What are the rules/guidelines for bumping old questions? (old as in 1 year or more) What is usually the maximum time before a question is considered too old to bump?
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17$\begingroup$ There is no "too old to bump." Yet pointless bumping and flooding the frontpage with numerous bumps close in time are discouraged. $\endgroup$– quid ModAug 20, 2016 at 23:44
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2$\begingroup$ See How much bumping is too much? and other posts linked there. $\endgroup$– Martin SleziakAug 21, 2016 at 5:33
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6$\begingroup$ My rule: do not bump more that 3 stale questions per day. $\endgroup$– GEdgarAug 21, 2016 at 13:20
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2$\begingroup$ How to bump an old question which is unanswered? $\endgroup$– user345851Aug 21, 2016 at 18:01
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4$\begingroup$ @ShubhamKumar if you want to give it visibility place a bounty. If not, I do not understand the question. $\endgroup$– quid ModAug 22, 2016 at 1:01
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1$\begingroup$ Doesn't editing or answering an old question bump it? $\endgroup$– suomynonAAug 22, 2016 at 4:08
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6$\begingroup$ @Anonymous Yes, though those actions should always carry an intention beyond "I want to bump this question" $\endgroup$– Milo BrandtAug 22, 2016 at 5:10
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3$\begingroup$ Instead of just bumping the question and hoping that somehow this will lead to a different outcome than the previous time, try to improve the question as well as you can. The question will then naturally be bumped, and it will have a better chance of receiving an answer (or at least comments). $\endgroup$– Najib IdrissiAug 22, 2016 at 15:44
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2 Answers
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Bumping of a Question, old or not, does not of itself signify anything constructive, re the mission of Math.SE. Bumping occurs as a side-effect of editing or answering a Question and serves the purpose of bringing these changes to the Community's attention.
If an Edit or Answer is worthwhile, even for an older Question, then the bumping that occurs is generally unobjectionable, certainly a secondary concern at best. Thus the age of the affected Question is at best a tertiary concern.
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$\begingroup$ I disagree. Making a minor edit (adding a tag, fixing a spelling mistake,...) is OK, even desirable, for a question still on the front page. But not for a question that has had no activity for a year. $\endgroup$– GEdgarAug 22, 2016 at 12:33
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15$\begingroup$ @GEdgar: A Question may have "no activity for a year" affecting its front page appearance, yet still receive views and votes, factors more directly connected to the value of edits. Certainly some edits are less valuable than others, and some users object to even important link-rot fixes to systematic problems when many older Questions are affected. So I will agree to disagree, my position being that the age of a Question for a worthwhile edit is of tertiary importance. $\endgroup$– hardmathAug 22, 2016 at 14:34
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Bumping occurs as a side-effect of editing or answeringFWIW it can also occur due to the Community background process: "Randomly poke old unanswered questions every hour so they get some attention". P.S. Or maybe "no accepted or upvoted answers", seeing that Lengths of the sides of a triangle: sufficient and necessary condition? was just bumped to the active page by Community, even though it had a posted answer. $\endgroup$– dxivAug 25, 2016 at 0:01 -
1$\begingroup$ @dxiv: I'm aware of the Community bumps. I'm glad you pointed it out; since the Question and its Answer were both reasonable and had zero votes, I upvoted both. Unanswered here perhaps includes Questions with no upvoted or accepted Answer. Mention of Community bumps did not find a place in my narrative since they are independent of user action. $\endgroup$– hardmathAug 25, 2016 at 3:41
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The Community process will occasionally bump random questions without any activity triggering it. That tells me that bumping old questions is indeed desirable, as long as it doesn't affect too many in too short a time. And I'd rather see a post bumped because it got improved than just bumped with no improvement.
So if you want to answer a question or improve a post, I'd say go ahead, improve our site with valuable content. If the questions you process are similar in nature (e.g. because you're going over a given tag listing, or all posts of a given author, or deliberately searching for some common misspelling or dead links or something like that), make sure to limit your bumps so that they don't come to dominate the front page. Perhaps check there is only one or two of them in the list at any given time?
If, on the other hand, you don't intend to substantially improve the post, but only edit it for the sake of bumping the question, then I'd rather not see that tool being abused. If you want to draw attention, offer a bounty. Or hope for luck and wait for the Community process to bump it.
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5$\begingroup$ The auto-bump occurs for questions which have no upvoted answers and have a positive (non-negative?) score. Namely, questions that as far as the system is concerned are unanswered. $\endgroup$– Asaf Karagila ModAug 31, 2016 at 20:10