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I have a question that I asked about two years ago. It got two answers, one of which was my own. The other was also helpful (and got an upvote from me). Since then I have been occasionally researching the topic from time to time and have recently discovered some critical piece of lore. I edited my self-answer with this extra information and I believe in its current state it objectively answers the question in a factual manner. (I believe it is almost impossible to improve on the answer any longer.)

The answer is now fully satisfactory, and I would honestly accept it had it been written by someone else. Yet I feel uncomfortable accepting my own answer. Is there a way to pass the right to accept answers to another user or a group of users?

Generally speaking, is it considered bad etiquette to accept your self-answer? Is there a way to handle this delicately (beyond leaving the question with no accepted answer)?

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This sounds like an ideal case for accepting your own answer. Go ahead.

To answer your questions:

Is there a way to pass the right to accept answers to another user or a group of users?

There is not. You retain sole agency over the accepted answer. Not even diamond moderators can change or set an accepted answer on your behalf.

Generally speaking, is it considered bad etiquette to accept your self-answer?

It is not. Doing so is totally OK.

FYI: When a querent accepts an answer they wrote themselves, the answer isn't pinned to the top like usual. Instead it's just sorted in regular vote order. This means your self-accepted answer wouldn't appear on top anyway unless the community thought it was good.

Is there a way to handle this delicately (beyond leaving the question with no accepted answer)?

It doesn't need delicate handling; it's fine. It's not a delicate thing. You did well, and past-you would have accepted that answer. You can accept it now. The only kind of handling it really needs is to act in good faith about it, which you're doing.

I'm concerned you'd be worried where you sit regarding good faith or bad faith usage of the checkmark, so let me illustrate what bad faith means here with a specific behaviour pattern we see from time to time: bad-faith visitors sometimes come by to ask questions fishing for a very specific (but wrong) answer: they want to win an argument or have their way in a game or something like that, and they want us to back up their side, but that's not our business. Our business is correct/good answers and they get upset at us when we provide those and they're not the stance they want to hear. They'll argue with anyone and everyone for days about it, insisting every answer is wrong and should be “fixed” to represent the querent's desired stance. Sometimes, after days of arguing with us inevitably fails, they'll leave their own answer with the stance they wanted and accept it, and because it's wrong and they're being a jerk they'll subsequently get downvoted to oblivion.

If that's a yardstick for bad-faith behaviour with using the self-accept button, you're nowhere near it. You just have a good answer, you've neutrally assessed it's pretty good, and you've done legwork to get it into that shape. Feel free to accept it.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Hey doppelgreener, in the goodfaith / badfaith area, something I quite like to do with self-accepting is give the reason the I felt the other answer(s) didn't quite earn the checkmark whereas my own one did. So in @ZwiQ 's case I'd likely add a comment to the other answer saying what he has put here "Good answer UserX, but after researching this even further over the past few years I've found SourceZ that answers the question exactly so I'm giving that the check. Upvoted this one though as it was certainly useful." - OTT for some maybe but I think it is nice to let others know your rational. \$\endgroup\$ Sep 12, 2019 at 14:36
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    \$\begingroup\$ @RyanfaeScotland: I added a comment in accordance with your suggestion. :-) \$\endgroup\$
    – ZwiQ
    Sep 12, 2019 at 14:45
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    \$\begingroup\$ @RyanfaeScotland Sometimes that can be helpful, sometimes it isn't. Accepting your own answer doesn't necessarily have to be justified to anyone. If it's the more upvoted one then the community already supports it as the best answer, for example. \$\endgroup\$ Sep 12, 2019 at 14:48
  • \$\begingroup\$ Yeah for sure, just throwing it out there as something that is nice to do but you can certainly gauge on a per question basis if it is warranted / useful or not (or even worse is just going to draw you into an argument). In my eyes, the only things necessary in SE are the things that are literally necessary (i.e. you gotta have rep to comment, edits gotta be more than 6 characters, etc.) everything else is optional and I'm just throwing explanatory comments out there as one of those nice to do extras. :) \$\endgroup\$ Sep 12, 2019 at 15:55

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