Last month, more than 35,000 users submitted at least one upvoted answer on Stack Overflow. It's an inspiration to see how many people are out there willing and able to help fellow devs be more productive. Altruism is real — it’s what makes this community so special and the platform so powerful.

But while public data makes it pretty clear who answers, we’ve found how you answer to be quite personal, and we’re fairly uninformed about the ways in which you discover questions that you choose to answer. Thus: this quick survey.

Please take a moment to help us understand what’s going on inside your head. Let us know in an answer how you typically find questions to answer.

Please only upvote others’ responses if their answer-flow resembles yours.

Questions to consider:

  • How do you discover Stack Overflow questions you can answer?

    • Do you use tag filtering? If so, how many tags do you have in “favorites”?

    • Do you navigate to “newest”, “featured”, or “unanswered” tabs on the Questions page to find questions to answer? Another page?

  • Does progress towards a badge or other milestone influence your choice in questions to answer?

  • Do you answer within the same session that started with a web search?

  • Do you use any third-party apps to help you find questions to answer?

What else can you tell us about how you discover questions to answer?

We know similar questions have been posed before, but they're mostly instructive (and old). This is personal. Help us improve surfacing the content you want to see by telling us a little bit about how you answer.

Thanks for all your help.

@Jaydles I removed my comment when I realized that I really don't care anymore. If SO staff hasn't already figured out what needs to change based on the suggestions presented in MSO discussions, a survey isn't going to help. The site has become an endless moderation chore and frankly, not worth visiting. I hope that changes someday. Farewell. –  George Cummins May 12 at 19:37
@GeorgeCummins, I can sympathize with your frustration, and hope you'll keep an open open mind as we dig into this. If you want evidence that we care about figuring out the best way to address this, and are taking your suggestions seriously, look no further than this post. We're soliciting more details on users' current workflows to help us figure out the best way prioritize ways to help improve that experience. You can't possibly really argue that our asking for more input indicates we don't care. –  Jaydles May 12 at 19:44
@MerlynMorgan-Graham, we're doing that, too, but it has two challenges: 1) Most of our tools don't work as well for reverse funnels (going from a later event to an earlier one), and 2) Even when you can tease out the majority case, it may well be that the majority of answers are from one-time answerers who drown out the power-user activity we want to understand. You can obviously then filter for that too, but one power-user description sometimes saves a thousand queries (or at least helps explain their results...) –  Jaydles May 14 at 19:10
I predominantly use the favourite tags, but don't like it that they appear below the community bulletin and careers (usually off my screen), hence this post asking for them to be moved up the right hand panel:… –  Tanner May 16 at 13:45

34 Answers 34

Overwhelmingly, just by looking at the default SO home page (Top Questions / interesting).

Agreed, with an extensive set of favourite tags to cover the majority of the questions I'm likely to answer (a self-fulfilling prophecy since I very seldom go elsewhere to find questions to answer). –  Jonathan Leffler May 13 at 23:39
Sadly, the tag pages are so full of crap that we kind of have to use the homepage. –  usr May 14 at 14:28
I do this, and then go to my top 2 or 3 tag pages when I can't find something good on the home page. –  user1118321 May 15 at 1:19
Alas, I faved "java" and "python", and it's still like more than half of the homepage. /_\ –  skytreader May 15 at 9:56
This, combined with sporadically looking at the newest page of a few tags and, if I really feel like it, browsing the featured tab to see if the cowboys skipped a question and it would be possible to formulate a good answer. –  SvenT23 May 15 at 14:55

The majority of questions I answer I discover via a custom tag search (long URL starting with /questions/tagged and loads of tags joined up with +or+) to be notified of new posts in tags I am interested in. I look almost exclusively at the 'newest' tab of that view, relying heavily on the live-refresh feature. My current filter page is:

which won't even be accepted by the search box anymore. Together with the official keyboard shortcuts this makes for very efficient access to new posts.

In addition, I use RSS feeds to track specific, not-so-popular tags where you don't have to be FGITW to stand a chance, as well as bountied posts. The tags in question are for OSS projects I have a stake in and care about support for.

