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Is it possible that I am not using this feature correctly? Or perhaps I should be modifying my expectation, but when I click on the 'Unanswered' button I get a list of results that contain perhaps one or two unanswered questions at the top, followed by many more already answered questions. Another strange thing is that interspersed with the results are random unanswered questions within and around the answered ones, so that we are not only seeing answered questions in with the unanswered ones, but they are not sorted so that the unanswered ones stack up at the top.

Am I the only one to be seeing this? Am I not using the feature correctly or is there some way that I am supposed to sort the results on my own?

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  • Okay, so I cannot yet upvote, or I would have "eliminated" one of those "unanswered" questions (on the first page, about Ruby's ".call" syntax). Ah, now to go hunt me some rep. :-D
    – Jürgen A. Erhard
    Dec 25, 2009 at 21:52

3 Answers 3

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The answers you are seeing do not contain any up-votes. The question is not considered answered until either an answer is accepted or one of the answers receives an up-vote.

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  • 3
    or until an answer is accepted (in the case that the answer has 0 upvotes)
    – Kip
    Jul 10, 2009 at 1:57
  • AH .. so the OP must select the checkbox to accept the answer or upvote it, I see. Makes alot more sense now ;)
    – user130690
    Jul 10, 2009 at 2:41
  • Accepting is done by the OP, but if any answers has a net vote up +1, then the question is no longer "unanswered"
    – Timothy Carter
    Jul 10, 2009 at 3:48
  • I edited the post to include the criteria of "answer accepted"
    – Robert Cartaino
    Jul 11, 2009 at 14:53
  • SuperUser is plagued with this problem.
    – rlb.usa
    Mar 18, 2010 at 21:15
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Although I understand & agree with the accepted answer, its still confusing for new users (it confused me for ages until I went hunting for a bug report & stumbled across the answer in the faq somewhere). Logically its understandable that people to expect "unanswered" to mean "has no answers".

I think the solution to the underlying issue could be as simple as a title tag on the main "unanswered" tab/button/link. Or perhaps a description next to the "Unanswered Questions" header at the top of the unanswered page.

Edit: Well I'm blind... as Jeff points out in the comments below there's already a description on the right saying:

12,345

questions with no upvoted answers

(emphasis on "no upvoted answers" already there)

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    it says on the sidebar : "111 questions with no upvoted answers" and that part is in red as well.
    – Jeff Atwood
    Jul 10, 2009 at 6:28
  • What, so now you expect me to read as well as answer questions?!? Sheesh. ;) ...my bad though, didn't notice that. Suppose I just need to pay more attention.
    – Alconja
    Jul 10, 2009 at 7:25
  • The sidebar is just that: a sidebar. I don't expect to find important information there. Ideally the description of the page should be between the headline and the list of questions.
    – RickMeasham
    Aug 1, 2009 at 12:20
  • I think the problem I have with this behaviour comes from the questions that are never 'answered'. I've seen questions stick around on the page just because the OP never returns to 'accept' an answer or because the question is too narrow to get enough of an audience to get upvotes. Maybe there needs to be some randomisation of the result set?
    – RickMeasham
    Aug 1, 2009 at 12:28
  • I agree with RickMeasham. There is a usability problem here that should be fixed. E.g. changing "Unanswered" to "No upvotes" (or "Non-voted" or whatever). I had the same experience as the OP.
    – This_is_NOT_a_forum
    Aug 2, 2009 at 2:58
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If you are only interested in questions with no answers then enter this in the search box:

answers:0

Or for non-Community Wiki questions with no answers that have not been closed:

answers:0 wiki:0 closed:0

These very useful advanced search operators were recently announced on the blog.

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