Q:

How to prevent your question being closed? Just post a bounty on it

The question Win Server 2008 RDP Attack caught my eye as I was going through the bounty questions. To me it is clearly off topic, so I voted to close it as such... only to be told by the system that I couldn't: 

To me this is a bug. If the question is migrated then the bounty can go with it. If it is closed then the bounty doesn't matter - the OP has already had it deducted (I wouldn't even care if they got it refunded). But when a question is off topic (or closeable for another reason) then placing a bounty on it shouldn't make it immune from the correct actions of the community.

Edit:
I've since flagged the question for mod attention. I think there is the possibility to change the flow for this, so that OT/NARQ questions can still be close voted and don't get the bounty refunded, but maybe the other close reasons are either disabled or the bounty poster gets a refund (as they can be either purely accidental (Exact Duplicate) or arguably more subjective (Not Constructive / Too Localized)). Or maybe I'm just over-thinking this and the bounty should get auto refunded.

A:

Refunding a bounty is problematic, closing a question without refunding a bounty is also very problematic. Any mechanism that would allow to refund bounties by actions the community can take is prone to being abused.
If a question that should be closed receives a bounty, it means the moderation has failed already. The question was then open for at least 2 days, in which it should have been closed. For this reason this situation is relatively rare, most questions are closed earlier.
Diamond moderators can refund bounties, which enables them to close bad questions that somehow survived long enough to get a bounty on them. So there is a mechanism to deal with this, which I consider sufficient. 

A:

This is status-bydesign and documented on the bounty FAQ.
Note that you cannot migrate a bounty on a question if the user doesn't exist on the target site, or has too little reputation there to cover the bounty. Reputation should be subtracted on the site where the question resides and bounty is awarded.
As such, edge cases like how to handle bounties on migration means that bountied questions require moderator intervention. Mods can refund a bounty, just flag the question for attention and they'll review the case.

A:

I don't see the real need for this feature, but I think it's as follows: Closure is subjective (and also can be wrong). The bounty allows one to preserve a question that is in the grey area of SE-appropriate (i.e, it can be both closeworthy and not closeworthy, depending on the user--and noth will be correct).
Of course, if the question isn't such a "Schrodinger question" (i.e, is obviously OT/NC/NARQ/etc), then the bounty must be refunded. Mods can refund active bounties (awarded/expired bounties need dev magic), and then close the question. Use a custom flag, letting the mod know why you think that the question should be closed and unbountied.

