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Lately, it seems to me that the amount of questions with no upvoted answers is increasing, and what more, some of the older questions seem to be getting themselves forgotten.

Now it may be that the question IS obscure, and we have no experts on the topic, but I think many of these could be answered, if users were in some way reminded that these actually exist.

Am I wrong in my premise?

Is there a way we can remind the users or revive the questions, aside from bounties, which no one seems to be willing to place on these?

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  • \$\begingroup\$ If it's not worth a bounty to anyone then no one cares enough to get an answer. Not every question deserves an answer, frankly - if bumping, promotion, bounties, and other standard site tactics don't help it then that's OK. \$\endgroup\$ – mxyzplk Sep 26 '13 at 13:04
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There are 12 questions in the unanswered list.

That's insanely low for a site of our size. One of our closest comps as far as site size and traffic is the Christianity site. There are nearly 50 unanswered questions there (still quite low). Another solid comp UX has 86. Travel has 26.

Only six have been there for more than a month. Again crazy.

That said, if you want answers to these questions, you've got options.

  • Research the question yourself. Sometimes all it really takes is someone to do some leg work. If you've got the time and energy and you care, why not do it yourself.

  • Publicize the question. Twitter is a great place to be a gamer right now. If you follow the creator for a product go ask them on twitter. If you know of other experts, follow up with them. FB and g+ might also be good. We also have a very active chat community on this site, with some true experts hanging out there. If you think a question has been passed over, come talk about it in chat.

  • Edit the question. Editing always bumps the question to the top of the list. This is like a free, 2 day bounty. Don't do this often, but if there are fixes to be made, you can always suggest an edit and have the question bumped.

Ultimately, these questions are already presented in the unanswered list and that means that they are relatively easy to find compared to other old questions. If people want to find things to answer, they will. If people take advantage of favorite tags, then the list is even more focused.

Addendum: I've looked at all the questions in the unanswered list. I don't feel like any of them really merit a bounty right now. I've got reputation I'm willing to give away, and I've invited folks to suggest posts for me to bounty in chat. Only one person has taken me up on it so far, but stop by and make the case if you've got a pet question.

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    \$\begingroup\$ What I was basing my question on was the state when I joined (2), but I take your point about this being low. What I meant was that people often forget to open the Unanswered list, or so it seems to me, and I was looking for a solution to that. Thanks for the answer though! \$\endgroup\$ – kravaros Sep 24 '13 at 20:02
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The Community user will bump unanswered questions periodically, until they get an answer that's upvoted. That keeps them alive indefinitely.

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