual answer for several years until it was edited.

I like Stack Exchange because it minimizes the steps from "error to resolution" by removing the parsing of forum threads, parsing of multiple answers, reading tons of text, and puts the ANSWER immediately when I find a matching question.

Answers showing as "accepted" is a huge part of that.

My point is that I emphatically believe YES there should be incentive for accepting answers.

The point of a Q/A site is to be, well, a question answer site.