What exactly bumps a post up the list?

Question

Could I get a little more detailed explanation of what bumps a discussion up the list on the Hot (De Moda) listing?

So far I know of :

appending a new answer to the question

adding a comment to the question or to an answer

What about?:

If I go back and edit a previous answer of mine to append additional information

If I edit someone else's answer or the question

I vote on an answer

pretty arcane, but what if I deleted a comment that I had made.

My purpose for asking is I don't want to keep bumping questions back up to the top of the list when the question has been adequately answered (but I would like to improve the archived thread or acknowledge someone's contribution)

Bumping older question back up to the top of the list pushes unanswered post off the "first" page too quickly (an of course, I'm too lazy to switch to the "newer posts" listing or surf the pages beyond page 1.)

Answer 1

Editing is always going to be a problem. The detection of editing activity is trivial but the distinction between "cosmetic" (fix a mistyping/misspelling/even (perhaps( a poor choice of words) is entirely different from the correction of a substantive mistake or the expression of reservations/second thoughts about the thrust/content of a response. Unfortunately these are precisely the sorts of distinctions that computer programs will not be able to make for the foreseeable future).

Answer 2

yes i believe that they all do bump up your posts, pretty much if you just mess with them. all your suggestions are true.

actually i just checked and deleting a comment does nothing, but the others do.

Answer 3

Hi qfreed -- sarahjs is correct. Posting an answer, posting a comment, editing a question or answer, and voting for a question or answer all bump a thread to the top of Hot. Deleting a comment does not.

You're right, there's a balance to strike between showing people new content and cluttering the front page of Answers with minutiae, and the system is hardly set in stone. I've asked a question about how you think this question filtering should work.