I see interesting questions posted here all the time come up in my home feed. I click on the post and there's usually a dozen or so deleted comments and no answer to the question. What gives?
The dynamics of this sub don't work well with trending algorithms. Someone posts a question, others are curious so they upvote it... then crickets.
But that's a good thing. You don't want fast, off the cuff replies. You want well thought out, detailed answers. The problem is that you don't get those until the post has been replaced by another new, trending one that has no answers. There are many fantastic answers in here, but you have to dig a little.
TL;DR: sort by best this week
Yes. We have about a 40 percent answer rate overall, and nearly 100 percent for popular threads.
If you use the /comments queue, you will see all the answers, with no pesky [removed] and no unanswered questions. Find a cumfy chair and click here /r/AskHistorians/comments
Alternatively, follow our @AskHistorians twitter feed, or drop by on Sundays when people highlight their favourite answers in the stickied post Sunday Digest. Or look for links to this sub from aggregators like /r/bestof and /r/depthhub