<p>Cross-validated is a question-and-answer site. I think it's worthwhile to ask &quot;How well does this website serve people who ask (on-topic, answerable) questions?&quot;</p>
<p>To answer this question in a quantifiable way, we can look at the gap between the number of (non-closed) questions asked in a month <em>in total</em> and the number of (non-closed) questions <em>with answers</em>. <a href="http://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/869988/questions-and-answers-per-month#graph" rel="nofollow noreferrer">I have a query that does this</a>. <strong>Behold! The chasm between the number of questions asked in a month and the number of answered questions yawns!</strong></p>
<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/D3PlV.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/D3PlV.png" alt="Behold the yawning gap!" /></a></p>
<p>This plot clearly shows that, since 2016, the gulf between questions and answers is more than <strong>1000 unanswered questions per month</strong>. For recent years, it appears that roughly half of questions are not answered. Moreover, the number of answers is on a gentle decline.</p>
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<p><a href="http://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/872868/questions-and-answers-per-month-not-nns" rel="nofollow noreferrer">If we amend my query to break out questions with the [tag:neural-networks] tag vs those without that tag</a>, <strong>we can see that the answer gap does not solely arise from neural networks</strong>. (It was easier to just do the post-processing in R.)</p>
<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/o1H5Y.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/o1H5Y.png" alt="It's not neural networks" /></a></p>
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<p>Glen_b asked a related question several years ago, <a href="https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2242/are-we-seeing-a-dramatic-drop-in-answers-per-question">Are we seeing a dramatic drop in answers per question?</a> But I think that this is not the best way to measure how we are doing. Instead, I think we should ask &quot;If a user asks an on-topic, answerable question, will that user get an answer?&quot; Additionally, I think we can decisively answer Glen_b's titular question in the affirmative (look at the plot!), since a bunch of smart statisticians have all made their own graphs and measured their own quantities of interest over the past several years. Now that we have evidence that there is a problem, I think we should start looking for solutions.</p>
