What is the best practice for accepting answers during the private beta?

Question

This question is in response to a couple of comments I've gotten asking me to accept answers for questions I've asked. In this beta (and a couple other ones), I've personally avoided accepting answers during the private beta to give others a chance to flesh things out once it's opened to the public. At that point, I'll go back and accept all the answers I'm satisfied with.

But since I've gotten a couple critiques so far on this beta I thought I'd ask, what's the recommended way to handle accepting answers during private beta? Do StackExchange people have any advice (it seems like the "% accepted" statistic only starts appearing several days into the private beta)?

Answer 1

In general, my advice is "pick the one that you want as soon as you want."

If you feel like a question has been fully answered by a given answer, choose that as accepted. If you feel like the topic has a lot more to depth to it and you want to wait until more answers come in, feel free to not accept an answer.

Also, if you feel the question is not getting the attention that it desires and you're looking for a more complete answer, you can wait until public beta and then post a bounty on it. Posting a bounty gives you different reasons for the bounty, including the desire to have a canonical answer or to draw attention to the question.

Ultimately, the little green checkbox merely means that you find the answer useful. It doesn't necessarily confer "rightness" to the answer, merely usefulness. So, please don't feel any pressure to wait for the "right" answer. On the other hand, don't feel pressured to choose one that you feel doesn't answer your question.

Just pick the one you want, as soon as you want to.

Answer 2

I'm reluctant to accept until the public beta has started. I'm still upvoting the good ones, of course!

Some answers are complete enough to accept even now. It should be up to the judgement of each private beta participant who asks a question.

Answer 3

If an answer is definitive and the votes and comments it gets or the references it provides indicate that is the case then I won't hesitate to accept a good answer.

If the above are lacking I don't accept. For instance if an answer seems to be somebody's assumption or comments refute it or I can't follow links to read more about it then I might not accept. I also might not accept a one-liner that lacks details even if it seems correct in case a more fleshed out correct answer also comes in.

And of course don't forget, you can change the accepted answer! It doesn't hurt anything besides the originally accepted answer's author's ego and reputation score to accept a better answer that comes along later.