I have seen many new users post many questions and they get answers for it... They often forget to mark the correct answers.... How to tell new users with 0% accept rate to improve it?

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7  
With a blunt object? –  perbert Apr 5 '10 at 8:09
 
Related: meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/34922/… –  Jon Seigel Apr 5 '10 at 17:33
 
possible duplicate of meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/23321/… –  Jon Seigel Apr 5 '10 at 17:35
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3 Answers

up vote 5 down vote accepted

If at all, politely would be my keyword. Snarky comments about accept rates will often be removed. Personally I see this more as one of those "discovery" things (a bit like the badges) - so it'll happen automatically in many cases.

Until then, upvotes from other users go a long way to acknowledgement of a good answer.

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+1. On this occasion, I apologize for the tons of my rant and BS about accept rate, which Marc had to remove. Being polite works a lot better. –  Pavel Shved Apr 5 '10 at 10:50
 
@Pavel - did I? I honestly didn't notice. –  Marc Gravell Apr 5 '10 at 12:56
 
-1, good answer, but doesn't include instructions, which are (unfortunately) necessary for many new users –  Pops May 17 '10 at 14:11
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I think it should depend on what acceptance rate they have. If a user has 0%, it's likely that they just don't know how SO works and didn't realize they have to accept an answer for previous question. In that case I usually post something like this:

@user: please revisit your previously asked questions and accept some answers. You can do this by clicking the check/tick mark to the left of the answer just below the votes. Other users are more likely to answer a question if they see a high acceptance rate.

If the accept rate is above 0% but below a certain amount, I usually write something like:

@user: please revisit your previously asked questions and accept some answers. You have currently marked x questions as answered out of a possible y.

I think it's best to stay polite, but sometimes you can't help yourself when a user has accepted 2 out of a possible 37 questions :-)

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Mostly people leave comment suggesting to accept answers for other questions. I have seen it work in a few cases.

Other than that, if there is no compelling reason to accept answers, nothing will persuade them to do so.

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Right. It's surprising how often the new user couldn't figure out how to accept an answer. –  Charles Stewart Apr 5 '10 at 8:03
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