has the Community mandate for bumping questions changed?

Question

consider this question: Is it possible to make xelatex to compile just once?.

it has one self-answer, with one up-vote, and is more than a year old. yet it has reappeared with the banner

bumped to the homepage by Community♦ 35 mins ago

according to the community profile, this shouldn't be happening.

i am confused.

[also, the community avatar seems to have changed on the main page. probably not related, but may indicate that they're "adjusting" the system again. i hope we don't have to be prepared for double-backspace disasters ...]

edit: it has been hypothesized that a question with no up-votes and a very low vote on a single unaccepted answer is fair game to be bumped. okay, but in that case, the community profile should be amended.

Maybe it was bumped because although the answer had an upvote the question didn't. — Alan Munn, Commented Apr 15, 2017 at 18:47
@AlanMunn -- good suggestion, but this one has one upvote for the question, one upvote for the answer, and a community bump of 9 hours ago: Vertical spacing in equation after splitting. i suppose the vote could have come during that 9 hours; i only just noticed it. — barbara beeton, Commented Apr 15, 2017 at 19:05
That upvote on the question was mine just before I made my comment. — Alan Munn, Commented Apr 15, 2017 at 19:10
@AlanMunn -- fair enough. but still, if community is now bumping questions that have no votes and only one answer with only one vote, then the community profile should be updated. will add that hypothesis into the question. — barbara beeton, Commented Apr 15, 2017 at 19:14
@barbarabeeton At the time the question was bumped, the answer had no upvote yet, you can see the upvotes in the rep tab of the OP, and the time of the first upvote seems to be an hour after the bumping. tex.stackexchange.com/users/56075/davips?tab=reputation — samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz, Commented Apr 15, 2017 at 20:36
@samcarter -- fair enough. however, i'd still like to see the definition of "unanswered" that includes a question with more than zero answers, as the community profile explicitly states "old unanswered questions". i accept that there's an overwhelming prevalence of innumeracy these days, but really! is this a case of "alternate facts"? (i admit to an annoying tendency toward pedantry.) — barbara beeton, Commented Apr 15, 2017 at 20:42
@barbarabeeton I think David Carlisles theory is correct: Most probably the same definition as in the unanswered tab "Questions that have no upvoted answers" — samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz, Commented Apr 15, 2017 at 20:49
@barbarabeeton Take for example tex.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/…. All the 16 questions bumped by "community" have >0 answers. — samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz, Commented Apr 15, 2017 at 20:56
@samcarter -- with a bit more exploring, i think i've found a possible answer -- and analysis as a bug: One particular Unanswered question with my tags has been answered, upvoted 5 times and not downvoted?. i guess i'll just hope the management notices and does something sensible. — barbara beeton, Commented Apr 15, 2017 at 21:20
@barbarabeeton But the conceptional difference to meta.stackexchange.com/q/290042/169475 is that we are talking about answers which had 0 upvotes at the time of bumping - for me seeing these questions bumped does not seem like a bug but just like a strange definition of "unanswered". — samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz, Commented Apr 15, 2017 at 22:02
@samcarter -- i don't disagree. i just want to see an explicit definition of "unanswered". and i haven't been able to find one. if someone can point to an official one, i will shut up. — barbara beeton, Commented Apr 16, 2017 at 1:19
@barbarabeeton Maybe they have an "alternate dictionary". I suppose they've not read Wittgenstein. — cfr, Commented Apr 16, 2017 at 1:42
@barbarabeeton please see the screenshot with a short definition which I added to David Carlisles answer. — samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz, Commented Apr 16, 2017 at 11:57
thanks for the edit, @samcarter. i now understand the principle. but i had to travel through the links given in the answer i checked to discover that a mouse-over on "unanswered" would reveal it. (i "grew up" in the command-line era, and don't deal with with guis. i am totally incompetent with a "smart"phone, and work best when i can keep my fingers on a real keyboard.) — barbara beeton, Commented Apr 16, 2017 at 12:55

ShreevatsaR · Accepted Answer · 2017-04-16 05:23:44Z

This is the documentation I could find on meta.stackexchange.com about the definition of "unanswered" and when the Community user bumps a question:

Jeff Atwood, July 2011: Just to be 100% clear, our definition of unanswered is "no upvoted answers".
Why does the “Unanswered Questions” tab show questions that have answers: “The Unanswered Questions tab shows questions that have no answers with a positive score nor an accepted answer. (That includes questions with no answers at all.)” See also OK, Now Define “Answered [sic] on the Stack Overflow blog.
What can cause a question to be bumped? (via this FAQ): The Community user will bump non-negatively scored questions that have at least one answer scoring 0 and none scoring more than that.
Community ♦ seems to be bumping new questions more frequently than usual (updated recently): Note that the posts eligible for bumping are those scoring >= 0 that have gone at least 30 days with no activity, have at least one non-deleted answer scoring 0 and none scoring more than that, and no accepted answer (also, they can't be deleted or closed).

thanks for this. i have followed the link to the faq, and the most promising entry there led me to a question on meta that showed distinct evidence of confusion like mine. i particularly appreciated a comment i found there: "Quite, another example of breaking the 'Principle of Least Astonishment'." — barbara beeton, Commented Apr 16, 2017 at 12:46

samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz · Accepted Answer · 2017-04-16 11:55:48Z

6

I think it is the same definition of "unanswered" as the unanswered tab in the main question list

https://tex.stackexchange.com/unanswered

this has always included postings that have 0-vote answers.

A short definition is given if mouse hovering over "unanswered":

edited Apr 16, 2017 at 11:55

samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz

177k3 gold badges27 silver badges64 bronze badges

answered Apr 15, 2017 at 19:56

David Carlisle

788k2 gold badges48 silver badges73 bronze badges

but the questions cited in my question explicitly have an answer with one existing up-vote; the questions themselves had zero votes (although one of them got an up-vote after being bumped).
– barbara beeton
Commented Apr 15, 2017 at 20:16
1

@barbarabeeton yes counting as far as 1 has never been my strong point. (probably self-answers don't count)
– David Carlisle
Commented Apr 15, 2017 at 20:19
but the reference question i added in the edit was answered by a different person, one who has deservedly gained a substantial reputation. so for me, more confusion.
– barbara beeton
Commented Apr 15, 2017 at 20:30

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