Poll: why are you not accepting answers?

Question

There seem to be quite a few questions with one or more answers, but none of them accepted. This is understandable. History is not mathematics, it's harder to recognize an answer as "correct". If you have any questions with no accepted answer, would you mind sharing what you find unsatisfying about the current answers? What would an answer have to contain for you to accept it? What would your ideal answer look like?

We need to understand peoples' needs so we can promote answers that people will find satisfying. Anyone can google for a few minutes and get a superficial overview on some historical question, this site will only survive (or even take off) if we can provide answers that really hit the spot and make people want to keep coming back.

Answer 1

I did not accept an answer to this because I am not satisfied with any of the answers. I appreciate people trying, but none of these really answer the question, which is really about when and who worked out the principles that you find in structural engineering textbooks.

Even Wikipedia does better than these answers although it has little detail. From it I can learn:

1750: Euler–Bernoulli beam equation

1707–1783: Leonhard Euler developed the theory of buckling of columns

1826: Claude-Louis Navier published a treatise on the elastic behaviors of structures

1873: Carlo Alberto Castigliano presented his dissertation "Intorno ai sistemi elastici", which contains his theorem for computing displacement as partial derivative of the strain energy. This theorem includes the method of least work as a special case

1874: Otto Mohr formalized the idea of a statically indeterminate structure.

I realize it would take a unique person to wrap up this blend of engineering and history in a neat little package with a bow, but until then, I am considering this a Stack Exchange "long tail" question, and I am willing to wait.

PS: Is this correct use of the statistical term long tail? It sounds both right and wrong to me.

Answer 2

As a result of this question I reviewed all questions that I asked, and I accepted answers to all of them to which there are any answers, but one. This one is an open-ended question to which there is a partial answer, but I do not want to accept it, because on my opinion this may discourage new answers which can shed more light on the problem.

Answer 3

I currently have a question asking for books about the history of Linear Algebra. I haven't accepted an answer because no one has provided one - the Vector Analysis book isn't quite right. I don't think this is a particularly interesting example - book recommendation questions by their nature are prone to ending up unanswered on any StackExchange, not just HSM.

I also accepted an answer to this question even though it doesn't quite satisfy me. Ideally I would have prefered a survey of a few important 19th century sources, showing that the kind of thing I was looking for really doesn't exist, instead of an unsupported claim that it doesn't, but I thought that might be asking a bit much, so I accepted the answer.

Answer 4

I have not accepted an answer to three questions:

1. In what instances did Wolfgang Pauli say that something was 'not even wrong'? - I haven't accepted the answer here because I'd like something beyond a page on Wikiquote. I'm not a fan of using Wikipedia and Wikiquote here.
2. Who invented the Haversine formula (or at least the oldest paper in which it was cited)? - I haven't accepted the answer here because I cannot verify the passage. The book cited is extremely hard to access, because (as I stated in a comment) I do not have access to this kind of reference material. I'm also dismayed that the answerer apparently downvoted the question because the answer was supposedly available on Wikipedia - a site I'm trying to avoid! I explained that I could not access the book it listed, but he did not respond or explain himself.
3. When the Superconducting Super Collider was built, was the future of the site planned for? - Here I answered my own question (with no upvotes on the answer). I don't like accepting my own answers, because it might discourage other, better ones from coming along.