@SteveRobillard I did that graph of unanswered questions with the data explorer. First, here's just questions by date:

data.stackexchange.com/raspberrypi/query/254071/…

The average looks to have grown steadily in the last half of last year, plateaued in the first quarter of this year, and been up and down since then. Now here's questions with no accepted or upvoted answer by date:

data.stackexchange.com/raspberrypi/query/254103/…

Which turns out to be kinda nasty. I double checked a few of these, e.g., the highest one (13) is from 2014-07-17 (you can find the exact dates in the "Results" tab, but you have to widen the second column to see the numbers right). You can view posts by date by searching, e.g. created:2014-07-17:

raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/search?q=created%3A2014-07-17

There are indeed 13 questions w/ no upvoted/accepted answer in that list.

It looks like the number started increasing at the end of last year and has kept increasing -- if you look at the end of the graph, not only are there more high days, there are less low days of course. I'll try and do one that gives a total per month.

Okay, it's not so severe looking when using totals per month rather than day. Here's total questions asked:

data.stackexchange.com/raspberrypi/query/254104/…

And unanswered /unaccepted questions by month:

data.stackexchange.com/raspberrypi/query/254127/…

The fact that it is skewed can be at least partially explained by the fact that older questions are more likely to get an answer eventually. A thing to look at would be the spread between when a question is asked and when the accepted answer was written -- I'm a little "data explored" out for the moment tho.

Not sure if this all really changes anything in particular although it still maybe implies the number of unanswered Q's has been growing a bit disproportionately.

Eg., for October there's 260 Q's, 147 unanswered; for October 2013 205 Q's, 20 unanswered. I'm really dubious that the difference is because the ones from 2013 had an extra year to get an answer -- that would mean on average the time before an upvoted or accepted answer is > 2 months. Maybe though. It could be late upvotes. I could also filter that for just Q's w/ accepted answers to see.

I looked at the activity of some of the highest-rep users of all time (on this site) and a good chunk of the top 1% to 6% of users (via rep) on this site haven't actually been involved answering questions in a while.

Here's a couple: [Ikku](raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/users/1101/ikku?tab=activity)
[tibor](raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/users/13/tibor?tab=activity)
[alex](raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/users/35/alex-l?tab=activity)
(berry120)[raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/users/93/berry120?tab=activity]
(Maria Zverina)[raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/users/188/…
(Bryan Dunsmore)[raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/users/46/…

facepalm

dangit formatting

Oh forget it

Ikku / Tibor / Alex / berry120 / Maria Zverina / Bryan Dunsmore

@RPiAwesomeness Whoops. Actually I got the first couple before you changed it. Tibor actually only answered 17 questions total; alex just 6. But fewer answers could be part of it. Hadn't even thought of graphing that yet.

I'm re-linking them, correctly this time :P

Chat formatting is so strange sometimes

Fred / Highly Irregular

There we go

8 users from the top rep of all time that seem to have dropped out of answering questions (at least recently - within the last 2 months or so)

Yeah looks like Fred did a lot but has not been around for a while. People come and go. I stopped checking in here for at least a few months at one point.

Just seeing if I can find a way to rank users by number of answers...

Probably. If not, you could always ask one of the software devs in the Meta chat

@goldilocks Exactly, and that could be part of it. If a bunch of high-rep, high-involvement users left or just took a break around a certain time, we'd probably see a spike in the number of un-answered questions.

A major reason too would be lack of upvotes, which is the simplest solution if a Q has a reasonable answer.

@goldilocks Which is something you addressed in your new mod speech/post/thingy wingy. I definitely agree with you, people don't upvote nearly enough.

@RPiAwesomeness Okay I got the answers per user list. Guess who's #2? :) The numbers seem to be slightly off in one direction or another, maybe something to do with deleted things.

data.stackexchange.com/raspberrypi/query/254302/…

Here's answers by month:

data.stackexchange.com/raspberrypi/query/254307/…

Which peaked when the questions did, but then fell off more in the last half of this year.

@goldilocks First let me say thanks for your efforts with this. I think @RPiAwesomeness may be on to something here I took on the role of moderator a little over a year ago, and if you look at the number of questions I have answered since is probably in the single digits. My thinking was that it would allow other members provide answers, and grow there reputation (and hence involvement with the site)

I think the number of high rep users has grown, but what we may not be doing is moving the noobs from noob to intermediate status. Combined with the length of time we have been active, some people will naturally lose interest or as you have said step away for a period of time.