i see Solution as a decoration of help. Helping is what this forum is all about, but also being happy to have helped and maybe get a little gratitude for it. People coming here to ask for help and getting help and then decorating themselves with the solution is as weird as it is unnecessary.
can we maybe lock selecting yourself ?
I rather see it as a forum moderation or organization tool for the original poster/author to signal to other forum members that their question or inquiry has been answered and can be archived. I don’t care if they mark one of their own replies as solution, but I get how it can be frustrating, depending on where you stand.
There are many other situations where the solution-system is too one dimensional, for instance if the problem gets solved by multiple replies from various users, which one should be awarded the solution? And if the topic isn’t about a final solution, but rather a discussion?
In a hit-and-run, corporate environment like this, I don’t feel like there’s any value for users to start moderating this kind of stuff, by for instance prompting users for solutions - which I regularly see. That just seems desperate to me and making it a sport who collects the most solutions, which is just pointless, since there’s nothing to gain.
Usually it is someone else’s reply that is the solution but I can see why the help asker might mark an own reply as solution when someone else’s reply got that person on the right track to figure out how to solve a problem and then posts that information as the actual problem solving solution and then marks it as such.
But that would be somewhat of an exception I guess.
In the end, if there are multiple solutions then I don’t see why they can’t all me marked as Solution. There are sometimes multiple ways to solve a problem.
The actual “problem”, if it is one, is for me to be sure that a reply marked as a solution is indeed a solution and not some crutchlike workaround that doesn’t really solve the problem. Otoh, when trying out that solution oneself that should probably/hopefully become clear.
You sometimes see posts where the OP does solve it themself so you can’t just prevent them marking their post as the solution.
But there are problems with marking the solution box in the topic list. Often a thread continues with supplementary questions, each potentially requiring an additional solution. It would be nice if the list could be flagged with something like “Unanswered question” instead of “Solution”. Whether a robust but very simple mechanism for this could be designed I will leave Discourse gurus to decide.
On the other hand, depending on the urgency of the situation those “crutchlike workarounds” may very well be of value for the user.
I wouldn’t want the forum to become to snobby about these.
This is normal because it help people in future when they try to find a solution.
I’m not against “crutchlike workarounds” to overcome some problem in case of an urgency, I’ve done that myself as well on occasion so I’m not being snobby about that. It can serve a purpose.
But it should be clear it is a workaround/temporary solution… if such a workaround it is not a lasting solution it may further down the road cause more trouble than relief. I.e. it it may solve today’s headache and create tomorrow’s migraine. That serves nobody in the end (except the pharmaceutical industry 
)
i would or lets say i partially agree if there would not be a problem linked with this. solutions show up in your own profile with a count number. which clearly tells me that it is meant as some sort of indication for what somebody did for the community (either). that might be smallish but on the other side i do not believe that you are existing on bread only do you?
also that it could be used as an indication pointing towards the solution is in this case not solved properly. i have seen people giving themselves the solution pretty often which then not even contains the entire solution but just a confirmation, which then again means that the idea of organisation fails here anyway which makes marking yourself as the solution in such cases a double no go.
marking several people with a solution would be fair, but this would rather be more for the little nick nack of getting one more count for your solution but would indeed make compact organising a night mare.
Other users can benefit when a user checks a post of their own as having solved a problem.
Other users who are inclined to help will know the original problem has been solved which may save them the time of reading through the thread.
Other users with a similar problem can scan through the thread for the check mark to see the post with the solution without needing to read and interpret the entire thread. They may need to read some previous posts to fully understand the solution but than can occur independent of the author of the checked post.
More than once I have started a thread with a problem and then found the solution on my own, posted the solution and checked that post as the solution.
I prefer to have a thread marked solved than left unmarked.
How are other users adversely affected by a user checking their own post as the solution?
I’m often asking topic creators to click the Solution button so other users see the topic is solved. Many if not most users forget to click the Solution button and I think it should be more in your face sort of asking a topic creator if a topic has been solved then please click…. All this for the sake of a clean and tidy forum.
I’d mark this post as the solution 
I marked my own reply as a solution only once because there was a lot of speculation going on and I found out the problem had to do with my hardware. I didn’t want someone to come across the post and be led down the wrong path.
If this is a problem–and I’m not convinced that it is–perhaps a lifetime limit of self-marked solutions could be an option.
well to be honest, often does the solution not cover your own problem at all. and by all means i keep seeing the same questions pop up infinitely like they have never been answered before, questions the purpose of searching for solutions generally.
i think there is a difference between solved and solution.
but i agree as you say it is important to have a visually helpful solution to find stuff better, if it then is so at all. also we are forgetting that solutions show up in our discourse resumé. now what importance that may have other than being a bit proud to have helped remains unanswered i personally dont think that this serves any futher purpose and so be it. marking yourself as a solution when somebody a post further above solved it for you boarders in my opinion towards being abusive.
other platforms solve headlining answered questions via ratings and not via a one man only judge.
I’ll ask again:
Is this the answer?
If so how does someone giving themselves credit for finding the solution adversely affect other users unless participation on the forum is viewed as a competition?
to compact that resumé, the problem is that people can abuse the current system. hence pleating for something different.
How are you personally affected if someone “abuses the current system”?
everything impacts us.
Isn’t it?
sometimes it does 