I am working on the analysis of the Stack Overflow dump. I met some questions when I worked on the posts.xml file.
Do all the questions in the dump have accepted answers? If they are expected to have them, then why do some questions not have accepted answer IDs? Or even no OwnerID?
On Stack Overflow, if one question is not answered, does it mean it will be deleted or closed? How long can one question exist if it never has an accepted answer?
Not every question on the site has an accepted answer, so why would you expect every question in the data dump to have an accepted answer?
A question can exist indefinitely without an accepted answer, without an upvoted answer, or even without any answers. If it's closed and/or deleted, that's either because the asker didn't want it anymore, or the community didn't deem it a good fit. It has nothing to do with whether it is answered or not.
The only questions that don't appear in the data dump are deleted questions.
