How is 'Accept Rate' calculated?

[rverschoor]

I assume the Accept Rate is an indication how often I accept an answer on my questions.
People asking questions but not accepting any answers either means they ask unclear questions, or just don't bother accepting any answer.
The result is that they get a low Accept Rate, and people will bother less with supplying an answer as it's probably a waste of time and karma.

My user profile shows I have a 50% Accept Rate.
I've only asked 1 question, and did accept one of its answers, so I'd expect my Accept Rate would be 100%.
Is my understanding of Accept Rate wrong, or is there a problem with the calculation?

[Jeremy Largman · Accepted solution]

So this is how it's supposed to work:

(number of your questions asked that you've accepted) / (number of answered questions)

The unanswered questions shouldn't count against you (and this appears to be working correctly with 'N/A' for new users).

Obviously it's borked. Sorry everyone! Together with the karma bug we had a couple misses in this latest release.

I'll post updates over on ANSWERS-585.

Update: ANSWERS-585 is fixed (as is the karma bug). And, @Joanne - yes! Drinks are on me...

[Jo-Anne MacLeod]

Jeremy does that mean that you that you owe us a drink at the Summit. :)

[Jeremy Largman]

Oh and by the way, there is some caching involved, which explains why some pages update more quickly than others. Caching doesn't help the confusion around how it's being miscalculated...

[rverschoor]

Looks like it's already fixed.
Great work :)

[JamieA]

Not quite, your accept rate is showing as 150%.

[Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]]

How can the accept rate be 150%? Because you asked 2 questions and accepted 3 answers? I have 7 questions asked and accepted 7 answers. My accept rate is 37%!!

[rverschoor]

So it does...

[JamieA]

It's gone back to 100% now, maybe caching at play. The caching needs to have some smarts to top out at 100% to avoid confusion.

[Jeremy Largman]

It's not fixed yet in production. We have it fixed in our dev environment. The fluctuation is indeed related to caching.

I'll post here once it's fixed in production - shouldn't be more than a day or two at most to get it rolled out.

[Ramiro Pointis]

In case you have a question with multiple answers, it lows your rate if you only have one answer marked as correct?

[Ramiro Pointis]

Glad to know it is working pretty well now :)

[Jeremy Largman]

Just adding a comment as well - this is fixed.

[james18080]

Your arIn fact, you played. I know. You are very good...
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[NikE]

Yup - it is a bug. The bug report is here: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/ANSWERS-585

I, personally, think this is a great way to nudge people into excepting answers, but right now it needs some work.

[Ramiro Pointis]

Yes, I've been trying to understand how is it working but a think it is very buggy.

Here it is my best solution:

It should count the number of answers in the questions, but only count one answer, beacuse sometimes appear answer that in fact are only comments, and if a question has 0 answers it doesn't count. Sometimes there are more than 1 correct answer so if the percentage is greater than 100 then it is 100. Something like that :)

[JamieA]

Something is buggy, because when I accepted an answer today my rate went down, and someone else reported an accept rate of 113%.

[NikE]

Okay, I agree Jamie, you should have >50% and it is only giving 31%. I will see what is going on and get this resolved.

[JamieA]

There seems to be a problem with the calculation. It's not working in any of the multiple ways that people expect it to.

[NikE]

I believe your understanding is correct...but now it is right as you asked this question, which you haven't accepted an answer on. It is a brand new feature, so I will be keeping an eye on it. If you get a chance, can you accept an answer on this question and we can see if it pops up to 100% ?

[rverschoor]

It gets even weirder...
My signature in this question showed 34%.
My user profile page also showed 34%.

I then edited Nik's comment to fix some typos which might confuse people reading his answer.
Now my signature and user profile show 50% again...

The 50% for my only question was incorrect.
The shortly shown 34% was incorrect.
The 50% it now shows is correct, as this question is still unanswered.

I'll accept this answer and see what happens...

[Jo-Anne MacLeod]

You will also have (apparently) a low accept rate, if you ask a question and find your own answer and document it. In this case the system doesn't mark it as accepted so it counts against you. You need to answer your own quesiton, and then accept your own answer.

[rverschoor]

...and minutes later my sig shows 67% and my profile 50%.
<insert your favorite rageface>

[rverschoor]

I've accepted Nik's answer.
My sig shows 50%, my profile shows 67%.
I smell a bug.. want me to raise a JAC?