Last but not least, I use StackPop to get comments and track reputation changes. I used to use Newt, which also notifies you of new question titles when I don't watch the filter page above, but is sadly under-maintained and no longer works.

Overall, I track 35 tags with these tools.

Progress towards a badge doesn't influence me as much anymore as it perhaps used to; although the current tag score script breakdown has made me watch the progress towards tag badges a little more, rather than less, using an excellent JS script that queries the API.

If I do find posts via a Google Search and find I have to contribute something, I won't hesitate to post in that same session. But most of my answering happens via discovering new questions via the filter page.

Oh, so that's how I can do an or instead of an and. Suddenly, tag navigation will be much easier. –  Quincunx May 13 at 4:06
There is also a possibility to use tags with stars. Like python* or *python* –  user May 14 at 21:45
@user3075942 yup, but when they are expanded you quickly expand beyond the limits set on the number of tags supported by the search. –  Martijn Pieters May 14 at 22:29
I only recently discovered the tag/url method that Martijn mentions. If it wasn't for this, I would have left last month :-) I'm surprised there isn't a better way to set up such a feed (that doesn't involve manual url hacking) –  Disco 3 May 15 at 14:51

I don't answer as often as I once did but I've got a few different ways that I find questions to answer.

My process is typically:

  1. I check the Interesting tab on the homepage - since I've got tags favorited the questions with these tags are highlighted. This allows me to decide based on question title if I want to read the question

  2. Favorite tags. I've got about 25 tags that are favorites. I'll browse the "Newest" tab in those to see if there are any questions that I want to answer. Sometimes I'll search on multiple tags if there is a specific topic I feel like answering.

Badge progress was something I previously used to decide if I was going to answer questions but I don't really pay much attention to that now.

I could copyNpaste your answer as mine :) –  linluk May 15 at 5:06
I have only 9 favorite tags. One problem for me is that I have 3 groups of tags: Threadgroup: Threads / multithreading / thread-safety / race-condition Compilergroup: compiler, compiler-optimization, Languagegroup c++, c++11, c++1y. I have yet to figure out how to say "Questions must have at least one of the first or second group and at least one of the third group". –  nwp May 24 at 7:24

TL;DR Ain't nobody got time for that

I don't search for questions to answer anymore.

But I do sit on the home page top questions list refreshing occasionally, opening the top few in the list and down voting and voting to close them. With good reason of course, the vast majority of questions on this list are absolute rubbish.

Sometimes very rarely I'll see a question that's reasonably well written and within my expertise and I'll answer that.


Step 1: Open new tab in Chrome.

Step 2: Click on modified Stack Overflow bookmark, which sends you directly to the Newest questions. (

Step 3: Find a question which seems somewhat answerable but isn't so absurdly basic that it has or will soon have 7+ answers on it. (e.g., WHAR IZ MAI NULL POINTERZ?!!!?!1!?1!/1?!??one) If you don't see one, go directly to Step 6.

Step 4: Answer question.

Step 5: Cry, because in the time it took you to type up a detailed answer to the question, it's already fallen off everyone's front pages and you will now only garner like two upvotes for it.

Step 6: Close Stack Overflow tab and do some of your actual day job.

Step 7: Repeat.

When I first became a Stack Exchange user a couple of years ago, badges and points fueled a certain obsession with the site. But now, really, I just come because I find it interesting and like to occasionally help out. For that reason, actually, the Code Review beta is a bit more suited to my style (slower paced Q&A cycles, less ridiculous competition, more focused on helping individuals rather than just gaining rep and whatnot, much less hostile to new users).

This steps sound absolutely familiar because they are my routine too. –  Trilarion May 26 at 7:41

I don't consider myself an "active" answerer anymore. Nowadays I'm mostly a chatroom regular. But nevertheless, I still post about once a month.

Like a lot of other users, I'm only interested in answering good questions. But those are extremely rare and are completely drowned out in the ocean of low-quality homework dumps and "give teh codez" questions. And sorting through all the junk will wear out my patience.

So the goal is: Find a good question in as little effort as possible.

  1. I configure my favorite tags to what I want. These along with my past activity does a great job of filling my front page with stuff that's relevant to me.
  2. I setup an auto-refresher on the homepage at a 30 second interval. I then dedicate half a spare monitor on the side.

