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As the title states, what is the point in constantly editing year old questions in order to remove tags and possibly edit a few sentences?

I've noticed this occurs frequently and was curious why, as it mostly contributes to cluttering up the main page with year old questions. Editing questions that are over a year old usually often brings back up false information as many online games become outdated with time. Often times I've noticed that the majority of the questions in the front page are really old threads that have been brought back due to having edits done to them.

Take for example Rift which is an MMORPG, recently there was a question that was asked back in 2011 that was recently brought back to the front page due to edits. The answer provided then is not fully accurate for today's version of the game, yet since it was brought back from the dead it is now providing outdated information.

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    If you know the answer(s) is/are wrong - do something about it
    – kalina
    Nov 12, 2013 at 0:47
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    It's important to remember that which questions appear on the front page of Arqade.com at any given point is pretty inconsequential. We're playing the long game here, and most people get to these questions from Google. Anything that can be done to improve them, even editing tags or fixing sentences, helps. The fact that it temporarily clogs up the front page doesn't matter much, and as you pointed out, brings attention to out-of-date answers. Even if only 1 in 20 of those out-of-date answers gets fixed, that's 5% more than otherwise would have.
    – Sterno
    Nov 12, 2013 at 4:14
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    Side note: If you only ever want to see new questions, set your bookmark to gaming.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=newest
    – Robotnik Mod
    Nov 12, 2013 at 4:22

1 Answer 1

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Bringing up old questions is good because they are sometimes wrong. It brings them to the attention of those who can correct them.

The content on this site is provided whether it's on the front page or buried deep in the back pages. people can still find it through search engines. That question isn't now providing outdated information, it was doing that the instant it became outdated. Now that it has been brought to people's attention, it can be fixed.

We should strive to provide quality content no matter how old the question.

Retagging questions is good for the same reasons. Plus, we often clean up bad tags or fix misused tags. All these things only make the site better.

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    This would be good, however I've noticed that usually questions that get brought back up don't get updated answers. Many users see that there is already an accepted answer and don't bother with providing new answers to these questions from what I've noticed.
    – Valrok
    Nov 11, 2013 at 21:37
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    @Julian So break the mold and provide a new answer yourself.
    – user9983
    Nov 11, 2013 at 21:38
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    Don't forget about random spam that ends up being posted to age old questions, it get's deleted, but the page is still bumped to the front.
    – Arperum
    Nov 11, 2013 at 22:16
  • @Julian - If I knew anything about Rift, I'd update it. Do note this situation does come up often enough - Minecraft is the perfect example where something may change following a patch, making an answer invalid or no longer apply. Here is an example of one I went back and answered with an updated answer, over a year after the question was initially asked. So it does happen :)
    – Robotnik Mod
    Nov 12, 2013 at 4:42

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