Why is it hard to get answers and responses here? Or is this a false impression?

Question

I've been a Stack Exchange user for about seven years, mostly on Unix & Linux. I noticed recently that I have a slight impression that it's pointless to ask about my Apple problems on this site, so I looked at the numbers:

• I've asked 101 questions on Unix & Linux (and written 569 answers). Out of those 101 questions, exactly 4 of them got no answers, and all four had multiple helpful comments. One of those four was closed as a duplicate, which means I really did get an answer anyway.

• On Ask Different, I've asked 23 questions (and written 22 answers). Out of those 23 questions, 7 got no answers. That's about a third. Also, at least a couple of the questions were self-answered with no other comments or answers.

Is this just me? Is it something I'm doing wrong with how I'm asking questions? Is there any sort of general "ghost town" feeling for anyone else? Or am I maybe just running up against corners of Mac OS that other people tend not to care about?

There's another factor of speed of response that may be relevant. Unix & Linux feels very immediate, like pretty invariably getting a response in 24 hours or less. But I don't know, maybe it's just me. I thought I'd see what other people think here.

Answer 1

AskDifferent has significantly less active users than Unix&Linux, resulting in way less pages views per question. Your most-viewed question (Remove "Creative Cloud Files" from Finder sidebar?) got 7k views (but is already six years old), your newest ones got below 30 views so far. So it's kind of obvious that it may take a while to get answers.

It's not always obvious why certain questions gather a lot of interest while others don't. But let me share my impressions on your two recent questions:

Can I revert Apple Mail to its previous behavior with regard to the search box?

The only suitable answer here is most likely "No, this is not possible, get used to it". But usually people are reluctant to post such answers because it is not possible to prove that this is correct, also it could be read as slightly rude.

Is there a way to correctly set "media kind" in Apple Music 1.2.4.3?

My first reaction to this one was "does Music even support audio books and TV shows, or are these media types rather handled by Books and TV today?". So, based on the way you framed the problem to be solved, it may not be solvable. Also, upgrades such as the one you did are probably rare so there might just not be enough people out there who had similiar problems already and found ways to solve it.