"Have things changed?" questions

Question

There's always new software coming out, but old questions aren't necessarily revisited. I can find a question which addresses exactly the same use case as mine and has an bountied answer, but the question and the answer are 2.5 years old and I wonder whether people would have other recommendations if the question had been posted today.

On most Stack Exchange sites, if I posted the same question then I would expect it to be closed as a duplicate. On the site where I participate most actively the advice would be to promote the old question in chat or to bounty it.

To give three phrasings of the same question: does the Software Recommendations policy on duplicates differ from the general rule? Is "More than two years have passed" sufficient to make a question not be a duplicate of an earlier one? What is the approved way to ask for new recommendations on an old question?

Answer 1

At least up to now, we deal with this the same way your second paragraph indicates (bounty even has a special entry for that, and usually draws more attention than a "plain question").

I'd say if the software recommended meets your requirements, still exists and still is maintained, it's still a valid answer. But if it e.g. is no longer maintained, does not work on current OS, or does not fit your needs well enough, these are valid reasons writing a new question asking for alternatives – of course pointing out why a new question asking "for the same" should be justified.

To address your 3 questions explicitly from my point of view:

• does the Software Recommendations policy on duplicates differ from the general rule? Not in general at least.
• Is "More than two years have passed" sufficient to make a question not be a duplicate of an earlier one? Not by itself, but joined with additional arguments (see above) it might be.
• What is the approved way to ask for new recommendations on an old question? s/the/an/: IMHO what I pointed out above is an approved way. Not saying it's the only one 😇