Does the bumping also happen when editing an answer, or only when posting a new one? — timtfj Jan 17 at 17:36

@timtfj Bumping happens when editing answers, too. — Alexander Gruber ♦ Jan 17 at 19:48

@timtfj You can find basic information (and pointers to more details) about various actions which bump question in the tag-info for bumping. — Martin Sleziak Jan 21 at 7:58

@AlexanderGruber Thanks—that's helpful to know, though I think it's rather unfortunate. The site prides itself on quality and it seems paradoxical to have a situation where people have to avoid improving the quality of what they've posted. (To me, correcting a typo if I notice one is simply essential maintenance! And really skilful editing involves finding the smallest possible change which will improve something or fix a problem—so my instinct is that most edits should be minor but can never be "trivial".) — timtfj 43 mins ago

@MartinSleziak Thanks for the link. I'd never have known to look there! I see the rationale for the bumping but I wish editing could be based simply on the quality of the text and opportunities for improving it, and not on avoiding bumps. Allowing competent editors to mark edits as minor would help (maybe basing competence on the proportion of rejected edits). — timtfj 35 mins ago

Another issue here is that the ideal time to re-read something and make minor corrections isn't immediately after writing it, but some time later when you can see all the blemishes. I would like to work through my old answers doing this, especially with ones that got upvoted and are more likely to be read, but the outcry that can follow such edits makes this seem somewhere between foolhardy and impossible. — timtfj 28 mins ago

And I don't think that editing your old posts would cause an outcry if you don't do too much at the same time. (Of course, there might be some other side-effects. For example, if the question is low quality and it was missed when posted, it might get closed after you bump it.) — Martin Sleziak 25 mins ago

@MartinSleziak To be honest I don't think I'd have the energy to do many at once! I tend to want to edit when a post gets some attention (a comment or upvote), since it reminds me of changes I'd like to make. The change I want is sometimes just a judiciously placed comma or changing one word to a better one, though. — timtfj 20 mins ago

@MartinSleziak Thanks for the link. I'd never have known to look there! I see the rationale for the bumping but I wish editing could be based simply on the quality of the text and opportunities for improving it, and not on avoiding bumps. Allowing competent editors to mark edits as minor would help (maybe basing competence on the proportion of rejected edits). — timtfj 36 mins ago

@timtfj I would suggest that if we want to continue this discussion, we could do so in chat. (One reason is not to leave too long comment thread here - after all it seems we have digressed from the original topic. And additionally, we could spare Alexander Gruber from too many notifications for comments on a single post.) — Martin Sleziak 11 secs ago