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How does one distinguish between any of the following reasons why he or she has not received a response to his or her question:

(1) The question is unnoticed by many.

(2) Not many feel confident or qualified to provide an answer.

(3) The question is too trivial.

(4) The question is too confusing.

(5) No one is interested in the question.

I have posted two questions already. Feel free to investigate them and suggest improvements for them to invoke better feedback.

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  • $\begingroup$ The Covariant derivative one is interesting; but I need paper and pen to work it out. $\endgroup$ – Manishearth Mar 3 '14 at 3:31
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    $\begingroup$ I added a bounty. I don't think 50 rep will actually motivate any of our expert users to answer but hopefully you'll get enough attention that at least one person will provide a decent answer. $\endgroup$ – Brandon Enright Mar 3 '14 at 23:41
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As far as I can tell/predict:

  1. There is a "view" counter for each question
  2. No way of knowing
  3. It'd likely be closed if its too trivial
  4. Someone would likely comment that it's confusing, a close vote for "unclear what you're asking" would also likely come
  5. No way of knowing

Note also that if you really want an answer to a question, you can always add a bounty to the question (though this requires 75+ rep).

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  • $\begingroup$ That is true, but I do not have 50+, maybe in the future when I have more rep+. Thanks. I was thinking earlier that a possible feature to add to stackexchange is another clickable menu where users can up-vote any of the 5 categories listed above. For example users could up-vote the confusing category. $\endgroup$ – linuxfreebird Mar 2 '14 at 22:26
  • $\begingroup$ Note that bounty amounts start from 50 rep but offering bounties requires 75 rep. $\endgroup$ – Emilio Pisanty Mar 3 '14 at 10:15
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    $\begingroup$ @linuxfreebird that will most likely be too clunky to be of use. If a question is very confusing it will be closed (or close-voted) as Unclear what you're asking. If it can use specific clarifications people are likely to simply ask that in the comments. $\endgroup$ – Emilio Pisanty Mar 3 '14 at 10:17
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To address your questions in particular: they are quite advanced technical questions, which immediately means only a small subset of the site's user base will be able to answer them. It's possible that such people might miss your questions. When you have more rep you can offer a bounty, which will help with this. Or, if you feel you can improve the questions, editing them will bump them back to the front page. (But please don't make small edits just for the sake of bumping - an edit should always make a substantial improvement to the question.)

In your case, your questions have been up-voted (especially the first one), and both of them have been favourited by four people. (The favorite button is the star underneath the up and down vote buttons. The small number underneath it is the number of people who have used it.) This suggests that in your case, people are interested in the questions but don't know the answer. For specific technical questions like this, you shouldn't be too surprised if it takes a little while for an answer to come.

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