Is the bounty feature/process giving community users what they need?

Question

Maybe I like to ask questions more than provide answers as a UX designer (sorry, I do have a background in science so it is in my nature), but I saw that of the five bounties posted today I started 3 of them, which makes me wonder why people with more points are not using bounties more to push the boundaries of discussion.

I am not sure exactly why people with lower reputation don't use it as much, but it is not as if people with more reputation use it much either. So I am wondering why there aren't there more bounties and responses to bounty questions, and if this feature is actually providing users with what they are looking for?

Answer 1

I've looked over all the bounties that have been awarded this year, to see who awards them, what rep they currently have (to see how new the user is) and how often they've offered bounties.

• Expressing brand personality in the UI with animation (Original question Poster (OP) - 3k Rep)
• Should an API documentation include When-to-use and when-not-to-use list? (OP - 1.2k Rep)
• Button for "Play, but from beginning" for a scrubber UX (OP - 0.7k Rep)
• How to tell user if they are offline or online? (OP 1.2k Rep - 2nd Bounty)
• How to explain that choice of UI library and framework should be made after the design of user experience (OP - 1.2k Rep - 3rd Bounty)
• suggestions for dealing with multi-dimensional hierarchical data (OP - .05k Rep - bounty not awarded)
• Why is the settings icon either associated with gears or a wrench + screwdriver (OP 7k Rep) - YOU
• How best to present origin in a hierarchical settings structure (OP - 0.08k Rep)
• Should an order tracker timeline be in chronological or reverse chronological order? (OP - 1.5k Rep)
• Do Samsung's Marshmallow skin Quick toggles have enough contrast? (OP - 0.7k Rep)
• A UI/UX developer with color-blindness. Good or Bad idea or maybe a challenge? - (OP - 0.5k Rep)
• Is there any place to get browser and version usage by industry? (Not Op - 7k Rep) - YOU
• Voting for "winners" after a fantasy sports draft (Not Op - 1.4k) - 2nd Bounty
• Recommended research articles or best practices for UI techniques for encouraging users to explore more functions of a complex application? (Not Op - 1.4k) - 3rd Bounty
• Arrowless tooltip: Usability? - (Not Op - 1.4k) - 4th Bounty

So, there have been 15 bounties awarded this year.

There are a 3 users who have offered multiple bounties (including yourself).

The majority of bounties were offered by the OP (i.e. the person asking the question) and in all but 2 cases the bounty has been awarded to an answer.

Bounties have been awarded by users with reputation of 101 (before bounty) up until around 3,000 rep (7,000 if you include yourself).

With the volume of questions we get I don't think this is a bad set of stats really. Looks like bounties crop up on average once per week, and are being awarded by a variety of users, new and old.