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With the voting debate going on, I'd like to make a related point:

Please do not prematurely accept answers.

As much as I love getting the tick mark, it is a signal that tells the community that a question is adequately answered. It also tells everyone that the reputation reward for the best answer has been given away.

Prematurely accepting an answer makes it less likely that other, possibly better answers will ever being written or posted.

Prematurely accepting an answer lowers the chance that it will be voted upon (as less users will even follow the link to a question that has an accepted answer).

Please wait at least three days* before accepting an answer as the best one.

That way, a healthy discussion can emerge, with several completely different answers giving a more complete picture from different perspectives, while the question will remain of interest to voters.

This will also help us improve our answer ratio.

**I recon three days is adequate, but it's a subjective thing. Go ahead and discuss this if you disagree!*

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    \$\begingroup\$ Accepting an answer doesn't prevent new answers to be written, it just makes it less likely. \$\endgroup\$
    – svick
    Oct 11, 2012 at 23:10
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    \$\begingroup\$ Well, I don't know about the rest of the CR community, but I do on occasion review answered posts and add my two cents if I find something worth adding. You may not get the acceptance points, but you may still get upvotes. After all, activity on a question, even those with accepted answers, is still registered with the feed, meaning people will notice and may investigate. Besides, there's been more than one question I've answered late on and gotten as much upvotes, or more than, the accepted answer. \$\endgroup\$
    – mseancole
    Oct 12, 2012 at 4:55
  • \$\begingroup\$ @svick you're right, my phrasing was too harsh and a bit unclear. I've changed it. \$\endgroup\$
    – Adam
    Oct 12, 2012 at 7:37
  • \$\begingroup\$ Adding this for future reference : This question is mainly relevant for the questions of main site \$\endgroup\$
    – bhathiya-perera
    Aug 6, 2014 at 18:52

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