I offered a bounty for clarifying the confusion in the answers & comments to the question "Simple, closed geodesics in 𝕊^3 manifoldSimple, closed geodesics in 𝕊^3 manifold." I've just been notified that my bounty will be "auto-awarded":
![BountyNotice][1]
It seems it will be awarded to Igor Rivin's answer, which was extremely useful and appropriately upvoted, but (as he would readily admit, I think) does not satisfy the bounty, and in fact, was the trigger for my offering a bounty.
So will the software automatically award a bounty in this case where it has clearly not be met? Are matters out of my control?
'Tis not a big deal in the end—Igor and I are professional friends—but it seems strange that I lose control of determining if the bounty has been met.
**Addendum**. In the end, the bounty was not auto-awarded as Stefan correctly predicted, because, in this case, Igor's upvoted answer was posted *before* I established the bounty (or because of François's kind intervention—not sure which). Still, I think that "auto-awarding" a bounty is a flaw in the bounty procedures, and I will never use a bounty again until the rules are changed. It seems inappropriate that software should decide whether or not a bounty is satisfied.
I am therefore tagging this as a "bug," recognizing this is perhaps a controversial use of that term.