Then I just go about my day. Whenever I feel like it, I'll glance over at the homepage and scan to see if there are any interesting titles. If there is, I'll click on it.

I don't waste my time downvoting and closing crap. In fact, I don't even click on them. They're usually obvious from the title. If the title is absolutely hideous, I'll click on it to see if I can get any entertainment value from it. But definitely not with the intention of stomping on it.

What I don't do:

  • I don't use the live updates on SO. It takes a click - too much effort. And then I'm presented with all the crap that I'm trying to avoid. Sure, I don't win FGITW anymore, but that's okay since I stopped playing that long ago.

I know very well that I'm not helping with the moderation situation by avoiding all the low quality questions. But if I don't avoid them, I'll be forced away from the site like many already have.


I never go searching for questions to answer just for the sake of answering. It takes too much time. The questions I answer are found while looking for solutions to my own problem. Sometimes that means answering questions when I finally find the answer; sometimes that means asking and answering my own question.

Exactly. It's a nice way to pick up Necromancer and Revival badges. –  james.garriss May 19 at 19:47

I find questions to answer by keeping the /questions page (sorted by newest) open in a browser. I use this page because it shows a couple of lines of question text, unlike the site home page. There are so many new questions that I usually don't even scroll that page, but just look at the first half dozen or so that I can see when I have a moment.

I have a few "favourite tags" where the question shows up in orange, and a few "ignored tags" where I really don't care about the subject (generally because of poor question quality combined with a lack of interest - for example, one of them is ).

I use the "newest" sort order because I don't want to be biased towards questions that everybody else thinks are worth participating in (upvote/comment/answer), and I want to see new stuff every time I hit reload.

If a question looks interesting, I'll open it in a new tab and keep it open until I'm done with it (I often have dozens of tabs open).

(All of the above only applies when I haven't become so grumpy with the overall low quality of questions that I've deliberately quit looking. This happens from time to time.)

For all the lower traffic sites (not SO), I have a filter set up on that shows a similar list of new questions across several sites at once.

  1. Immediately after login, I click on the "C#" tag (conveniently located in my "Favorite Tags" section.

  2. I then stay on the active tab, clicking to allow new questions to appear to see if anything is interesting.

    • The unanswered tab is nice, but nearly impossible to sort by newest, and doesn't auto-update.
    • Occasionally I'll look at featured to see if I know anything about the questions on it.
  3. If a question has more than a few answers, especially if it has an accepted answer I just ignore it. I've likely lost FGITW and so it's not worth my time. Since C# is so broad, I also ignore the "C# + Javascript but mostly Javascript" type questions, and others involving libraries outside my expertise.

  4. If a question looks answerable, I'll go ahead and answer it. If it looks like a problem question, I'll open it to check/downvote/close.

I choose questions to answer based on my perceived ability to answer them (based on the title and intro text). Progress towards a badge doesn't really affect anything. Granted, I spend all my time in the C# tag, so one could argue that all my progress goes towards it :).

My answering activity is separate from my searching/asking activity, so Google doesn't have much to do with it, and I don't use any 3rd party apps (though I'd love to see something for Windows 8!).

One feature I would really like to see is an auto-updating (even with a click) recently unanswered page (with tag filtering of course). I'd rather spend my time on questions that haven't seen a good answer yet, but don't want to constantly have to refresh. Seeing the "1 new question" bar and the (1) in the page title tells me I have something to look at!


An overlooked way to gain well-earned reputation is to provide better answers to otherwise good questions that already have an answer.

It doesn't matter if there is an accepted answer or not, as long as you think you provide more and/or better insight into the question. Obviously, this only works if the question actually is worth answering in the first place, but there are many that are.

I have toned down my answering a lot due to the widespread frustration, but I still get upvotes on answers that I posted years ago.

In the recent weeks, I even got the first upvotes on two nearly one year old answers that had hitherto been left with no votes.

So if you don't mind playing the role of patching the holes left by other answerers, then the questions to answer can be found on the first page(s) of your favourite tags.

You just have to be patient and wait potentially many months for the votes - and accept to get fewer votes than the person who answers within a minute with a half-baked line of code.

