Strategies for dead questions?

Question

When I join a SE site I often look through unanswered questions and try to answer as many of those as I can. However on this site there seems to be a lot of "dead" questions, by which I mean that neither the asker nor the community are interested anymore. As evidence: of the 11 questions I have answered 6 still have no upvoted answers.

I admit a possible explanation is that my answers aren't very good, but I haven't experienced anything like this on any other SE site. And the view counts on these questions are all under 150.

Put another way: Are there too few active members for this site to function properly using the SE model? At this rate it would take an excessive amount of work on my part to reach a level where I can contribute more substantially (e.g., review queues).

Answer 1

In the past 30 days, 123 answers have been provided to questions that are older than 60 days. Of those 123 answers, 60 of them where voted upon. 35 were up votes, and 25 were down votes.

In the past 30 days 1491 votes have been cast on answers. Of which 1408 of them were up votes, while 83 were down votes.

Which seems to show that if you're looking for a reputation boost, older questions are not the way to go.

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Queries

Data was obtained using the StackExchange Data Explorer, using the following queries.

NOTE: I'm not a SQL expert, so there's a good chance this data is incorrect.

• Number of answers in past 30 days to questions older than 60 days
• Votes cast in the past 30 days on answers posted within the past 30 days to questions older than 60 days
• Up votes cast in past 30 days on answers less than 30 days old answering questions more than 60 days old
• Down votes cast in past 30 days on answers less than 30 days old answering questions more than 60 days old
• Number of votes on answers in past 30 days
• Number of up votes on answers in past 30 days
• Number of down votes on answers in past 30 days

Answer 2

If a question is unanswered, there's often a reason such as the question not being very good, or people not having enough experience to post their own answer. If you're posting answers to these questions, then many won't upvote because they don't have the knowledge to know your answer is good/correct. And others won't upvote because they don't think the question is defined enough and so it's impossible to know if your answer really solves the OP's question. I suspect we tend to be less strict about closing questions that are getting out of our main scope, and so it might be better to check if there's a valid reason the close the questions first, and if so, flag the question appropriately.

I will say that one of the most common reasons for me to upvote a question is when I go to answer it and see that someone else has said exactly what I was planning to say. And answers with the most upvotes tend to be those where everyone seems to know the answer. I also see that OP's are more likely give upvotes more often when your answer is soon after they have asked the question, so it may be best to focus on more recent questions.

Answer 3

Do badges motivate behavior? If so could the criteria for a badge be lowered, or its status elevated, for a site that needs more of the behavior? E.g., in the case of DIY perhaps the "Suffrage" badge could be elevated to "silver" or awarded after 20 votes.