It seems that many new jellies tend to answer very old questions. Why?

Maybe when they go to ask a question they find that it’s already been asked so they join the conversation that was already started. I like it when an old conversation gets new life.

Sometimes I peruse other people’s questions from the past. It’s interesting!

Because, there appear to be a trend to disallow new questions if one already exists, I guess the powers that be feel it will keep the site from getting bogged down with 15 versions of the same question, too bad they did not stop that ship from sailing with all those ‘does she/he like me’ and silly NSFW questions, go figure. At worse it is a tacit form of question steering.

I’ve noticed that as well, not sure why. But as @GloPro says, I sometimes check out old stuff as well, and it is interesting.

Assalamualaikum.

I am a new jelly. I have answered some older questions as well. I am a Muslim. So when I see a question being asked on Islam old or new I like to answer it, hoping it would remove the misconceptions that many non-Muslims have.

Even I wonder why. Sorry my answer was of no help.
Ya know, when I joined, even I preferred to answer old questions than the newer one. ;)

Some of the older questions are still of interest today and more interesting than newer questions.

You also get to see them in the Related area of the website———->>>

I think people stop reading and answering old questions after they’ve been here a while. So there maybe be a social influence against it that new jellies haven’t yet encountered.

I answered an old question when I was new and did feel that the OP was a little annoyed that that question was being “dragged up” again. I may be wrong though.

Old questions can have relevant new answers.

When answers to some of my old questions pop up, I get a little nostalgic & tiny lump grows in my throat…hope it’s not sadness cancer.

I did it a few times when I was new. I didn’t realize the question was old. It popped up as related to something else I was searching and I don’t usually bother to look how old a Q is, especially back then.

On the right side of my screen, there’s a section called “Related.” When I read a question, a group of similar questions, some of them quite old, pop up for reference. Some newbies might open the “Related” topics and respond.

Because they weren’t here the first time around and have something to add that they think would be useful, of course. And also what @SadieMartinPaul said. I often see “related questions” that I wasn’t around to answer when they were asked, but would’ve liked to have been involved in. I never actually post a response, but some do.

I personally find it annoying when one member (new or not) goes back and answers a crap load of old questions and I’ll come to Fluther to find that I have 15 alerts in my personal activity and they’re all questions from a year ago or more. I usually end up hitting “stop following” on all of the questions once I notice that’s what’s going on. Not that jellies shouldn’t be able to do that – it’s just aggravating to me.

@livelaughlove21 I personally have no problem with new jellies answering old questions. What annoys me is many of the answers are unhelpful and/or badly written (full of grammatical errors and/or txtspk).

I can’t say I’ve really noticed that kind of low quality answer from newbies. :/ Sure once in a while it happens, but not enough to say that it’s an issue.

It might be because if it isn’t a new and wonderful question then @ucme always starts off with “I’ve answered this a thousand times already…”
He’s got me so trained I search for questions now before asking one. My cutoff for asking again is around 2011…

Now come on, be fair @GloPro, I only ever said “a hundred times”
You chicks don’t half exaggerate :D

I agree that it’s the newbies being more aware of the “Related” column, and less aware of the time frame. Occasionally I see a really great question in “related” and answer it no matter the age or the current status of the asker. It’s nice to see a great old question revived, IMO.

I sometimes answer old questions because there’s nothing fresh that interests me, and I’m bored. :)

Sometimes a web search will pull up an old question here and they (hopefully) read the responses and give their own in return.

And as @Stinley pointed out, once you are here there are ways of accessing old question once you are here, including the search engine at the top.

When I do it it is for Google. I would bet that 95+% of the pageviews here are from Google. So if someone looks at a old question and finds a answer they might be inclined to look around and maybe join instead of instantly hitting the back button.

Because the founders designed this into the site. I read this quite a while ago but don’t remember exactly where. They didn’t view old questions being revived as a bad thing.

I will sometimes ask a question again, if the last time it was asked was years ago. There have been many new users to the site, so it’s likely a question re-asked will have many new and varied answers.

It’s always interesting to look at old questions and see the users that have been here and gone. It’s like a walk down memory lane.

^ Or the “Fluther shooting gallery” of Jellies that have been picked off one by one.

They’re picking jellies?
Yum! Jelly pie!