If you're new around here, or else you haven't yet seen a bounty question, you might be wondering "What is a bounty?"
Essentially, if you asked a question and it isn't getting very much attention, the first thing you should do is try and make it a better question. Once you've done that, another option is the bounty. A bounty involves offering up some of your own reputation as additional incentive to get a question answered.
You can start a bounty on your own questions (most common), and even on questions asked by other people, perhaps on interesting but unanswered questions you can't answer yourself.
One requirement for adding a bounty is that the question be at least two days old. If a question is eligible to have a bounty, you'll notice a "start bounty" link under the question's comments. (It's a small link, easy to miss.) You also must have at least 75 reputation.
As a demonstration of this feature we, your moderators, have started bounties on a handful of open questions that we think deserve more attention. You'll find questions having a bounty on the Featured page for 7 days. They'll also appear in the regular question lists with a special icon displaying the outstanding bounty amount.
Got any additional things to say about the bounty system? Feel free to answer below.