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This is meant to be a community resource, not a resource for any one specific situation. However, in the end, the asker is accepting the answer, which will relate to his take on the question. If there is more than one good/correct answer, what is the responsibility of the accepter to accept an answer.

On my question Must Compels be negative in FATE, looking at it in hindsight, I think the answer is based on who is running the game, and the flavour of fate that is being run, so yes and no are both valid answers, and there are two very good explanations of the reasonings behind them. I accepted the answer from @SevenSidedDie because it seemed right to me, but the answer from @Jadasc was also valid after talking to him about it, and his edits.

What is my responsibility in accepting an answer?

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Your responsibility is to accept the answer that most helps you. It's basically a way of marking for future visitors that "I went this way."

That said, I've seen a number of ways of dealing with two (or more) very closely competing answers:

  • Accept one answer, but upvote the other (effectively splitting "the points" for the answer).

  • Add a comment to the accepted answer linking to the runner up.

  • Add a comment to the runner up, indicating that you feel that it also does a good job of answering the question in a different manner than the one you accepted.

  • Edit one answer to include the other (if both seem incomplete).

  • Post your own composite answer, integrating multiple other answers.

This situation is one of the driving forces behind the voting system. Even if you pick "wrong" on your accepted answer, the community still has the opportunity to weigh in, and vote the competing answer up.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Always make sure to up-vote good answers... your votes are free to use, and allow you to provide positive re-enforcement for good answers. \$\endgroup\$
    – Simon Withers
    Commented Nov 6, 2011 at 2:03
  • \$\begingroup\$ All good approaches. Don't let indecision prevent you from marking one as accepted; low accept rates may even hinder people from answering your later questions (it's often a sign of someone who drops a question and doesn't bother waiting around for answers). \$\endgroup\$
    – mxyzplk
    Commented Nov 23, 2011 at 14:39
  • \$\begingroup\$ So lets say we have a system-recommendation question and one answer lists a bunch of systems, several of which (but not all) work, and another answer lists one system which works as well. Is it bad form to copy-paste part of someone's answer into and edited version of someone else's answer? My instinct is to just post my own answer but copy-paste the relevant answers together as one post. What's acceptable/standard practice here? \$\endgroup\$
    – doctorw0rm
    Commented Sep 19, 2014 at 3:23
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    \$\begingroup\$ @doctorw0rm As the question asker, you should accept the answer with the system you actually used. I don't think that editing in a tangential system is likely to be helpful for system-recommendation questions. If you want to create a comprehensive list for some reason, other sites create a Community Wiki answer to gather list questions into a more organized answer. \$\endgroup\$
    – AceCalhoon
    Commented Sep 19, 2014 at 13:23
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Reward one (or both) of the answers with a bounty

When you choose to start a bounty you can select:

Reward an existing answer

You can reward 50 - 400 of your own rep to another user with an exceptional answer.

You can even give a bounty to both answers, but be careful because the second bounty must be twice the amount of the first bounty.

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