Should all answer edits make old questions look "active"?

Question

For instance, I have just edited my answer to this old-ish question on SF due to a formatting issue.

The change I made doesn't really indicate new active interest in the question, but the current algorithm seems to look solely at last modified dates for any part of a question (the question and any answers, and perhaps any comments).

Is there a case for edits to answers not affecting the "active" or "hot" status? Or perhaps a more fine grained approach: a check-box on the edit screen to select if the edit represents new information or new/further interest (rather than just being a clean-up, as in this instance)?

FYI: I had completely forgot answering the question, about two months ago, until someone gave the answer another vote a few hours ago so it could be said that there was renewed interest in the question+answer today, but my understanding is that the vote itself wouldn't bump the question's recent activity status.

Answer 1

Personally I think they should, as it shows that their was further activity and someone may have added more valuable information, one of the goals of the site in the beginning was to reduce the amount of stale information in Google. It also means someone new might be able to now add further information to the topic by adding another answer.

I know tonight specifically I did a Google search for something that brought me to a post on SO, and the answers were good enough to upvote on a question almost 8 months old. The question interestingly enough was on how to add constrains using T-SQL, as I haven't done it in a while and needed a refresher.

Clear indications that the site is reaching it goals.

Answer 2

1. Edits to answers do in fact affect the Last Modified date, and always have!

2. The hot algorithm is weighted towards time; as the question gets older, it tends to fall off the hot list.

So this question is kind of .. completely wrong.