Two years ago I asked an adorable [question](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/68155/how-big-a-problem-are-unanswered-questions): is 180,000 unanswered questions *too many*?

Now there are 704,563 questions with no up-voted answers and counting. I've had the feeling that this flood was starting to overwhelm the site, but I went looking for some concrete data.

**[Percentage of open questions with answers, by quarter](http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/76960/percentage-of-open-questions-with-answers-by-quarter)**:

![Answered Question Percentage][1]

This is probably the most telling. The percentage with *any* answer is dropping steadily, while the percentage with a *good* answer (Score > 0) is in freefall. Voters don't seem very impressed with all the new questions, either:

**[Question Votes by Quarter](http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/76963/question-votes-by-quarter)**

![Question Votes][2]

**[Question quality by quarter](http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/76961/question-quality-by-quarter)**

![Question Quality][3]

This also suggests an increase in bad questions (score < 0), but just as importantly, **60%** now have a score of 0. If the flood is too much even for simple actions like voting which almost everyone can do, what chance do editors and moderators have of keeping up? **I'd also be interested** in seeing the percentage of users with close-vote privileges over time, as well as the ratio of those users to new questions over time. I don't think SEDE has the required data though.

Eventually the site will simply cease to work if these trends continue. Community moderation will be affecting such a small percentage of questions that it might as well not be happening at all.

I can see three avenues of attacking the problem: increasing the number of (good) moderators, increasing the amount of moderating individuals can do, and building more flood gates. I'm hoping to trigger some brainstorming and draw attention to any other proposals that attempt to address parts of this problem.

**Related Reading** to help your brainstorming:

- http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/106717/does-so-need-social-networking-features-to-improve-the-experience-for-expert-use
- http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/77103/improve-tools-for-closing-as-duplicate
- http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/136089/not-just-closing-duplicate-nor-canonical-answers-but-optimizing-for-pearls-h?lq=1
- http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/88447/1-5-million-questions-on-so-organization-beyond-tags
- http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/139216/what-do-you-think-of-an-so-for-beginners-only

  [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/CPm8gm.png
  [2]: https://i.sstatic.net/ox8kGm.png
  [3]: https://i.sstatic.net/lgzKOm.png