<p>I think there are numerous factors, but statistics is one of those areas where a <em>really</em> large number of people are using a fairly demanding set of ideas with very little background in it -- in a way that (for example) people generating programming questions, largely <em>aren't</em>. </p>

<p>This results in a tendency to ask very vague - but often surprisingly specialized - and frequently utterly unanswerable questions. </p>

<p>On the other hand, sometimes the questions are so trivial that there's really nothing more to say than 'yes, that's correct', which hardly seems worth an actual answer, an issue I address in <a href="https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2685/a-difficulty-with-self-study-like-questions-of-the-form-is-this-correct">another question</a>.</p>

<p>With no answer selected, for a surprising number of the questions I see, clearly the original poster is satisfied by an answer <em>but doesn't choose any answer</em>. With repeat offenders you can - if you notice - try to encourage them to do their bit, but with one-offs (accounts that ask exactly one question), by the time you realize they won't choose an answer out of good answers available, they're <em>long gone</em>. Their problem is solved and our community norms don't matter. More often someone with a programming problem (for example) tends to anticipate a future need to solve such problems again.</p>

<p>When you add in a tendency for the jargon - and even the types of analysis - to be fractured across various disciplines that use statistics, it's especially apt to generate questions that won't attract answers.</p>

<p>When I answer questions on stackoverflow (I answer R questions there for example), the answers often take seconds. When I answer them on stats.stackexchange, I may invest hours in constructing some answers ... and then often not garner a single upvote for my effort. It does tend to lead to only answering questions that will be 'worth my time'. Even so - and in spite of decades working and publishing and teaching in the area - I frequently have to do significant reading (as well as a bunch of requests for clarification) to understand what the person is even asking, let alone how to answer it. </p>

<p>Little wonder then, that many questions I don't answer aren't answered by anyone else either.</p>