Also notice that you will have to learn to live with your elaborate answers not necessarily getting accepted, so for this to work for you, you really should be sure that you invest that time in questions that you want to answer, for the award will be mostly in the satisfaction of having provided a better answer.


How do you discover Stack Overflow questions you can answer?

  • I click on the giant orange [Unanswered] button

  • Then I scroll down and click the language tag that I'm interested in from the "Unanswered Tags" list

  • Default sort is by Newest

I swear I read (ok, ok, glanced through) through all 26 the answers and was shocked that this method wasn't already listed.

For me, this is the fastest / laziest / simplest way to view questions I'm interested in that do not have any upvoted answers (I'm not a fan of cluttering up my bookmarks).

This method of course has it's downsides since the "Unanswered Tags" list does not contain all the tags I'm interested in, so I largely only ever filter by the primary language tag.


I currently have two tags in my favorites: (a well-known technology) and (a less-well-known design pattern).

I never click on them because they take me to the /questions page which does not contain the data filtered or sorted in the way I want to see it. I want to view /unanswered, not /questions.

I would love it if you implemented this proposal so I could filter /unanswered with my "Favorite Tag" list instead of the "Unanswered Tag" list, but until then I have no use for favorite tags, or any desire to add any new tags.

Actually that's not quite true. The only thing I like about defining my favorite tags is it highlights these questions on the main page. This is the only thing that prevents me from ignoring the main page entirely.


Nope. I never memorized the exact criteria for badges, and never kept track of how close I was to reaching one. Perhaps if it was clearly displayed somewhere I may care, at least for a few badges, but overall I would not appreciate the feeling of being "harassed" with this data on a regular basis. It would have to be displayed in an easy-to-access interface and on-demand for me to use and enjoy it.

Do you answer within the same session that started with a Google search?

No, I primarily bring up SO anytime I feel the need to take a break from my work by typing the letter "s" in my url and letting it autocomplete

Frequently Google searches do lead me to Stack Overflow, and something may catch my eye that I want to answer. Or I may use an existing open tab to look for new unanswered questions out of laziness. But this probably doesn't occur as much as me browsing to the site by the url.


Nope, too lazy to find them, set them up, and figure out how they work


I come to Stack Overflow for two reasons: To find answers to my questions, and to provide answers to other people's questions.

Also, I primarily work in a single language, so I don't care about almost all the other language tags. I suspect many other developers feel the same way.

Your many filters/sorts/views are fun to browse on occasion, however I primarily want to view /unanswered for my specific tag(s), sorted by newest (since they typically have a higher percentage of responsive users).

I would enjoy having more one-click ways to access exactly this, without having to rely on bookmarks or 3rd party tools.

  1. Tag RSS, something looks interesting and I have time

  2. Occasionally hit /questions and see if anything is interesting in the first page

  3. Someone pays me via my PayPal account $2000 bucks to answer their question

  4. Ouiji

Pick two.

How do you get two-thousand-dollar deer into your PayPal account? I thought they only handled money. –  Josh Caswell May 12 at 19:54
@JoshCaswell: Dude, check their API documentation. Sheesh. –  Will May 13 at 15:02
I so want to upvote this. It makes me sad that I can't because of this: Please only upvote others’ responses if their answer-flow resembles yours. I guess I'll have to go buy a Ouija board... –  asteri May 14 at 2:55
Will you answer my question if I ask for code to post Deer to paypal? –  DVK May 17 at 0:12

I've become much more of an editor than an answerer these days, and where I have advice (or a short possible solution) I will often comment. So whilst rep is a minor motivator, I don't find it all that important. I don't keep track of badges, though I don't mind peeking at the chart when I am informed I have a new one.

I try to answer questions on the home page from time to time, so as not to get too stuck in particular topics, but otherwise it's my tag list in the sidebar that guides me what to look at. I go in cycles often based on my current work; if I've been playing around with , I'll lurk on that tag for a while, and will answer if I see I can help.

I sometimes will go to tags that I know are responsible for a high level of poor questions (e.g. ), mostly for editing, voting and comment guidance. In so doing, I sometimes find a good question and, if a comment would not be big enough for the solution, I'll add a proper answer in.


