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One of the first things I did upon joining this site today was to go through the unanswered section (hoping I'd be able to answer one). I didn't end up finding one I felt I could answer, but I did find a great question. So I bountied it - it very quickly got an answer which deserves the bounty (I'm holding it a bit longer in the hopes of more participation).

What's to stop some of the other higher rep users adopting a question they like and offering a bounty?

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Right now, lack of reputation. One of the metrics used to determine the health of a site in beta is the number of users projected to meet certain reputation benchmarks:

  • 150 users with 200+ reputation
  • 10 users with 2000+ reputation
  • 5 users with 3000+ reputation

As you can see from our report card, we're behind. In fact, there are only 2 people with 2000+ reputation, and only 8 people with 1,000+ reputation (the minimum needed to edit in beta: it goes up to 2,000 out of beta).

So high rep users offering bounties doesn't solve the long term problem (even though it's very nice of you to do so): the long term solution is vote early, vote often. Too many questions and answers here don't get upvotes or even accepted answers, making it hard to get more people with more community moderation privileges.

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  • I agree; the main problem right now is increasing the reputation of users. To get 10 users with 2000+ reputation, and 5 users with 3000+ reputation is not that easy, especially if users don't vote frequently. – kiamlaluno♦ Apr 21 '11 at 18:41
  • fair point on the rep - and i agree on the voting... perhaps more of both voting and bounties is required? doesn't the system match bounty offerings when accepted? – HorusKol Apr 22 '11 at 0:23
  • @HorusKol I'm not sure what you mean: bounties are zero-sum. If I offer a 50 point bounty, I lose those 50 points and the person who wins the bounty gains 50 points. It's shuffling the deck chairs instead of increasing overall reputation. – user7 Apr 22 '11 at 1:22
  • To say it all, the full bounty is given when an answer has been accepted; differently, after X days, the system gives half of the bounty to the user whose answer is the most voted. Only users with a reputation of at least 75 can offer bounties, though. – kiamlaluno♦ Apr 22 '11 at 8:16

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