If you visit the list of questions for any SE site, you will notice the original question author's name and icon beside the question.
However, if you visit the list of unanswered questions you will instead see the name and icon for the person who last edited the post.
Is there a justified reason for this? I think it makes more sense to show the OP's name, rather than the last editor.
If you'd notice, it says "modified" above the image:
It means that the information is regarding the latest modification (probably because that's how it's listed). I'd call this one status-bydesign.
You shouldn't care about the OP's reputation when answering a question. You don't answer users, you answer questions. It's all about the questions. It's possible for a 1 reputation to ask a much better question than a 40k one. Also, if you need to see the OPs reputation so bad, just enter the question.
It seems as though it's worded poorly. Take this question for example:
modified seems to mean there was some sort of activity on this question. In the case of the above question, that happened to be the last user who answered the question. There was nothing modified in the question.
