Note: This is a follow-up of Why can't I just offer a bounty for a question right off the bat? which was asked about 13 years ago.
Important: This is posted on meta SO on purpose (as opposed to meta SE) because SO has a huge question volume when compared to virtually all other communities and the bounty delay particularly affects SO
As a user with some experience on SO, I find very frustrating the fact that I need to wait for two days to be able to bounty a question. Before writing a question I had already tried several things and talked to at least one colleague. Besides this writing, the question takes some time because I am trying to include all the trials and results.
I don't remember how things moved in programming back in 2009, but in 2022 waiting 48 hours to place a bounty sounds like a very long time:
- a question is pushed below way faster due to a high volume of questions
- after making an effort to help others, it would be nice for one to spend a fraction of the points to get help in a timely manner
- the number of unanswered questions is far from being negligible (as opposed to the 10% back in 2009)
- the number of questions with bounties is only a tiny fraction of the total unanswered ones in a week: less than 100 out of more than 20K. This means that any claimed problematic effect of using more bounties is virtually insignificant.
My proposal is to reduce the bounty waiting period to 12h or less. This should satisfy the initial rationale (the assumption that instant bounties would create some sort of bad economy) and also allow a person to raise awareness for a particularly important question for them.
I know this is very similar to this and this, but both questions fail to provide a solid rationale about why a change would be needed.
Addressing feedback: I am not asking for no wait on bounties, but a great reduction in time. Most of the so-called duplicates suggest no wait time and worse than that, they provide no rationale about why not having a bounty wait time is important.