The "set a bounty" dialog kept disappearing

Question

I posted Can VMware Workstation Player be connected to my "Intel 4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller" card? and, as it got one "sanity check" comment but no other response, started a bounty. (I do not see the question as such to be interesting to discuss here; I gave a link so that moderators have a narrower field to investigate.)

What did happen that's relevant here is that the UI to set a bounty was inadvertently dismissed four or five times before posting; I ended up composing in vim and copying/pasting.

There were two things that might (or might not) be relevant:

First of all, I had a comment open to reply to the previous (sanity check) comment.

Second of all, I was switching screens on a single computer to manually type a copy of the guest OS warning from the hosts computer, and I eventually got all of what I intended:

Running in software rendering mode

Cinnamon is currently running without any video hardware acceleration and, a s a result, you may observe much higher than normal CPU usage.

This could be a problem with your drivers or some other issue. For best experiences, it is recommended that you only use this mode for troubleshooting purposes.

This message required several trips before I had copied the whole phrase, and I may have dragged my feet through more of the UI than someone just composing and writing without consulting external sources. None the less, whatever I did triggered the removal of the dialog quite a few times, and it is noteworthy to me that my partially entered text always vanished, every time.

I have the note and bounty message I intended to post (if I had to do it over again I would mark where the quotation began and ended), so I've got what I need. However, it might be worth investigating that it is apparently easy enough to accidentally dismiss the dialog, and unless there is strong enough reason to do otherwise, make the dialog stateful enough to remember what the user had entered in to it before.

Answer 1

Your problem is twofold. You are misusing the "why are you posting a bounty" comment box, and you are putting your information in the wrong place.

By trying to insert a lot of information into the "post bounty" box you are essentially missing the point of the notice and the ability to edit your question.

The "post bounty" reason should not contain information that should be in your question. What it should contain is a short and simple "I posted this bounty to get more attention" or "The answers I got were not good enough" or something similarly quick and succinct. Actual information about your problem should go in your question.

The bounty notice is transient, it will disappear when your bounty is awarded. This means that any information on your problem that is in that notice will vanish. This is a Bad Thing (tm) as future users will not be able to see how or why you got the answers you did.

The reason the bounty box is disappearing is likely because you are clicking elsewhere on the page, and in this case I'd have to say that the design is intentional and good. It gave you several chances to look at it and see that it is a transitory box and that it is not somewhere you should be writing an essay about your problem. Places where important information goes are very rarely transitory and often require an "ok", "submit" or "cancel" click to dismiss them. Case in point: the edit screen requires you to save or cancel changes to get back to the question or answer.

You really should edit the information in that bounty box into your question. One of the standard bounty reasons such as "this question did not receive enough attention" would have been clearer to state why you were posting a bounty.