In theory, the system's "economics" encourage askers to accept an answer, as askers with low acceptance rates will receive fewer quality responses (and often co

In theory, the system's "economics" encourage askers to accept an answer, as askers with low acceptance rates will receive fewer quality responses (and often comments reiterating the phenomenon). But there's little incentive for drive-by askers with no engagement with the community, such as it is, to choose an answer; a consequence of SO's growing popularity is that these users comprise the largest group (901K users with between 1 and 200 reputation). There should probably be some mechanism by which moderators or other trusted users can, after a time, accept an answer for such abandoned questions. Perhaps questions thus answered would be treated slightly differently (and identified differently in the UI); the original asker could always return and override the proxy acceptance.