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With the recent January changes, it is given that

2013-01-22: Accept rates will no longer be shown. Like flag weight, they will continue to be calculated for backend use.

I would like to know if there are any visible effects to the users in anyway? And at the back-end, what would it be useful for?

Is it that a post from a user with better accept rate will be deemed as higher quality over the post from a user with low accept rate?

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We are not doing anything special with it right now. Certainly not using it to predict the quality of a post.

Many people with a high accept rate post things that aren't 100% fantastic. Their posts aren't necessarily bad, but someone's accept rate in no way guarantees that their posts will be better than others'.

This may change later, of course, but for the moment... it's simply hidden but tracked internally for potential future use.

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    And it's part of the API's interface, can't stop calculating it without breaking the contract... which isn't gonna happen.
    – Kevin Montrose
    Commented Jan 31, 2013 at 8:29
  • And, as a trivial function of data that's just there, it's also... just there. Proposing to remove accept rate from the backend would be like proposing to remove the count of how many users SO has.
    – Lightness Races in Orbit
    Commented Feb 3, 2013 at 17:55
  • I would say that the "accept rate" was not meant to be an indicator for the quality of posts. I think it was something more like "Do I take the time to answer that question if maybe I don't get votes or the green checkmark?". Which might not have driven the right behavior sometimes.
    – insertusernamehere
    Commented Feb 26, 2013 at 13:27
  • Is it still tracked?
    – M.A.R.
    Commented Feb 28, 2016 at 20:06
  • @M.A.R. It would be impossible to NOT track it. It's calculated from numbers you cannot avoid tracking.
    – klutt
    Commented Jan 25, 2021 at 15:05

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