Title explains it.
Weird, right?
Title explains it.
Weird, right?
WTL:DR yep same problem on nearly every site, need more users to do all the other things (like answer).
Not weird. It's sad but, normal. You can look at any SE site and see the same content decline. (Its a big problem).
However here on BSE it's more pronounced. Why? Because we have many, Many new blender users. They only come here when they get stuck in a tutorial, or when their import fails. They do not (at the start) want to answer any questions, and in many cases they do not know enough to answer.
So, many brand new blender (and SE) users hits at both ends of the problem. They ask lots of questions (more on that in a bit), and they do not care to look around, and do not know blender enough to answer.
Now what about the rest of us that have rep? (hooray for useless internet points) Sure we may view the questions, even answer some every day. But there is simply not enough of us to answer. We get about 40 questions per day. I simply do not have time to read all of them. (Back in the day I use to go through every new question that was asked... but I digress)
Now what lies in these many questions? Looking at the top 30 newest questions right now there are 8 answered, and 1 UVed. Out of thirty.
No UVs could mean low quality posts, again a common problem with new users.
There being more answers then votes means either people are not voting on the questions (a couple of reasons for that), or the people getting to these questions can not vote on them (less then 15 rep).
The not voting could be because it is a new user and we want to be "welcoming" and not DV their post. Or it is not quite bad enough to DV, but it sure is not UV worthy.
The other reason for the more answers then votes, could be because there are new users answering them (because they all need more rep).
Good question. There is no "quick fix". In fact there is no solution. As long as there is an influx of new users we will have a huge question gap (and quality issue).
So tell everbody you know that knows blender to get over here and help this site out.
We need people to answer question.
We need the people to write the comments to the new users saying "we need more information, to be able to answer your question."
We need people to find the duplicates (there are LOTS).
As someone coined it we need more "curators."
Wow that turned out long.
Another important point is that everyone answering questions is doing so on their own time, out of the goodness of their heart, to help people. It takes time. Often times, answering a question means opening Blender, adjusting settings or doing some light modeling, perhaps rendering, and taking a bunch of screenshots. It can take 30 minutes to an hour to answer a single question depending on the complexity. Most of us have jobs, families, and other things to do besides answer Blender questions, so we have to find the time. The only reward is reputation points, and many times people don't even "accept" the answer as correct so there's no reputation reward, only knowing you helped someone.
TL;DR - it takes time, expertise, and can be thankless, so there aren't enough people able and willing to do it.
This is normal and will get even worse with time.
As this site matures, it gets filled with all the questions and answers. Even now it provides a pretty complete manual covering almost anything you might encounter with Blender. This is because old questions are still relevant for new Blender releases.
Users that know how to search will likely find a solution, the problem is not that there is not enough information anymore as the site gets filled with it every day.
Because of this it is more likely to have low quality questions now, it got to the point that cegaton had to write this, which some would consider common knowledge.
Low quality questions generate low interest, low votes and low views. They also make spotting good quality ones harder between them.