Recently I asked this question, and got a great answer by another user.

My question is about time comparison, and getting the best solution performance wise.

Since I know the nature of my data, I was able to boost it up (the answer,not the data), considering the alternatives, comparing them, and presenting the results in an answer of my own.

Later, I accepted this answer of mine. Is that OK, or should I have accepted the other answer, even thought my answer is more thorough?

I'm very interested in your opinions, Since I'm not entirely sure I did the right thing (Eventually, I used someone else's answer).

EDIT: After reading the opinions in the comments, I decided to accept the other user's answer. I can only hope that my answer will be appreciated as well.

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    If your answer is the best suitable for your question, I cannot see why you couldn't accept your own before the other. – D4V1D Jun 15 '15 at 8:58
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    @D4V1D I used his answer to write mine, and since only I have the data, maybe it is not appropriate – omerbp Jun 15 '15 at 9:00
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    You are free to accept any answer, including your own. If you're nice you'll leave the accept on the original answer, leaving a comment to point out your final solution. If you're for purity and how the accept functionality is really meant you accept your own answer and upvote the other answer. – rene Jun 15 '15 at 9:01
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    I can see you have mentioned his answer. This is fair. There is no harm in accepting your own answer then. – D4V1D Jun 15 '15 at 9:02
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    @D4V1D No harm, but he invested time on it, maybe he deserves the rep as well? that only fare – omerbp Jun 15 '15 at 9:03
  • See @rene's comment then. You clearly have two choices here. Not to mention that the original user has over 16k rep and might not be interested that much in gaining +15 rep for having his answer accepted. – D4V1D Jun 15 '15 at 9:03
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    @D4V1D the (current rep of the) user should have no influence on your decision how to vote/flag/accept posts.... – rene Jun 15 '15 at 9:11
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    @rene Fair enough. You're right. To OP: you might be interested in this meta answer as well. – D4V1D Jun 15 '15 at 9:13
  • @D4V1D loved the "imaginary internet points" part :) – omerbp Jun 15 '15 at 19:44
  • Accept the most correct, well versed, readable answer possible. – GPPK Jun 16 '15 at 12:59
  • @GPPK That would be my version I think, but it does not benefit the other user for helping me... – omerbp Jun 16 '15 at 13:00
  • Such is the nature of Stack Overflow, although you can upvote them which would benefit them – GPPK Jun 16 '15 at 13:01
  • @GPPK I agree, upvoting in this case is a must. However accepting the other answer is not that clear (for me at least) – omerbp Jun 16 '15 at 13:05
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    Give the other guy a (50 point) bonus and accept your own answer. More expensive to you but it would fit all requirements - recognition for the answer that helped you, and the most helpful answer at the top of the list. – Floris Jun 16 '15 at 13:05
  • Does this answer your question? Accepting, upvoting and bountying my own answer? – AGuyCalledGerald Jan 8 '20 at 13:51

You can definitively accept any answer including yours : you accept the answer that better fits your needs or was the most helpful. If no answer seems ok, you are free to accept yours.

Here you clearly used an other answer to write yours. You can still do as you want, but it would be fair to accept the other answer : accepting yours will give you no reward, while accepting another one will give 15 rep to the poster, and it did help.

I think that you did exactly what had to be done :

  • you accepted the answer that helped more
  • you wrote a followup clearly stating that (Following @...'s great answer) to allow future readers to have more informations than what initial answer gave.

That means that you rewarded the user who helped you and add the maximum information to SO site.

Some may argue that you should accept the best answer which now is yours to direct future readers there. I personnally do not agree here : you as OP should accept the answer that helped you. The community may upvote your answer as being useful and well written (it is already at +2). Anyway, when searching for information on SO, I always read all upvoted answers because they can show different ways, and the way that best fitted OP's requirement will not always be the best for mine (and I often read others to look what bad ways should be avoided ...).

