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The following question has recently been bumped by community.

Do iOS frameworks require the same internal versioning as OSX frameworks?

It seems to me to be counterproductive to the efforts of adhering our new scope that questions that haven't been closed for whatever reason now turns up as 'examples of how questions are'.

Is there anything that can be done to avoid a 'bad question'-creep like this?

Though things might have become better, I don't think we really need this extra work in cleaning up scope.

Can community be disabled from bumping?

  • As Thomas says, that specific question is on-topic -- barely, in my opinion. I edited it to be more clear, and to avoid the possibility of being interpreted as "why did Apple do this?" – user22815 Mar 13 '17 at 4:09
  • FWIW I recently intentionally used this feature to bump an off-topic question. I did this because at front page it has better chances to get noticed and gain 5 close votes while in our slow review queue it could go round-n-round infinitely unable to get to 5 votes because of expiration (see for example questions that took 7 votes to close because of that: this and this) – gnat Mar 17 '17 at 11:01
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There are two issues here.

First, should Community be bumping questions? There are specific rules as to when Community bumps a question back to the homepage of a site. Community exists to get more eyes on a question and its answers. The goal is to improve the question so it gets answers, get votes on the question to get even more eyes on it, get votes on existing answers so the question enters an "answered" states, or get answers to questions. Although not stated as an explicit goal, if a question should be closed as off-topic, bumping it to the homepage should allow people to cast down and close votes and put the question into the close vote review queue.

To answer your question, no. Even if the staff could tweak Community on a per-site basis, disabling it would do far more harm than good. It would stop good questions from getting eyes on them, good answers from getting votes, and in some cases, bad questions from getting close/delete votes.

Then, there's the specific case. You make the claim that this question is off-topic. I read the question and I don't see it. I see a question about build and release management (which is on-topic) and versioning (also on-topic). It doesn't require Apple customer service to answer (which would make it off-topic). Just because a question is about iOS (or Java or C# or {insert technology here}) doesn't mean it doesn't belong here if it fits our list of things that are on-topic and doesn't go into the things that we exclude.

  • As I read the question it is "do I need to use a symlinked directory on iOS". That has very little to do with build and release management or versoning. – Bent Mar 12 '17 at 9:15
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    @Bent Either way, the system is working as expected. It bumped the question, you saw it, and if you flagged or voted to close appropriately, it has gone into the review queues where the rest of the community can review it as well. This is exactly how the system is supposed to work, and it is. – Thomas Owens♦ Mar 12 '17 at 15:51
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The real homepage of a Stack Exchange site is https://google.com because this is where the majority of question views come. So, if a question should be closed but is not, this is a problem that exists regardless of whether the question is bumped.

The official home page is where a relatively small number of active users of the site find questions to answer or to moderate. Bumping a close-worthy question there is likely to draw more close votes, thus rectifying the problem.

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    We still have users arguing that their question is on topic because "just look at these questions on the front page". I'm looking for a better solution than dumping old questions on the front page saying "so what if they are off topic then they probably gets closed". Software Engineering has fought quite hard to avoid being a questions landfill, question bumping is counterproductive. – Bent Mar 11 '17 at 22:58
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    @Bent My response to those users is "that other question slipped through the cracks, I added my close/down votes" which is also "the system at work." Once a question is scored -3 or lower, it disappears from the front page (but not the "questions" page). – user22815 Mar 13 '17 at 4:06

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