Is it acceptable to solicit bounty for unanswered questions?

Question

As I've stated in a previous post, I've asked a number of unanswered (or in one case, sparsely answered) questions. For example:

• How can we calculate the benefit gained from taping glider wing roots?
• What are the implications of building a private airfield in the United States?
• Where can I find more information about my grandfather's crashed B-18a bomber on Mt. Redoubt Alaska?
• Why is it not practical for the USN T-45 to be fitted with oxygen systems used in other trainers?

Since I'm new to the site and not really an expert in anything related to aviation, I'm still a bit low in the reputation area, so sparing some to post a bounty would be punitive. However, I see members with well more than 25k of bounty and I don't think the extra buys you anything accept perhaps a place on a ranking sheet.

So, my question is, is it acceptable, either here in meta, in chat or as a comment to the original question to ask that someone post a bounty on my behalf. Since getting some of these questions answered (especially the two with nine votes) would only benefit the database of information we are building here, I would think yes. However, I can also see a case for the argument on the other side.

Note: Less anyone think so, this post is not a clever ploy to get someone to do the very thing I'm asking about :-) Instead, this is an attempt to ask first and get buy off instead of acting without asking and getting slapped down in the process.

Answer 1

No, begging people to bounty your question for you is frowned upon and may well have the opposite effect: people downvote your questions, which reduces their visibility and your rep.

Bounties are to allow people who have contributed a lot to the site to increase the visibility of their questions, as a reward. They're also a way for those people to encourage and reward individual newer users, by bountying questions that have already been answered well. If you want to get this, you'll just have to increase the contribution you make to the site.

You don't need to be an aviation expert to contribute and increase your reputation points. If you ask questions that other people think are helpful and well-researched, people will upvote them and you'll get more reputation points. If you find a question that interests you, you can research it yourself and post an answer - even if you didn't know before. If you make helpful edits to questions and answers to improve them, or to the tag wiki, then you'll also get reputation for that.

Finally, spending reputation points on bounty may not be a way to achieve your goals. The answer rate on this site is pretty high, so if your questions don't get answered, it may be for some reason that a bounty won't fix. For example, they may be broad or vague, and people don't want to spend effort writing an answer that won't satisfy you. (I think the "private airfield" question falls into this category, and your slightly condescending comment to the person who tried to answer won't encourage others to think they can write an answer you'll be happy with.) People may simply not know the answer. (e.g. "Has anyone seen an accident site at this location?") You can already spend some of your reputation on a bounty, but it may simply not help.