A question is considered answered when it is either accepted or has an up voted answer. I therefore don't see the real problem. Further to this...
- Green tick marks indicate the usefulness to the original asker for their specific use case.
- Votes indicate the accurate and correct solution as indicated by the community.
I have to admit I struggle to understand why it is so important for users to get their answer accepted, when getting votes for it is way more effective.
Write a good answer, it will gather votes, and will seriously make the little +15 an accepted answer gets you irrelevant. I have a lot of questions that has never been accepted, yet it didn't take me very long to gain reputation on votes alone.
As for past discussions, please review my above description of the difference between accepting an answer and votes as to why it is declined so often.
FYI: I stopped answering questions when I reached around 5k reputation. I reached 10k solely on up-votes from existing answers, and although it doesn't happen often any more, I still gain reputation from those up votes, while the accepted answers maybe account for 5% of my total reputation and never ever affected it again.