<p>Have a look <a href="http://stackexchange.com/sites?view=list#percentanswered">here</a> and scroll to the bottom. You'll notice that (as of the day of this post) Cross Validated has the 3rd <em>worst</em> record for percent of questions answered among SE sites. Only 61% of questions have been answered (that's 39% <em>unanswered</em> questions). Compare this to the average across all sites: 88% (SD=10.3) answered.</p>

<ul>
<li>As of Mar 23, 2016:

<ul>
<li>Questions Asked: 76360</li>
<li>Unanswered Questions: 30017</li>
</ul></li>
</ul>

<p>I'll save you all the additional stats (for fear of this question remaining unanswered) and instead will use a picture to sum the issue up well: </p>

<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/uyXpD.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/uyXpD.jpg" alt="%Answered questions on SE sites"></a></p>

<p>The question is <strong><em>WHY</em></strong>?</p>

<p>This question was actually originally <a href="https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1538/why-is-our-answer-rate-so-low">asked</a> <strong>3</strong> years ago. In that time, the % of unanswered questions has actually increased: from ~25% unanswered in Feb 2013 to almost 40% in March 2016! </p>

<p><strong>Why do so many Cross Validated questions continue to go unanswered?</strong></p>

<ul>
<li>What's changed in the three years since this issue was last discussed?</li>
</ul>

<hr>

<p>Possible causes:</p>

<ul>
<li>Not enough expertise (no one knows the answers).</li>
<li>Not enough <em>experts</em> (the ratio of questions : those knowledgeable enough to answer is too low)

<ul>
<li>The same 20 people can't answer 30k questions...</li>
</ul></li>
<li>Not enough people <em>willing</em> or interested in answering questions.

<ul>
<li>Perhaps due to laziness, lack of ease to answer, simplicity of the question (the "<em>they should know that!</em>" excuse), length/complexity of question asked, lenght/complexity of required answer, etc.</li>
</ul></li>
<li>Too many people know <em>too little</em> about stats (this one falls on the schools)</li>
<li>Too many questions. Questions get bumped down too quickly for people to see, and perhaps too few people are scouring older questions among relevant tags.</li>
<li>Too many duplicate questions that are not immediately apparent as duplicates.

<ul>
<li>Complex questions or too-specifically context-dependent worded questions mask the underlying statistical concept, which otherwise could be more easily searched</li>
</ul></li>
<li>Answers are not useful and require people to come back for more

<ul>
<li>No need to flex your stats muscle if the person is a beginner</li>
<li>Alternatively, vague answers or those that don't really answer the OP's question seem to be somewhat frequent. </li>
<li>Perhaps more questions that involve specific scenarios should have discussions in chat so that all aspects of an OP's issue can be addressed, instead of the need to create a half dozen specific questions.</li>
</ul></li>
<li>Others?....</li>
</ul>

<hr>

<p>I promise the purpose of this post is not to attack anyone or ruffle feathers. Cross Validated is to be a helpful source for stats information. If more than a 3rd of the questions continue to go unanswered (and that amount keeps increasing) the site is not doing its job as well as it could. </p>

<p>We have the responsibility of recognizing <em>why</em> this might be the case so that we can <em>adjust</em> the site's approach or its users' approach to using the site in order to improve the overall helpfulness &amp; utility of Cross Validated. </p>
