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Is there a way to filter out questions from users who don't accept answers? It seems like a great waste of my time if I'm not even sure they're going to come back.

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I've never seen much point to this. If you're worried about reputation or badges, most of it comes from other people voting on your answer. If you just want to help somebody, as long as the question is initially well-thought you can do that regardless of whether they accept your answer or even provide additional feedback.

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  • +1: The badges are primarily vote oriented, particularly the specialty tag badges.
    – OMG Ponies
    Commented Dec 2, 2009 at 22:49
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    I agree with this answer. If you're worried about wasting time, then avoid answering poorly-asked (esp. poorly-titled) questions entirely: regardless of whether or not the authors "accept" answers, those questions will tend to sink like rocks in the search results.
    – Shog9
    Commented Dec 2, 2009 at 23:08
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    Good point, I guess it feels like a waste of time to answer those questions because neither the person who asks the question or anyone else tends to see those questions and hence there are no votes. Sigh, it seems the reward system doesn't favor helping someone even if you never get a vote/answer. I wonder if there's some tweak where you get a token reward for being the only answer on a question after a month.
    – Epsilon Prime
    Commented Dec 3, 2009 at 22:36
  • I agree, but I want to add that that is the reason I've never understood why accept rate info should be ever displayed.
    – shabunc
    Commented Aug 19, 2011 at 15:13
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Don't forget though that you're not just helping the OP, you're also helping those who come after with the same (or very similar) problem and have found the question through Google.

You never know, they might just give you an up-vote for your efforts.

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I am concerned because what happens when you ask a question, meaningful people put a lot of effort into answering the question, but ultimately none of the answers is valid. I would love to give a "great effort" to the person who put in the most work, but I cannot accept an answer which does not solve the question correctly.

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