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How to find the right questions that I can answer?

I have favourited some tags. I see on homepage related questions getting updated regularly. But out of those questions I can find few questions that I can answer and add value. What is bad is most of those questions have already been answered or have vague answer such that I can't really figure out if that answer is what user wanted or not. Sometimes that is what user wants and I avoid adding another answer. On other questions I feel why should I spend some effort when someone else might be already composing an answer to the question.

How do you solve this kind of bystander effect. How do I find questions to answer matching my expertise? BTW I have fair amount of ROR, Javascript and relevant experience so I am not really a newbie.

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    If you're experienced and don't want to answer easy questions that get 10 answers each, then check out the bounty questions. These are harder, and usually get less answers. If you are awarded the bounty, then you get a whole bunch of rep.
    – Manishearth
    Apr 21, 2012 at 12:20
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    This is how MrGomez has been hitting the top of the weekly reputation charts.
    – Oded
    Apr 21, 2012 at 12:35

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Check out the Unanswered tab in some of your favorite tags. Some of the more popular tags have thousands of questions that don't have any answer at all, and even more that have a few answers that didn't receive any upvotes. Also, the Unanswered tab is sorted by votes, so the questions at the top should be high enough quality that they'd be worth a look.

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    On Physics.SE, i like to go to the unanswered section and find the zero-vote zone--full of neglected questions. Too bad there isn't a "sort by views"
    – Manishearth
    Apr 21, 2012 at 13:47
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  1. Use both favorite tags and also ignored tags and use them a lot - I have at least 100 of each !

  2. Use other Stack Exchange sites such as:

    Programmers,
    The Workplace,
    Project Management,
    Database Administrators
    Personal Productivity and
    Ask Ubuntu

    These are personal favorites of mine.
    Use other sites and then you can focus on your combined profile flair.

  3. Provide more details than others.

  4. Use style formatting - not just bold and underline but other styles and ue styles more than others to get noted- use ###'s for various level headings, use "---" for line dividers, etc. Include images such as screen shots (partials work best for zoming reasons) to get attention.

  5. Tag your questions well, tag your answers well. If you get accepted and the question has tags missing, add them.

  6. Ask questions! If you're having issues getting the right answer 'in', ask good questions - they get points too!

More tips here: Tips for getting really good answers on SO

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