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I've seen many posts where answers are provided yet none are accepted. These include questions where the given answers are straightforward and clearly correct.

For instance, in this post, two answers were provided in the day of asking the question. Both answers are correct with @StrongBad's one being an acceptable direct answer (IMO). Yet the post is nearly 3 months old.

It could be that the OPs could have forgotten the fact that they even posted those questions.

What to do in such cases? Could we just report to a mod to accept a correct answer for such posts?

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  • A mod, afaik, cannot accept answers other than those to their own questions, as any normal user. – Massimo Ortolano♦ Nov 29 '16 at 8:54
  • You may be right @MassimoOrtolano, I just wanted to discuss the 'what if' scenario. If this is possible, would this be welcomed? – Ébe Isaac Nov 29 '16 at 9:06
  • I notice you've also got a significant amount of reputation on SO, like I do. Accepting answers is a much bigger part of that community than it is here, and I had to adjust too when I got involved in both. On the flip side, it's far, far easier to get masses of upvotes here than it is there. – Jeff Nov 30 '16 at 15:29
  • @JeffL. Come to think of it, you're right. Most of my rep in SO comes from accepts (and edits) while most of it in Academia.SE comes from upvotes. But in SO, if you're lucky enough to be the first one to answer an about-to-be-famous question, you'll be flooded with up-votes in the future. I've seen some posts way over 2k to 4k upvotes in SO! – Ébe Isaac Dec 1 '16 at 4:15
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What to do in such cases? Could we just report to a mod to accept a correct answer for such posts?

No, even moderators cannot accept an answer to questions other than their own.

The possibility of having answers accepted by the community or moderators was brought up several times on the main Meta (e.g., here) and declined. Briefly: There is no need for it, since in case of no answer being accepted, the best answer (as per votes) should float to the top. An answer being accepted by the asker serves nothing more than to indicate that the answer helped the asker. Having others accept an answer for the asker would go against this.

So, all we can do with such cases is to live with them.

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  • Thank you for the insight, @Wrzlprmft. The link was pretty useful too. It always bothered me when a perfectly right answer just stands there without being accepted. I guess I'm clear now. – Ébe Isaac Nov 29 '16 at 11:57

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