I check 3 small (>200 questions) tags daily, and have a shot at answering everything that comes up. On that front, I wish that was a process which was easier through the iOS app/mobile interface.

Outside of that, I refresh through a few high-traffic tags now and then, but generally don't feel enough of an expert to answer anything worthwhile there.


I have not found an effective way to find unanswered questions that are within my sphere of knowledge without spending lots and lots of time on it. As a result, a few of my answers are a result of such a search, but most of the time the only way I find an unanswered question which I am able to answer is when I find a question about a problem I am currently encountering, realize that it is unanswered, solve the problem and answer the question.

I really wish there was a better way that I could find questions to answer, but usually it takes longer just to find the question than I am willing to spend on it. Maybe I'm not altruistic enough. :)

I would answer more regularly if this mechanism were improved; for example, perhaps if I could opt-in to be notified about questions that still need an answer. If I could sign up to get one email per day on up to 10 questions that have been unanswered for at least a few hours and were strongly correlated to my favorite tags or my highest-rep tags, perhaps I would find some to answer.


I keep a tab open on the newest tab for the [c++11] tag, which is the only one I currently lurk, but the set of tags I include in there has changed over time. I refresh it from time to time, but the questions I find tend to fit one or more of the following categories:

  1. I have already answered that question too many times;
  2. It should not be tagged [c++11];
  3. It is about those damned function_traits abominations that people keep tossing around.

Sometimes I find the odd interesting one and answer that. This happens about once a day, I guess. Sometimes I don't have time for flesh out the answer I would like to, so I just leave a hint in comments in the hopes that someone else picks it up.

Recently I started finding some questions to answer by having them handed out to me in chat. For example, some loungizens will toss at me any [unicode] questions they run across that aren't obvious crap and I answer some.


Maybe I'm the only one, but I subscribe for email alerts about my favorite tags. These tags are low traffic (0 to 5 questions per day), so the email volume is manageable.

Subscribe to tag

I read every question I'm emailed about, and edit, vote, answer and/or try to close as it suits: my mood, my available free time, and the quality of the question.

If my target tags started to get higher volume, I would probably rethink this approach, but it's worked well for me for years.


I use the "Interesting" tab on the home page. I have three tags favorited (all related), and so questions I'm likely to be able to answer are highlighted. I often avoid the questions at the very top of the page, as they're new within the last few minutes, and will likely get an answer by somebody else if I'm not very fast at typing (though I'll occasionally go for one of them anyway, if it seems interesting rather than "give me the codez").

To find questions to answer without racing, I usually look for questions in the lower half of the page that don't have answers yet (or ones with titles that stand out, without yet an having an accepted answer). The questions at the bottom of the "Interesting" page tend to be several hours old and so if they don't have an answer yet, I'm not likely to be beaten by some other answerer at the last moment. Of course, some times they have no answer because they're bad questions, but I'm happy to help the site by closing or downvoting those instead of answering them.


How do you discover Stack Overflow questions you can answer?

Random. I open the site with the intention to answer something because I have some extra time or need a brain break/distraction while I think about a code problem of my own.

Sometimes I use the tag filters, but usually, I click a couple of random questions that grab my attention on the front page. Often (increasingly more common), I run out of spare time and/or dive back into my code without finding a question worth investing time into. If I have a lot of spare time, I might wade in and help someone who seems well-intentioned, but has posted a weak or likely-to-be-closed question because I feel bad that they're struggling and might get shut down for administrative reasons.


Yes, but not frequently. I have about 14-20 tag favorites


Barely, and only with the tag filter on. If I am looking for a question to answer, it would either be a random one off the front page, or an unanswered one from the tag-filtered list.


It did at first, but by the time I hit 10k, I had both reached most of the milestones I wanted to and simultaneously cared less about the milestones. By that time, I considered myself a member of the community rather than a mostly-anonymous participant. Finding the very active (and awesome!) PHP chat was also a large contributor to the shift in my attitude.

That said, since the gold badge dupehammer rollout, I have a renewed interest in gold tag badges.


No. If I am searching Google, I'm fully engaged in working on my own stuff. I might perform a quick moderation task (flag, CV, etc) if I land on a question that needs it.





