When a user with a very low accept rate posts a new question, is it OK to comment, suggesting that the user accept some answers to other questions to raise their accept rate?

I am not suggesting commenting instead of answering the question (though I understand that some users would be less inclined to work on answers for questions by users with very low accept rates). The particular question I'm thinking of, I have already answered.

Or is this not really a good practice, since such a comment is not really about the question at hand?

(This relates to but is not the same as: Is it okay to ask a user to accept an answer for his/her question?)

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1 Answer

up vote 10 down vote accepted

People who aren't accepting answers aren't using the site correctly. Sometimes this is because they forget they have open questions, some times they just don't know that's what they're supposed to do.

I'm generally okay with people prompting others to get on top of their open questions. Just do it politely and with a hint of an explanation as to what that means and why it matters. Link to a help page where possible so you're not writing an entire manual for the site in each comment.

I say "generally okay" because I've seen some people (on other SE sites) being quite rude about it. There's no need to be obnoxious about it.

And it also might help if you check some of their open questions before posting the comment. I've left comments only to find out that the answers on their questions are dud and they're doing the right thing by not accepting them.

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Would a pro-forma comment be useful here? –  WarriorIng64 Nov 30 '11 at 15:52
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@WarriorIng64 Yes. I've added a quick one to the end of Jorge's answer. –  Oli Dec 1 '11 at 0:07
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