Is there a way to find questions which need answers? - Meta

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Jack Douglas

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Jack Douglas replying to Jonathan Shaltz

thanks @Jonathan, we've put this on the list and tagged it 'planned'

Jonathan Shaltz

If we also end up with tags, or favorite search terms, I can see a tailored feed based on "question is recent, highly rated, has many of my favorite keywords, and has no highly-rated answers, etc."  Basically, a prioritized list of questions where I'm most likely to be able to help.

Jonathan Shaltz

I think that would be very helpful!

Jack Douglas replying to Jonathan Shaltz

I also think stars is a better (albeit also imperfect) guide than having 'accepted answer' like SE — how would you feel about a search filter that shows questions without a starred answer? Or with no answer > 'n' stars and you can specify the 'n'?

Jonathan Shaltz

Seeing the length of an answer might help, though of course it would be just a proxy.  Some kind of highlight for questions which have no starred answers might be helpful too; I didn't even see the stars for answers on the main page until you mentioned it.

Monica

But the "unanswered" filter is too limiting.

Monica

Those are the ones that, combined with tags, are fertile hunting ground when looking for things to answer.

Monica

A thing that was never possible on SE AFAIK, but would be useful, is: search/filter for questions where no answer has score > N.

Monica

Though the stars are visible already, so that gives some hint of quality.

Monica

I wonder if it would help if the answer preview indicated the *length* of the answer?  That way you'd at least be able to tell at a glance that the existing answers are barely more than comments.

Monica replying to Jonathan Shaltz

Fairly often in my experience (which doesn't include DBA), that the OP accepted an answer doesn't mean a lot.  Particularly for older questions, sometimes the OP was satisfied with something that has long since been surpassed or *ought* to be surpassed.  I'm not convinced that "acceptance" is meaningful.

Jonathan Shaltz

On the main page, the one-line previews of answers sound like a good idea but in practice they're too short to tell if they're good (comprehensive, accurate) or not.  I suppose I'm asking for an equivalent to SE's "accepted answer" flag, more specifically a filter for questions that do not have an accepted answer.

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