What is the purpose of very old questions appearing on the top?

Question

Than and when, old or even very old questions appear automatically at the top of the questions - right now this one here: Anyone know where I can find a file like this for Pakistan?

I am aware of this statemant by Community user and it's duty:

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

But the question cited above is more than 8 years old and the OP has also not been on the site for more than 8 years and has a very limited activity on GIS SE. So even if there would be an answer, I doubt that it would be of any use to the OP. Aren't there enough unanswered questions from the last months that would be better to appear on the top? Wouldn't it be better to poke old questions just in case the OP has been active recently? Otherwise, the OP will probably never learn that the question got a (new) answer.

This question here is about data, in other cases it's about software - we all know that after 8 years, almost no software is the same. So a standard answer would be: first update your software, than come back. I guess that even for others, new answers will be probably of little use. It happens quite often to me that I find old QGIS documentation sites for version 2.18 when searching the internet - that's annoying and I guess a similar effect could be the case here.

So as long as there are unanswered questions asked a few weeks or months before, wouldn't it be better to poke these to the front?

Answer 1

Personally, I very rarely visit the front page of GIS SE and instead I use browser favorites to go to sets of questions like its Newest.

However, every time a question is listed there or anywhere, irrespective of its age, represents an opportunity to raise its profile (by upvoting), improve it (by editing) or to nudge it towards removal from the site (by downvoting).

I think it is important to remember that the primary purpose of our focused Q&A format is to create a massive body of clear questions with clear answers so that the next person with the same question can find their answer instantly, rather than having to ask a question and wait for an answer. New questions being asked assists us to add candidates for that body of Q&As, and provides an important side benefit for the asker, but curation of existing content is critical to maintaining and improving the quality of what we present.