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Community: The bounty time is just too short

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    So, I've been using MathOverflow for a long time now and there are a lot of opinions that I could express about a lot of things. I know that there is even more than one gripe about bounty questions. However, there is ONE problem that is the most glaring for me: The bounty time is just too short. A 7-day bounty makes sense for programmers who need to get something done on their professional time scale. It does not make sense for mathematicians. Yes, an adjustable time period for a bounty could be interesting. Yes, there are also other irritating aspects of the bounty system. The problem with these other points is that they invite the answer that the SO people are too busy with other matters to work on MO software.

    Would it be possible to simply change the bounty time period to a month? I don't know how it can be a hard thing for the SO people to change. I don't know whether a month is an optimal or approximately optimal period of time. But as a matter of common sense, for a math question it's a big improvement over a week, and it is a nice simple suggestion. Or even two weeks, if you wanted to be conservative.
    • CommentAuthorMariano
    • CommentTimeOct 14th 2010
     

    (I wonder how long are we going to stay in this strange state in which MO is immutable! There is so much that Anton can do by editing CSS.)

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    It seems fair to me that we could ask. There's a good chance that changing the length of the bounty takes less time than writing a reply email explaining why it can't be done.
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    As long as the object file (executable) is compiled in some fairly standard ways, you can tweak the executable directly. It's a rather painstaking skill but if you have some idea of what you're looking for it can be done fairly easy. If we knew that SE was written in C++ using a specific time library then you'd have a sense for what format to search for "7 days" in the executable, you could then change the data in the executable directly. That's perhaps an extreme possibility, but I'm just putting it out there -- nothing is impossible when it comes to software.
    • CommentAuthorMariano
    • CommentTimeOct 14th 2010
     

    @Ryan, but (as fas as I understand the situation) we do not have access to the executable. The fact that google likes to write code in python does not make it any easier to modify google's behaviour.

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    To clarify Mariano's explanation to Ryan, for any other bystanders: the Stack Exchange people do all the hosting for us, and the software is completely inaccessible, beyond the fact that we can insert custom javascript into the served pages.

    We've been told that the Stack Exchange 1.0 software is frozen except for critical bug fixes. On the other hand, we all expected to hear from the Stack Exchange people long ago about the process of transitioning 2.0, and perhaps it's time to start bugging them about small features like this, in the hope that it prompts some movement.

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    Oh. I didn't realize (forgot?) that they host the site, too. Hmm.

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