This site needs a more prominent "Mark As Answer" function
The number of questions that are not marked solved here is very high, IME. And the reason is, I believe, that the Mark As Answer function is an nondescript check mark in a circle. The number of questioners here with 1-1-1 karma is high, indicating that many of them are unfamiliar with this site's intricacies. They simply don't know how to, or even that they can or should, mark a good answer as such. Most of the "Answers", it seems, have been marked so after the fact by regular members.
And so, the feedback is low, and that is not a good thing. Consequently a lot of the regulars here include a tag line instructing the questioners how to mark an answer. But that adds clutter and should not be necessary.
The answer is quite simple. The answer function needs a more prominent display, including accompanying text explaining how to mark an Answer.
I first thought to raise this issue at the bugs site, but there is no Website category that I could see, so here it is.
Seconded. I shall do this with my questions
Yes, yes, yes, and yes. In general the "voting culture" here is pretty poor. Perhaps that's to be expected in an "isolated" Q&A site, but the lack of feedback hampers quality assurance on content (IMO). In the absence of a "Meta" site, there is at least a "meta" tag, and I've added it to your helpful post.
"...including accompanying text explaining how to mark an Answer." On my system (but not on all systems, I'm told), mouse over the check mark shows "mark this answer as correct (click again to undo)."
@David - I agree, it affects the quality of the interactions here, and also the motivation to answer questions. This is no small matter, in my view.
@Jim_K - you're right. Strange, I tried that the other day, same machine and browser, and got nothing. But IAC, I don't think it's enough advertising.
Perhaps the site could allow "community acceptance" via an algorithm. If an answer receives X number of upvotes by users or SUM(karma of all upvoters) > Y, the answer is automatically marked as the correct one, even if the original asker is long gone and never coming back to accept an answer because all they wanted was a quick solution, and they don't care about the community (which to be honest is a normal human behavior, nothing malevolent or rude).