I read the other question on why there are two different tabs, but why is the questions > unanswered tab not renamed to "no answers accepted" or something similar? This would allow users to understand why there are two different tabs without having to dig into meta to figure out the difference.
3 Answers
The tab is named "unanswered" because all the tabs in that page use a single word. Users can understand what that tab lists because it has a tooltip.
As for why there is a "Questions > unanswered" tab, and a "Unanswered" tab is because the first lists all the questions without up-voted answers, while the latter shows the questions without up-voted answers, and it allows you to see those questions that falls in four categories:
- The ones using a tag you set as favourite
- The newest ones
- The ones with most up-votes
- The ones without an answer
The first, and the last tab filter the questions, and show less questions; the other two tabs just sort the questions using different criteria.
The fact that both the "unanswered" tabs show the same questions is evident from the number shown in "Questions > unanswered," and "Unanswered > votes" which is the same in both the tabs.
One is Questions, sorted by eliminating all with answers, and the other only shows unanswered questions, that allows sorting by various methods. I don't think it's that confusing.
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I did not say it was confusing it is just not that big a difference and I only know the difference because I am a part of the meta site... And only because I searched for the difference. It is not stated clearly enough for users. Though I have not read any of the FAQ's lately but from what I can remember there is no reference to the difference.– gabeioJun 18, 2012 at 21:57
If you really wanted to straighten things out, remove the top level Unanswered tab so it's just [Questions][Tags][Users][Badges], and then stop conflating sorting and filtering.
Under [Questions], use checkboxes, radio buttons, or subtabs to choose filters:
- featured
- faq
- unanswered
- active
- my tags
then use a select box to choose the sort order:
- newest
- votes
- relevance (what the "Interesting" tab used to do)