<p>It is known that CV has a <a href="https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5325/">large and growing number of unanswered questions</a>. If that is to improve, increasing the number of people who answer questions and/or help clean up (downvote, edit, comment) is a likely a necessary part of the solution. </p>

<p>Reflecting on my experience as a new answerer here, I felt that the greatest impediment to me becoming active on the site was the feeling that I was "speaking into the void". When I started to feel confident in answering questions, my first answers got almost no reactions (comments/acceptance/upvotes/downvotes). As I did put a lot of effort into those answers, it didn't feel great. Not saying my answers are necessarily great, but I also got basically no feedback on where to improve.</p>

<p>I eventually became OK with getting little feedback (though it still feels sad at times) and am now trying to participate on the site actively but I wonder:</p>

<ol>
<li>To what extent is this a common experience of new answerers? Do we lose noticeable number of potentially active participants this way?</li>
<li>Is there some way to avoid this?</li>
</ol>

<p>Right now, I am experimenting myself with proactively searching for answers without votes and being generous with upvotes. My current upvote threshold is somewhere around "This answer is more likely to improve the statistical practice of the OP than to make it worse". Is this considered desirable by the community? Or could it have unintended side effects I am missing?</p>

<p>Managing expectations of new answerers or providing some hints on how to determine if an answer to a question is likely to attract some feedback might also make sense (e.g. show info to users writing their first few answers).</p>

<p>The <a href="https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1900/crossvalidateds-rather-extreme-up-voting-problem">lack of upvoting</a> has been discussed before, but from a different angle (also it was 5 years ago) and without a strong conclusion.</p>

<p>The discussions on <a href="https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5402/is-a-quick-and-dirty-answer-better-than-no-answer/5411#5411">quick and dirty answers</a>, <a href="https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4763/should-i-upvote-an-elaborated-answer-which-i-do-not-fully-understand">upvoting answers you are not sure are correct</a> are also somewhat related.</p>
