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At times questions are asked without any proper responses that are useful to the person who posts questions, even though there might be few upvoted answers. These generally get pushed back quickly given the frequency of new questions. This would cause the question to escape the view of the right person capable of answering it.

Some people would be motivated to answer unanswered questions. Some might skip going through the question if they see enough number of votes on the already answered question. Or might not make past the first few pages of the unanswered questions.

Is there a proper way to bump up the question without breaking any rules?

From https://stackoverflow.com/faq:

Edit your question to provide status and progress updates. Document your own continued efforts to answer your question. This will naturally bump your question and get more people interested in it.

  • What does the bump here mean?
  • Does editing the question push it up the stack in the relevant tags?
  • Make it move to the first pages?
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  • I had tried posting this topic on meta but was unable to as its not a bug report or such.
    – AdityaGameProgrammer
    Mar 9, 2011 at 9:02
  • @Aditya: where did you try to post it? I don't see such an entry. Also: did you try searching on meta, I'm pretty sure this has already been discussed.
    – Joachim Sauer
    Mar 9, 2011 at 9:55
  • yes i searched on meta first.. and tried posting but was unable to post due some issue with tags. but if This topic is more relevant there kindly move it. I am just looking for an answer. @joachim in quoted text from the SO/faq section what does the "bump your question mean" ?
    – AdityaGameProgrammer
    Mar 9, 2011 at 10:15

2 Answers 2

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"Bump" means "moves the question up the list of questions on the interesting tab".

Of course, continuously editing your questions/answers to bump the question is considered abuse of the system.

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  • 3
    @Adit The default sort is by last edit time of any post (question or one of its answers) so naturally, editing will cause the question to appear first until newer question is asked or other post is edited. Note that adding comment has no effect on this sort.
    – Shadow Wizard Says No More War
    Mar 9, 2011 at 14:19
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    i keep my questions updated. I update with new developments or to try to make the question clearer. It doesn't seem to effect the position of my questions a bit.
    – Jay
    Jun 25, 2011 at 15:21
  • I edited my question a few times in a 10 minute span when it was marked for close (1), because of lack of information. When I supply the information needed to answer my question, it did not appear on the interesting tab. So this is wrong. Even when editing the question more times in row (so would stop bumping it), on the first change, it should have been displayed on the interesting tab page. It has not, though.
    – Martin Braun
    Apr 13, 2015 at 7:29
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    @modiX I offer no warranty that, four years later, things haven't changed.
    – user1228
    Apr 13, 2015 at 14:53
  • (Old answer, I'm not exactly sure what constitutes the "interesting" tab nowadays, possibly the front page?)
    – user1228
    Mar 23, 2017 at 20:25
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Probably the best way to get attention is to first earn some reputation yourself and then set a bounty for your question. That way your question appears on the "featured" questions tab and also encourages others to invest a little more time into answering your question.

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    Other than this? What does the quote from the faq mean?
    – Aditya P
    Mar 9, 2011 at 10:51

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