Questions with an answer being edited and clogging up timeline?

Question

I guess this is a good as place as any to ask this,

Lately I keep seeing very old questions appearing on my timeline and the only reason I can see why they appear is either the question has been edited or an answer has been edited.

I cant see the reasoning behind this?

If the question already has an accepted answer why would the question need to be edited?

Like wise if the question already has an accepted answer why would the answer need to be edited?

Is there no way to control the behavior of any question to not appear at the top of the timeline?

As much as I like SE the whole thing seems pointless if i have to look through questions that were answered 3 years ago if someone edits a full stop or makes a spelling correction.

An example below

If what I am asking is beyond the control of Bicycles SE i can ask elsewhere on SE if it's inherent with SE rather than individual SE sites

rantover

Answer 1

An edit always returns a question to the top of the active list. So a cleanup can make it look like an invasion.

There's an automated cleanup script that goes through content looking for http:// URLs and changing them to https:// wherever appropriate, this also raises questions back to the front page.

In this specific case, OP came back and edited their question. The "edited X hours ago" doesn't say a name, so Saaru was the editor. For a diff you can click the link and see what was changed. Here, OP updated a URL, taking out a broken link and replacing it with an archive.org link which is more useful.

So, yes its slightly annoying, but exposes older questions to newer users who may have different info.

And things change over time - What bike computer (speedometer) to get for mounting on the rear wheel? was a 7 year old question about mounting a bike computer sensor to read the rear wheel in a trainer. Since then, active turbo trainers have become available, so an additional updated answer is appropriate. Whether it helps the OP or not I don't know, but it will help future searchers who have the same/similar questions.

Remember the vast bulk of readers are just that, readers. They don't ask questions or post answers. They simply get some results out of a search engine and read them, so maintaining questions/answers is good.

Whether you can filter them out across SE? I don't think so, but happy to be proven wrong.

Answer 2

It's important that no amendments go unnoticed, to prevent spam, vandalism, etc. For me it's a huge strength of stack exchange to allow edits to improve accuracy and readability in questions, which needs us to moderate the changes. Criggie has mentioned how the majority of readers of the site find what they need by (Google) search.

Skipping to solutions... When you are on the home page of bicycles.se, the filtering options are limited and probably won't give you what you seek. Hot questions includes questions with most activity recently, (hover over each link to get a definition) so that might not be any better.

However, if you click Questions on the left hand vertical menu, the filters are a bit more intuitive. The default filter is Newest, so you can see only the most recent questions and select which ones you want to give an answer to. There is also Custom Filters on the right hand side of the page, you might find a setting on there that you like to use.

If you like Newest, you could make https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/questions the link you click to access b.se, then you would load that page directly when you log in.