Yes, although most of the time just the MySQL tag.


I tend to use the newest tab 99% of the time, and occasionally the featured tab.


Not really.


Sometimes, but rarely. If I have done a google search the chances are the question / answer it brings up will be from some time ago and likely already answered.




Home page =>> tag ==> newest ...."click"

Sometimes I may go to the 2nd/3rd page from newest.


I wish I had more time to answer, but I spend too much time drawn into the quality control vortex. Even when I do wish to answer, I often won't because a question does not deserve an answer due to lack of effort / basic tutorial stuff / duplicated stuff / do my homework for me.

For instance, today I was the first to spot the error in a regex question (I won't give the link). Instead of posting an answer for some cheap rep-whoring upvote + accepted answer, I commented, downvoted and voted for closure due to typographical/reproducible because it wasn't worth anyone's time here.

When I do actually give an answer, it is one of two possibilities:

  1. In one of my top knowledge tags, such as java. So I usually do [java][-android] filters.
  2. I come across an actual problem in my real work that I solve and see if I can contribute to any existing questions. These questions may be a couple weeks old or a couple years old but if I see a hole I will relate my experiences in a new answer.

I imagine that my #2 is quite rare and may even be considered an anti-pattern for SO.


There are so many questions asked on StackOverflow that it's more a matter of filtering questions down to those that seem efficient to answer, rather than just finding questions.

I use tags heavily. I have one high traffic tag (java), along with a number of low traffic tags which are areas where I have expertise or interest (e.g., ssl, sockets, multithreading). I watch the java tag when I feel like racing to be the first to answer, and the other tags when I'd rather take my time.

This still results in a lot of questions that are only peripherally related to the tag, so I also look for the yellow shading that indicates a question that also has one of my tags other than the one I'm currently filtering for.

I mostly use the "newest" tab and to a lesser extent the "featured" tab, because questions in these tabs are more less likely to have been abandoned by their posters. I preferentially look at questions with no answers.

Not being a jaded 100k+ members yet, I'm perfectly willing to help people with debugging questions or homework questions as long as it's clear they've made a real effort already and are stuck.

Badges don't affect my choice of questions much, though they are influencing me to spend more time in the review queues and less on answering questions. I don't use third party apps to find questions. When I find something by Google I'm usually looking for an answer to one of my own questions, so my next action is to use the answer to fix my problem, rather than to answer other questions. Rather, I usually come to StackOverflow to answer questions when I have a bit of dead time in my work flow - a build is running, or whatever.


What I do as an answerer:

  1. Favorite's Tag highlights the languages/areas I'm most comfortable answering. I'll scan those questions and attempt to answer them
  2. If there's nothing that I can answer or the question has a good answer which I've upvoted, I go back to work.
  3. If I'm really, really bored or I just need to escape for a few minutes, I'll check the bounties area or review some items.

What I want as an answerer:

My own custom tab that I can set as the default view. Really! I just want to have my Favorite Tags+Unanswered as one of my selections ordered as the question would appear on the "most interesting" tab.


I find questions via Google when I am working.

When I am looking to answer I look at the top of the question queue with my favorites highlighted.

Sometimes I find questions when reviewing.


Lets get your specific questions out of the way first...


Yes I do tag filtering (c++ and -qt) and although I have c++ in my favorites, I don't make use of that.


Almost always newest. On rare dull days featured.


Not at all. I can't even quickly think of a way it could.


Rarely, see the "hot network question", "searching for a question that fits my answer" part below.



Now that we are done with the specifics, a little free text. Note that I can't give any hard statistical numbers, so take "often", "rarely" etc. with the appropriate grain of salt. Further note that due to my "workflow" this is not restricted to

The majority of questions that I consider for answering are those from my browser starting bookmark:

For the purpose of answering (ignoring the purpose of closing etc.) there I mostly look at questions that * are unanswered * have 0 or higher score * have a title that makes them sound intresting. This is very subjective and I can't really elaborate much more on this, but consider it of being the opposite of something that sounds like "do the rtfm for me" or "debug this program for me". * aren't about a specific API (maybe with the exception of some parts of boost)

Every few days, someone one freenode ##c++ irc channel comes and posts a link to an SO question. Surprisingly the quality of those questions is on average much higher, so I always consider those for answering.

