We've got a slight issue that will take some dev involvement, a hack, or just us settling for a significantly less than optimal solution.
The problem: A user posted a bounty on this question with pretty clear intentions as to how it should be awarded. He then requested his account be deleted which leaves the bounty in limbo, and unable to go to the requested answer automatically as it was not posted during the bounty period.
Possible Solutions: Caleb and I have talked about 3 possible solutions:
The Dev intervention: This is the primary purpose of this post. We'd like to petition an SE dev to award the bounty manualy, respecting the wishes of the OP in placing the bounty.
The Hack: We place a dummy answer on the post, ask people to upvote it and delete the answer and then start a new bounty to manually award the bounty to the existing answer that should be awarded. This answer is suboptimal and breaks the system.
Just Leave it Alone: We let the system work and just leave the question alone, half the bounty is either awarded to a new answer with upvotes or the bounty is lost. This is suboptimal, but requires the least breaking of the system.
Anyways, feel free to chime in with other suggested solutions, or comment on the solutions we've presented.