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    I totally agree, although if there weren't any rep consideration here, I would accept my own answer. The rep from the acceptance serves here as gratitude .... – omerbp Jun 15 '15 at 10:25
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    I don't think it's best to say "should accept the answer that helped you." One great thing about a QA forum is that questions are asked and answered that benefit more than just the people who ask them. – AdamMc331 Jun 15 '15 at 14:44
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    @McAdam331 that's the whole purpose for accepting answers. – Christopher Pearson Jun 15 '15 at 14:47
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    But shouldn't it be about accepting the best answer for the question? OP knows his question better than anyone, and if after a while he felt he was able to give the best solution to the problem, shouldn't that be known to other users? Isn't that why we are allowed to answer/accept our own answers in the first place? – AdamMc331 Jun 15 '15 at 14:49
  • I have done the same for a couple of my own questions. I accepted my answer, and upvoted the user I attributed much of my own answer to. – onebree Jun 15 '15 at 15:15
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    @McAdam331 The best answer (in theory) is voted for by the community, it is not for one person to decide what's best. A single person can only decide which answer helped him or her solve the problem. And if that person is the OP, they can use the accept button to express this. – biziclop Jun 15 '15 at 15:28
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    @McAdam331 : there a badge for that use case : Populist Highest scoring answer that outscored an accepted answer with score of more than 10 by more than 2x . That means that explicitely SO rules say that OP accepts the answer that help him and the community votes for the answer that seems best to the majority. – Serge Ballesta Jun 15 '15 at 15:54
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    @biziclop The problem with that idea is that by default - sadly - the accepted answer is still at the first position despite the community upvoting other answers much higher. So doing so will give a worse answer a much higher visibility. Obscuring the best answer to give someone a measly 15 rep strikes me as a very bad deal. – Voo Jun 16 '15 at 12:35
  • @Voo This might sound harsh, but I think anyone who only reads the first answer deserve to be misled. – biziclop Jun 16 '15 at 12:38
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    @biziclop By the same argument we shouldn't delete misleading answers either, because anybody who doesn't read the remaining answers deserves to be mislead. I'm sure we agree that the goal of this site is to promote useful knowledge and not to hand out pointless internet brownie points. – Voo Jun 16 '15 at 12:45
  • @Vox No, we couldn't use the same argument. A bad answer is a bad answer. We're talking about good answers here, with one being slightly more specific than the other. As has been pointed out in this answer, the more specific answer might not be the most useful in general. – biziclop Jun 16 '15 at 13:00
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    @Voo : The relative position of the accepted answer and the most upvoted is a different question that has been discussed here. The question got a score of 50 and Brad's answer 59 (for putting highest before accepted). IMHO it is not a valid reason for OP not to accept the answer that helped him. But you can try to reactivate the other question with upvotes and comments. – Serge Ballesta Jun 16 '15 at 13:11

I disagree with @Serge Ballesta here, which shows how subjective the topic is.

Personally, I would proceed as is:

  • Accept the answer that best fits the question, regardless of author
  • Up-vote, and potentially award a bounty to, any answer that was helpful
  • I totally agree. I wonder - will your answer be different the OP is 'poor' of "imaginary internet points"? – omerbp Jun 16 '15 at 14:03
  • @omerbp: No, in the end "imaginary internet points" are only an incentive to get the job done, so if we start altering our behavior because of them then they become noxious (they may already be...) – Matthieu M. Jun 16 '15 at 14:06
  • "they may already be..." - no doubt about that :) – omerbp Jun 16 '15 at 16:06

good coders read ALL the information, then use that to come up with their own solution. nothing wrong with voting yourself up... but the other person deserves credit for steering you in the right direction.... which with credit will steer others in the right direction too

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    Small typo? "nothing wrong with voting yourself up" -- You cannot upvote yourself; you can accept your own answer. – Frank Jun 15 '15 at 15:27
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    If I'm gonna read ALL the information before writing anything I won't be home before Christmas.. – nhaarman Jun 15 '15 at 17:22
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    sorry @frank. i think everyone else understands what i mean... i think... – James Walker Jun 15 '15 at 17:53
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    @nhaarman I think what James meant, is that he runs over the answer quickly, not necessarily read it all (am I right?)... Anyway, I wonder why this answer got downvoted that much – omerbp Jun 15 '15 at 19:24
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    @omerbp...correct! :) – James Walker Jun 15 '15 at 23:33

Personally I value your moral dilemma, and the decision to consult others about it.

The effects of accepting an answer

  • Accepting your own answer has no effect. To avoid misuse, self accepted answer does not gain reputation, and isn't promoted above other answers. The only thing is that the accepted icon will show next to the answer.
  • Accepting someone's else answer - His answer will be sorted first by default, and he will also gain 15 points.

What you should consider

Aspects you should probably consider:

  • Will it be helpful for future users that his answer will show first?
  • To a much lesser degree - will he benefit from the reputation boost?

There is a third option

Remember that besides accepting the original answer, or your answer, you can also choose not to accept any answer, and leave things as they are. In such a case answers will be sorted by default by the amount of votes.

  • I disagree that reputation should be a factor here. Maybe in FGITW situations where two people post similar answers at nearly the same time, but in a case like this, the answers should be substantially different enough to judge them only on their contents. As for not accepting anything, why would you self-answer a question if it wasn't an adequate solution to the problem? The only reason I could see to not accept a valid self-answer is if there was another better answer you wanted to accept instead. – John Montgomery Jan 8 '20 at 18:38
  • @JohnMontgomery, I mostly agree with your disagreement. The most important consideration is which answer is most helpful. I edited the answer accordingly. Accepting your own answer have any effect - so might as well be avoided. – Ben Carp Jan 8 '20 at 19:15
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    Your edit helps address my concern as well, the reason why I downvoted this shortly after it was posted. I appreciate that you've de-emphasized the "does the poster need the reputation?" consideration, but I think having it there at all is problematic. Posts should be evaluated in a vacuum, independently of the user who posted them. Reputation doesn't matter. All that matters is the usefulness of the answer itself, and whether you think others would benefit from it being pinned to the top of the page. – Cody Gray Mod Jan 8 '20 at 20:19
  • Overall, my perception of your original draft was that you were working too hard to outsmart or game the system. You are making it far too complicated. The only consideration there is is whether you believe your answer was the most useful to you, and whether you believe it will be the most useful to others in the future. Don't try to game the sort order. Pick the best answer, and let the system deal with the rest. (Agreed that not accepting any answer is always a valid option, though, and one too many people don't know to exercise.) – Cody Gray Mod Jan 8 '20 at 20:20

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