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I saw a question this afternoon: minimizing the norm of a curl over a domain

Then I went on to cook up an answer. After I submitted, I was about to edit OP's question to make it better formatted. Suddenly I realized the question was asked two years ago... and I saw no other activities except my newly added answer.

Is this a bug in the system?

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    $\begingroup$ In this case, the bot's bumping served its intended purpose: the question got your attention, and you then proceeded to answer it. Worked all splendidly, I'd say. $\endgroup$ – J. M. is a poor mathematician Jun 19 '13 at 0:49
  • $\begingroup$ @Ｊ.M. Hmm...I am curious what data mining algorithm the SE bot is using. After seeing your comment I search the MSE a bit and found many un-answered question or answered-but-not-accepted question. Why the bot decides to bump this question but not some other one? $\endgroup$ – Shuhao Cao Jun 19 '13 at 0:56
  • $\begingroup$ Not sure either, but questions that are candidates for bot-bumping have to be at least a month old, and haven't had answers that are either accepted or upvoted. $\endgroup$ – J. M. is a poor mathematician Jun 19 '13 at 1:02
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The other answer has no upvotes. This means that it is likely a Community user bump.

This sort of thing occurs from time to time to questions without upvoted answers, at least if the question's score is nonnegative.

How often exactly is a trade secret, I believe, but it's very normal to see these things happen.

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    $\begingroup$ I see. Thanks man! $\endgroup$ – Shuhao Cao Jun 18 '13 at 22:06
  • $\begingroup$ To complete this, questions are also bumped when a deleted answer is edited (for <10k, this appears like nothing happened). $\endgroup$ – Lord_Farin Jun 18 '13 at 22:06
  • $\begingroup$ @Lord_Farin: Not true, deletion and undeletion do not bump; re-opening a question does bump it though. $\endgroup$ – Asaf Karagila♦ Jun 18 '13 at 22:07
  • $\begingroup$ @Asaf You're right, I've checked on MSO and replaced with the likely accurate alternative I have observed a lot. $\endgroup$ – Lord_Farin Jun 18 '13 at 22:10

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