Why doesn't Yahoo penalize people for not awarding a best answer? Don't people tire of answering questions that are never given a BA?

It';s something which has been pointed out to staff many times since voting was abolished and unfortunately, just as predicted, the amount of questions which have a Best Answer awarded is pretty small & many people have seen their Best Answer %'s dip due to questions sitting around in limbo eternally (unless they go back and self-delete answers to questions with no BA's on them)

When voting was abolished I did a rough count for the first couple of weeks and I calculated that less than a third of the questions I answered resulted in someone coming back to award a Best Answer.

Many solutions have been suggested to staff using both the "carrot" and the "stick" approaches e.g.
- points penalising askers that don't award BA's
- making questions "cost" more points (and getting them back if they award a BA)
- publishing the BA award % on a profile (so answerers can see how often they award a BA)
- only allowing so many questions to remain "open" and otherwise the asker cannot ask more
- reqarding users with points incentives to award BA's
- having leaderboards for askers with how many questions they ask vs award BA's for

..... unfortunately none of them have been picked up by staff and we are left in this "limbo" status with no real assurance that anyone will ever look at an answer and/or reward it.

Because sometimes there is no best answers.

What if someone asked something like "What book should I read next? I have these 3 books" they list 3 books and users picked which book should be read next. How is the asker to pick best answer? There really is no best answer. Just an opinion.

I rarely ask questions because I mainly answer them to help others in mental health. But if I do ask a question it is most often asking others opinion on something.

What about situations where there is no good answer at all? You ask a question about an illness and how you will see a doctor tomorrow yet users reply "see a doctor". Again there is no best answer. People didn't read the question.

Askers shouldn't be penalized because answers don't give good answers. This is why I rarely ask questions.

I happen to have an open question going right now, and the reason why I haven't awarded a Best Answer is because I don't think I received even one GOOD answer. I know that isn't always the case, but if Y!A refuses to return to voting on undecided questions, I'd like to see them offer an option for something like "Question Closed without Best Answer."

it does with points

it costs points to ask questions


i would prefer to see a point incentive to close questions

Volunteers who offer their expertise on a regular basis already know they have provided the best answer. They eliminated the audience voting (which was how most of them were awarded) because the audience doesn't know enough about the subject to render a worthwhile opinion.

Perhaps yahoo doesn't care if a best answer is picked. Yahoo users do. They even let you answer a question once it is resolved. They didn't used to do that. Many people do get very tired of not seeing a best answer awarded to a question they have answered. For me, it is all about the information they got and not about the points or best answer leaderboards. If I feel they got the information they were looking for I am happy either way.