Question: > 
> **Possible Duplicate:**  
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> [How does accept rate work?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/16721/how-does-accept-rate-work) 
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I normally post questions on stackoverflow relating to my programming work, but sometimes the nature of the problem does not make for a speedy solution.

In most cases, if I can't get an answer right away on stackoverflow, I'll come up with a solution or work around to the problem on my own some time after posting the question. This means that I no longer need answers and cannot actually accept any answers as having solved the problem because none did. When this happens I generally delete the question.

Is this a bad thing? (I believe I saw something about someone getting their account deleted for doing this). Does this improve my accept rate?

Mathematically, I believe the accept rate is calculated based on total questions vs accepted answers. So as I figure it, if I have one less unanswered question on one side of that scale, surely the accept percentage should increase...

Answer: 
No, it won't help your accept rate, unanswered questions are not counted there.

When you come up with the answer to a question yourself, just post that answer and accept it. All future visitors that come to your question will benefit from the solution. Nobody benefits if you delete the questions.
Accept rate is not really something you should worry about. It's a flawed metric at best. Did you accept answers for all the questions where that answer was helpful or correct? Great. You've done just fine. Even if that would (theoretically) mean that your accept rate is 10%. Of course, if most of your questions go unanswered, perhaps your questions can be improved. But that's besides the point. 

If you've managed to answer your own question, good for you. Well done. Go ahead and answer your own question. You are explicitly encouraged to do so. The questions you ask here are ideally not only for your own benefit, but for that of others as well. As a result, adding an answer is a good thing as well. 

Whatever you do, don't delete your questions. Or, at the very least don't do so with great frequency. That only signals that you ask bad questions to begin with. And while the exact details are not know to us, this does seem to factor in to a possible automatic question ban. That is certainly something you would want to avoid. 

All that being said, unanswered questions don't factor in to the accept rate. So in that sense deleting them does not help your rate along anyway.