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I filtered by unanswered recently (no not just no accepted answer, not answered at all):

https://space.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=MostVotes&filters=NoAnswers&edited=true

It seems we have 1,099 of them that are unanswered, that sorts from most popular to least popular. I think that maybe we should start an initiative to do the following:

  • Get the good, high quality questions more views (possibly using bounties).
  • Get the bad, low quality answers closed (there aren't any of these really).

Is this idea pointless? A little house-keeping which could result in some good answers?

I'd be willing to bounty any question you post as a response to this meta post using my own rep if that isn't against stack exchange rules. I've been looking through these specifically and there are a lot of these questions beyond a month old which are still quality questions!

Let me know what you think!

Candidate list for bountying (highly opinionated, questions I'd love to see answered):

How strong is the electric charge capacity of Martian dust storms?

At what surface gravity can't astronauts do full steps anymore?

Launch to orbit delta-v penalty from Venus compared to Earth?

Does the kinetic impact of gas particles cause erosion to the surface of objects in orbit?

What science data has been released from Chang'e 4?

Note I can update the list to include yours if this takes off.

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    $\begingroup$ If you filter by only questions with 3+ score, then it nearly cuts the number in half. This means the biggest driver behind the bulk of unanswered questions is probably lack of interest. $\endgroup$
    – called2voyage Mod
    Commented Oct 30, 2019 at 21:09
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    $\begingroup$ Also, if you exclude the 10 most popular tags, over half the questions still remain and most of what's left is 5 or less scoring. $\endgroup$
    – called2voyage Mod
    Commented Oct 30, 2019 at 21:19
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    $\begingroup$ Over 1/4 of the questions are older than 2018, meaning it may require expertise not on the site or it dropped out of visibility before the expertise to answer was here. $\endgroup$
    – called2voyage Mod
    Commented Oct 30, 2019 at 21:24
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    $\begingroup$ Interesting list. I have a few on there, they are admittedly hard (or maybe just super niche/obscure) questions. I looked at the list through the ones with 5 or greater votes. Most are OK questions, but not easy to answer. In many cases the answers may not be known. There are none that I could answer. $\endgroup$
    – Organic Marble
    Commented Oct 30, 2019 at 22:31
  • $\begingroup$ by the way, short of bountying a question, you can bump a question to the active list just by making an edit. There's a bot that does that randomly to questions that need attention, but it's not an intelligent one. $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Commented Oct 31, 2019 at 16:11
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    $\begingroup$ A while ago I went through the list and answered a bunch, but yeah, on the first page of the list there are several which I looked at and couldn't find an answer for. $\endgroup$
    – Hobbes
    Commented Oct 31, 2019 at 16:11

1 Answer 1

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Site stats as of today:

questions     11,647
answers       18,058
answered       90%
users         23,888
visits/day     6,153

90% is probably in the "typical" or "normal" or "healthy" range for a Stack Exchange site.

The statistics cited in @called2voyage's comments below the question further indicate that the unanswered 10% is somewhat explainable; there are no indications that there's anything amiss.

Per my profile's infinite wisdom:

...let Stack Exchange be Stack Exchange.

"Has not received enough attention" is an approved reason to add a bounty, so rather than ask here, I think you can bounty anything you like as long as you are not gamifying in some unscrupulous way.

For examples of that, see answers to:

Space Exploration SE site statistics 31-Oct-2019 screen shot

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    $\begingroup$ Yep, a bounty may help mitigate lack of interest or "dropped out of visibility before the expertise to answer was here" situations. For the rest, it will probably be difficult to attract an answer since it seems the expertise simply isn't here yet. $\endgroup$
    – called2voyage Mod
    Commented Oct 31, 2019 at 11:46
  • $\begingroup$ For the two questions I looked at, the expertise doesn't even exist: adding drag to the TRE, and impact testing at the molecular level. $\endgroup$
    – Mazura
    Commented Nov 6, 2019 at 2:10
  • $\begingroup$ It was Re. "the expertise simply isn't here yet" $\endgroup$
    – Mazura
    Commented Nov 6, 2019 at 4:21
  • $\begingroup$ @Mazura oic it was meant for someone else. $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Commented Nov 6, 2019 at 4:25

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