Does Fluther have any rules against bumping old threads?

Bumping doesn’t exactly work in Fluther, since the questions are arranged in the order in which they were asked. So if you answer a 2-year old question, it will come to the attention to those who are still following it, but it won’t rise to the top of the question list to everyone’s attention, the way it would in some other fora. If you’re arranging the questions according to which are “active”, then you pretty much get what you asked for.

Presumably, the reason Fluther officially closes questions is to prevent specific questions from getting more attention; this implies (or at least, I infer) that “bumping” old questions is not against the rules.

Personally, I like the idea of being able to comment on old threads, rather than re-introduce the same question again – though sometimes it makes more sense to ask the current collective, rather than whoever might have been using Fluther when the last question was asked.

@glacial Do you know if those still following the question would see it at the top of the list?

I don’t know if something has changed, but last I knew about it, a year ago or so, it was possible to bring it to the top of the list.

EDIT: I mean, to push an old question, to the top of the list in social or general, with all the old answers still there, not ask an old question again like new.

It will show up on the “activity for you” list but still in the date order of the all the questions asked. I’ve had 500 plus new responses in the past so I probably wouldn’t have noticed a new response to a very old question.

Maybe it is because I have not slept in a long time, but I don’t seem to be understanding.

So, if I do some necromancy and bring back an old question it’s ok? Like, if I bring back my most popular question, I wont lose it to moderation?

You can keep posting on questions for as long as you like but as the question gets older less and less people will notice.

You can’t bump a question – if you post a reply to an old question the only people who will see it are those who are still following it (assuming they still log in). It will appear in their “Activity for you” section. But the question won’t re-appear at the top of the General/Social list, so people who weren’t following it already won’t see it again.

You can’t (and have never been able to) push a question back to the top of the que. The questions are chronological.

If by “bring back an old question” you mean post it again as a new question, it depends. If enough time has passed, sometimes they’ll leave them up (especially if you note in the body something like “I’ve asked this before, but I was hoping to hear from the newer users”).

Yes, you have to ask the question again to make it current. I think there’s no problem if the question hasn’t been asked in a year, and even, sometimes, if it’s been at least six months.

Of course, you can always change it slightly and then there will be no problem.

As others have hinted above, if you do post on an old question, no one will be aware of it at all unless they were already following that question. There is nothing you can do to bring an old question to the attention of new users (or people who stopped following the question), unless they make a habit of clicking the “Active” button. I don’t do this regularly; I don’t know how commonly others do it.

Alternatively, if you want people to look at the old question, you could post a link to it in a new question – but I’m not sure if that’s what you’re trying to accomplish.

@glacial I often click on the Active button when I have no other activity. Maybe I’m one of the few who does this? I’ve found many old questions this way.

I answer old questions all the time. One of my favorite things to do here is click on usernames and go through their three Greatest Questions. While doing this does not, as everyone noted above, repost the question to our main three queues, I have found that it often seems to generate a surprising number of subsequent answers from people who must have left it on their Activity list. At the very least, the OP usually keeps following. I resurrected this nifty thread the other day.

Ok, I just tried it, and it does not work. So I am not sure, if it has been changed, or if I am mistaken.

Just, I am quite sure, that you used to be able to bump it. The way it used to be done, was to ask the same question again, word for word, with all the dots and commas and same topics all in the same places.

Maybe I am thinking of a different site, but, I’m quite sure, that you used to be able to ask a question again, and if it was identical, it would push it to the top of the list.

I had seen it done in the past, and I’m quite sure I managed to do it once in the past, by re-asking the first question I ever asked.

@poisonedantidote As far as I know, we’ve never had that feature here.

@augustlan You could find out if you look at my account. I asked my first question on the same day I joined.

After I had been a member for about a year, I asked the same question again, and I believe it got bumped to the top.

If my first question is younger then my second question in the database entry, then you could tell, but maybe I am just mistaken or remembering wrong.

I think you’re mistaken. However if you ask simmilar questions then you do often find that the same jellies have the tendency to answer with same stuff (I’ve answered a Q in the past only to find I’ve already answered with the exact same thing and just forgotten about it).

There’s an “Active” button? Where is that?

@downtide it’s underneath the Ask Fluther Box on the question page. You can filter so you only see active questions or orphans.

~blinks~

I have never noticed that before.