How to handle repeat questions after a certain age?

Question

This is thinking ahead a bit, but since most of these questions are subjective, there's a couple situations we'll eventually have to deal with:

1. Questions with changing answers. For example, if someone asks "What's the hottest new language" today and then someone else asks that in a year or two, is it fair to mark it as a duplicate? At what point is it ok to repeat time-sensitive questions?

2. Very subjective questions (eg, "What's your favorite programming joke?"). Such questions get filled up pretty quickly and then stagnate. Do we want to always point anyone wanted to ask that to the super big, super old original question, or do we eventually want to allow it to start over and let new users contribute?

Answer 1

For questions that are somewhat date sensitive, but long-lasting, they should be dated ("What are the hottest languages of 2010?", followed by "What are the hottest languages of 2011?" sometime late in 2011). But then again, I'm not a fan of a lot of time sensitive questions (although if you are interested in what the emerging trends were for a year, that's of enough interest, I think).

As far as large questions, I don't have an opinion there. I'm not a fan of the ones that grow to hundreds of postings (favorite joke, favorite cartoon). They do belong here (as opposed to Stack Overflow), but I'm not going to weigh in on something I don't plan on participating in.