I'm raising this again because I now have a question I would dearly like to find an answer to, with one totally wrong answer awarded a bounty. I would prefer to be able to delete the entire question rather than leave this wrong answer as the only thing users will see if they visit it.
Relating to Please do not auto select answers on bounty questions which is marked [status-complete] and Explicit "do not award bounty" button which is marked [status-declined].
The answers to the latter do not answer the question as asked. They are all essentially frame challenges, or reasons why variations on this theme have not worked in the past. E.g., a bounty is a payment for advertising. That is not an answer. The payment has been made, and the advertising has been gained. If I paid for an advert for a job opportunity I would certainly not be bound to offer the job to the least worst candidate. I could choose… none.
Therefore this is a new question with a clear goal.
I want to decide if no one deserves the bounty. It should not be tied to votes, accepted check marks or who answered at what time. There is no gain for the user who offered the bounty. That's already gone, given away at the start. If no satisfactory answer is received, the bounty should not be awarded automatically without giving the initiator the chance to say no. If no action is taken you can assume lack of interest and auto-award. If a definitive action is taken, that should be the right of the one whose reputation was staked on receiving a satisfactory solution.
A decade later and this is still badly broken, IMO.
I should have the right to decide no one deserves the bounty. The bounty should not be a reward for effort but a reward for getting the answer right!
I offered a 500-point bounty on a new question right from the start, to pull some attention to an issue I knew was going to be tough to answer. The volume is the wrong format for a backup. Why?
As expected, no one even got close, though one answer received three upvotes… perhaps for effort. The answer went through three major revisions, none of which were salient and after a comment thread 22 deep trying to clarify, the last version was still totally wide of the mark. Two answers were deleted, for not even leaving the starting blocks.
This question itself also went through some major revisions, reducing some initial guesswork as my endeavour to find a single underlying symptom/cause was honed. Also, in each revision was an attempt to clarify what was confusing the answerers and commenters… not that it seemed to make any real difference to misinterpretations.
The end result, however, was there was no answer anywhere near. This means, in my mind, no one deserves the bounty.
I want the option to declare specifically that no one gets the bounty. However, the system automatically gave half points to the one remaining answer, with little regard as to how well it actually answered the question.
I have already given up the points. I don't want them back; I just feel no one deserved them. I should have been given that choice.
I didn't upvote any of the answers. None of them were more than misreadings of the question, or very poor guesses. I didn't downvote anyone either - I decided the users should decide, until and unless I got a working solution, which would then have been marked accepted and also awarded the bounty. I have in the past awarded bounties without accepting, for answers which showed good research and working method, or a good path towards a 'fix' even if it didn't work in my particular case.
... what if I advertise a job where I am compelled to accept one candidate, [regardless]. I will never again advertise a job. I will use other means, word of mouth, or Google.--- Your compulsion to hire is: advertising costs, time that could have been better used, plus you lose a person who could bring in X dollars per day and likely not be paid 10% that much. - Employees have blogs / WOM too; who has the most to lose. Hire, pay $+ or close.