I do especially not use any kind of email/rss/android-app push way to notify me about any questions.

Then there is the "hot network questions" sidebar. I always look through it, open questions that sound interesting, and sometimes answer them. Then when I don't find some questions on SO, but am in the mood of answering something, I go to and scan through that longer list. Then sometimes when there are interesting questions on another SE, I open their questions tab and look if something sounds interesting enough.

A totally different way to answer questions is, when I found a solution for one of my problems. Here I might have done a search on SO or google, and discovered a question with a non-fitting or no answer. Sometimes I just discovered something on my own, and then quickly search for a question on SO.

If I find one fast enough (first couple of any kinds of search results) then I will add my new findings as an answer.

That's pretty much it. Now let me give a few words about why I don't answer some questions. I think this is equally important to consider, since the goal might be to get more stuff answered.

Questions that deserve no answer but close votes aside, there are a couple of questions I do not answer/touch because:

  • They feel like being a duplicate and I don't have the time right now to search for a duplicate
  • They are too easy. I want to be at least challenged a bit, and not merely reciting documentation from my memory.
  • They deserve a more elaborated answer, but due to the fastest gun in the west problem, when I would be done with writing an answer that satisfies my personal quality standards, there would be already 10 answers, one accepted and everyone moved on. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to repwhore, but seeing a dozen or two upvotes spent for several two liner answers, all saying the same thing like "do this instead" while I try to explain the why behind what to do instead, adding and researching some references etc., then I find this effort a bit wasted, since it feels like no one will ever look at my answer. Who looks at answers that only have 1 upvote while there are 10 with 5 or more?

My way of finding questions has changed of the past year, so I'll cover both cases.

  1. My Favorite Tag -> Newest Questions
    • This worked well when I first started on SO, however I feel that over time my favorite tags have been overrun with help vampires.
  2. Stackoverflow Homepage (interesting tab)
    • This is my new favorite way of finding good questions primarily because by looking at a much broader range of tags I tend to find more good quality questions.
  3. Bounties
    • Bounties are also a common place where I search for good questions because I feel that if the user was willing to give up some rep to bring attention to the question, they likely put some time into preparing it.

I find myself clicking on poor quality questions just to downvote/close/improve them more often now than i did previously. I hate finding users who can't/refuse to debug properly.


How do you discover Stack Overflow questions you can answer?

I browse tags and check the "new" question in tags where I have experience.


I check the new ones, and sometimes the unanswered but those tend to be very old questions and/or low quality.


Not really. At 12.6K I don't need the karma for anything really :)


Rarely, but I do sometimes use Google to find other relevant Q & A to link to in comments or answers.




My skillset is pretty limited when it comes to programming, I am primarily self-taught with VBA (although I think I'm pretty good with it). I have a small amount of training with Python and have done some self-tutorial stuff with javascript and Google Apps Scripting.

Most of my answers are in VBA Q's, or Q's related to MS Office interop/etc., where my knowledge of the object model(s) can often prove helpful even if I don't know the particular language constructs.

A lot of times I try to answer questions that I don't know how to answer. In this way, I use the Questions as a way to teach myself something new and expand my own knowledge.


When I was more active, I'd usually find questions using a desktop or browser notifier such as Newt. New questions in tags I was interested in would show up for a few seconds, so I had a chance to see if anything looked interesting, and then disappear, so I wouldn't need to worry about dismissing them if they weren't interesting.

This is a much better experience than visiting the site and using a manual auto-reloader or something, but there don't actually seem to be any particularly good tools anymore. Many previous ones are broken.

Relying on the community to provide these types of hasn't really worked, and shouldn't be necessary. If good, well-designed tools did exist, I think they would would drive more participation. Stack Exchange Inc. should assume responsibility for this issue and provide official browser plugins instead.


I have about 19 favorites but this is really more like 8 topics (I have 3 variations on linq as an example), then I just just go to the main page and look for things that haven't been answered. Or for certain topics (sql and linq mostly) I will look if there are only a few answers and none have been accepted.

Oh, I guess I look a little at the title. But the title rarely signifies anything.


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