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  • What is accept rate?
  • Why doesn't accept rate always appear?
  • How is the accept rate calculated?
  • What does "accepting an answer" mean? How do I do it?

Related: How does accepting an answer work?

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Taken from the blog entry:

  • The accept rate is the percentage of answers accepted based on the questions asked by the user.
  • The accept rate is calculated on questions that are older than 3 days.
  • The accept rate is heavily cached and can take 24hrs or more to update. (See below.)
  • The accept rate is only calculated when the user has 4 or more questions.

Which questions do not affect the accept rate?

The following questions are not included in the accept rate calculation:

  • Community Wiki Questions
  • Closed Questions
  • Questions with no answers

If a question has no upvoted answers, it is still included by design.

What does the accept rate mean?

  • If the stat doesn’t appear at all, it’s a new user, or someone who rarely asks questions.
  • If you see a low percentage, it’s a user who asks a lot of questions but accepts almost no answers.
  • If you see a middle of the road percentage, it’s an experienced user who understands what accepted answers are for.
  • If you see a high percentage, it’s an engaged user, someone who frequently goes back and interacts with their questions after asking.

It is considered good manners to accept answers on your questions, eventually, but accepting answers is not required. In general, an accept rate of 70% or better is quite good, meaning you accept answers on 7 out of 10 questions that you ask.

When is the accept rate updated?

Taken from this answer:

  • When the user accepts or unaccepts an answer.
  • When user accounts are merged or unmerged.
  • Once a day for all users.
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  • 52
    +1 for "If you see a middle of the road percentage, it’s an experienced user who understands what accepted answers are for."
    – Chris
    Commented Sep 20, 2010 at 19:09
  • 16
    +1 for "...or someone who rarely asks questions".
    – Adeel Ansari
    Commented Sep 30, 2010 at 4:55
  • 3
    I've had never noticed the different color coding for accept rates until it was just pointed out. Do you have the breakdown for what the colors represent?
    – Lance Roberts
    Commented Sep 5, 2011 at 7:20
  • Are deleted questions counted? Can that be added?
    – ale
    Commented Jan 10, 2012 at 14:53
  • So I should take my time to evaluate answers and not accept it immediately as an OP. This is why the accept rate is only - and not before - increased after a 3 day old question.
    – user3123159
    Commented Feb 6, 2022 at 18:01
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What does "accepting an answer" mean? How do I do it?

When you have decided which answer is the most helpful to you, mark it as the accepted answer by clicking on the check box outline to the left of the answer.

alt text

This lets other people know that you have received a good answer to your question. Doing this is helpful because it shows other people that you're getting value from the community. (If you don't do this, people will often politely ask you to go back and accept answers for more of your questions!)

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  • 3
    How does accepting an answer work?
    – Gnome
    Commented Nov 9, 2010 at 17:07
  • 37
    Nice image demonstration, by the way.
    – Gnome
    Commented Nov 9, 2010 at 17:09
  • 3
    @Gnome would have been better with an animated freehand red circle.
    – corsiKa
    Commented Jul 6, 2012 at 22:06

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