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I noted the discussion recently about the high proportion of unanswered questions here on CV and decided to try to answer some. So, I clicked on the "Unanswered" button but, rather than start at the top, I decided to start at the end. And, lo and behold, on page 997 of the unanswered questions, we have a lot of questions with answers. For instance (just to pick one) there is this question.

Is this a bug or am I misunderstanding something?

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    $\begingroup$ For what it's worth, I find it helpful to search for unanswered questions using this query in the site search: score:0..0 answers:0 [TAG OF INTEREST] closed:no. Open questions with 0 score and 0 answers are either (1) good but unrecognized & deserving of an answer (2) too vague or too broad to be answerable or (3) duplicates of existing questions. $\endgroup$
    – Sycorax Mod
    Jul 14, 2018 at 20:05
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    $\begingroup$ @Sycorax I often use answers:0 but mostly I don't restrict the score (if it has positive score but 0 answers it probably needs an answer -- while high scores may indicate a question that's difficult to answer for some reason, if you don't sort by score that's usually not a big issue. On the other hand, if it has a negative score it may need some kind of action - a comment or a vote to close for example) $\endgroup$
    – Glen_b
    Jul 14, 2018 at 20:41
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    $\begingroup$ FAQ: Why does the “Unanswered Questions” tab show questions that have answers?: "The Unanswered Questions tab shows questions that have no answers with a positive score nor an accepted answer. (That includes questions with no answers at all.)". $\endgroup$
    – Rob
    Jul 15, 2018 at 21:20
  • $\begingroup$ @Rob (+1) I edited this link into my answer below. $\endgroup$
    – amoeba
    Jul 16, 2018 at 12:20

1 Answer 1

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Q: Why does the "Unanswered Questions" tab show questions that have answers?

A: The Unanswered Questions tab shows questions that have no answers with a positive score nor an accepted answer. (That includes questions with no answers at all.)

enter image description here

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    $\begingroup$ Ah ha. That is, indeed, unintuitive. $\endgroup$
    – Peter Flom
    Jul 14, 2018 at 20:02
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    $\begingroup$ But only slightly so. If no answer is upvoted, then by the logic of the site, not one user has found any of the answers useful, so effectively the question has not been answered at all, and should remain in the Unanswered queue to "invite" more answers. $\endgroup$
    – Alecos Papadopoulos
    Jul 16, 2018 at 9:54
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    $\begingroup$ Otherwise put, "unanswered" means "not answered in a way that anyone rewarded". $\endgroup$
    – Nick Cox
    Jul 16, 2018 at 15:15

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