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One of the tasks of the mysterious Community user is to

Randomly poke old unanswered questions every hour so they get some attention

We know the following:

The Community user will bump non-negatively scored questions that have at least one answer scoring 0 and none scoring more than that. The number of unanswered questions bumped per hour depends on the site: 4 per hour on Stack Overflow, 1 per hour on Meta, and 2 per hour on Super User and Server Fault. The default for a new site is 1 per hour.

But I'd like to know some more details about how this works in particular. Since Community himself speaks of "old unanswered questions", is there any age factor/limit involved in the selection process? And is the choice truely random or are there other factors to bias it (like many votes, few views, ...)?

Likewise on Movies & TV there are days when Community seems to bump questions at an hourly basis and then other times feeled weeks of inactivity for Community. Are there factors that prevent the regularly-scheduled bump from happening? (Or is it that we just didn't have any candidates at bump time (though there should be some if it really only goes by the criteria above)?)

It may also be that all this information is deliberately kept undisclosed, but if not, I'd be pleased to gain some more insights into the doings of this user.

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  • blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/09/ok-now-define-answered defines 'unanswered'. – Martijn Pieters Aug 13 '14 at 14:23
  • It's all explained in detail in the linked faq post. – Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating Aug 13 '14 at 14:59
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    That post doesn't address some of what's asked in this question. It tells us what counts as unanswered and how often it bumps, but doesn't say if there are other criteria (like views or votes) or if it's truly random. – Monica Cellio Aug 13 '14 at 15:10
  • @Monica so we should add those details (once we find out) to the faq. No point in having it in two separate places. – Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating Aug 13 '14 at 15:15
  • That may depend on whether these questions are frequently-asked. the value of a FAQ entry diminishes when it gets long; if this question is answered the FAQ could link to it (for more details see...). I don't care where the info lands, but I think the question is valid and not already covered by the other one at the question level. If the answer to the other question addresses this too then great. – Monica Cellio Aug 13 '14 at 15:20
  • That FAQ post is definitely interesting and answers some things. I would assume in this case it's really random, since the FAQ post doesn't say otherwise? But the aspect of when it is scheduled (since it's apparently not every hour) is still not answered there. But maybe I could poll the FAQ post and adress that in a comment there (or specify this question to concentrate on the scheduling only). – Christian Rau Aug 13 '14 at 15:24
  • @ShadowWizard I agree with adding it to the FAQ, but until the FAQ is updated we cannot close this as a dupe of it :) – James Jun 6 '15 at 20:46
  • @James I disagree, but I already used my close vote on this. If and when official answer will be given here, this will create a mess since the proper place is the faq. – Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating Jun 6 '15 at 21:32
  • @ShadowWizard So when that happens we then close this one, which becomes a searchable signpost with a good answer and dupe link to the FAQ. Seems normal to me, not a mess. – James Jun 6 '15 at 23:31

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