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I'll throw my 2 cents here, I think Fisher hit the spot, and the big problem are the new users (most of them, not all):

1. Not much information (logs or other stuff) regarding the problem in hand
2. Explanation of the problem itself is of bad quality
3. Most posts itself are written in bad English
4. New users don't vote answers as correct
5. They don't search before asking

This removes motivation for others users to answer those questions, resulting in a high percentage of unanswered questions.

I use Ubuntu, but I also use Slackware (and used other distros in the past) like so, I've been participating on other helping sites, like linuxquestions or arch forums and such, and they have a different philosophy:

Users should be educated on first searching then asking finally voting

In here, they don't bother searching before, they just ask, and we can see this site has a lot of information already, most of the questions asked, have already a solution and has been asked before.

So, how to lower the unanswered questions?

As a new user joins AU, he should receive a warning or some basic instructions, like:

Search -> Ask -> Vote

1. Search first,
2. Ask only if your question isn't found
3. If answer is given mark the question as answered

When a user doesn't do this, the question should be closed and the reason why is the above instructions.