what determines the order of questions in the stack?

Question

When I see a question in the "all questions" list on page one, can I assume it is a new question, or an old one with a new answer, or do the questions shuffle automatically?

Answer 1

It depends on your sorting method. El'endia Starman's answer describes when you have the sort set to "active", but there are 5 other options that could be selected:

• newest (sorts by newest question)
• featured (shows only posts that have active bounties pending)
• frequent (sort by [recent?] page views)
• votes (by highest votes for the question)
• unanswered (questions with no upvoted answers yet)

Answer 2

On the front page, questions are sorted by those most recently active. This includes:

• The question was posted
• An answer was posted
• The question (including tags) was edited
• An answer was edited
• A bounty was added
• The question was closed or reopened

And maybe one or two other actions. So questions are sorted by which ones had these actions done more recently.