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Sometimes questions that seem valid and interesting seem to just pass people by—it has happened to some of my own questions, and I have seen it with other questions too. Often, I think it is a matter of how the question is phrased, so that if it were phrased in a (completely) different way, people would be more prone to answer it.

My question now is: if someone posts a question, and realizes after some months or so that no-one is interested in answering it, is it acceptable for this someone to delete their question altogether, and then post it over again, but in a whole new shape, as it were—that is, phrased in a better way, with clearer examples and so on?

This is not a duplicate of How Can I Rekindle Interest in an Old Question; I could explain why, but instead I shall quote Tonepoet, who has already explained it very succinctly in a former comment to this question:

That is a related question, but the relationship is only incidental at best, so I would not consider it a duplicate. That asks for a variety of good methods to rekindle interest, whereas this asks if a specific method is permitted or doable. No answer to that question has, as of yet, addressed deleting questions first then reposting them (keep in mind that deleted questions are not duplicate targets), and probably shouldn't even consider doing so unless this question is answered first to know if it is a valid option which may be done in the first place.

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    Yes, you can either edit your original question or delete it and post a new one. To attract more attention you can place a bounty on your questions.
    – user 66974
    Jan 21, 2019 at 11:31
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    Possible duplicate of How can I rekindle interest in an old question?
    – Dan Bron
    Jan 21, 2019 at 12:44
  • "Keep in mind that deleted questions are not duplicate targets" -- it's not possible for moderators to delete questions that are duplicate targets. I doubt that their authors can do so, either. So if your question is a duplicate target, even though it may be closed for reasons of its own, you probably can't delete it.
    – Andrew Leach Mod
    Jan 21, 2019 at 19:23
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    @AndrewLeach But I'm not asking about questions that are duplicate targets (if duplicate target means a question that is presumably a duplicate of another question). I'm asking about questions that have NOT been asked before, but that get no attention.
    – Hannah
    Jan 21, 2019 at 21:00
  • My comment was related to the quote in your question. A "duplicate target" is a question to which others are pointed: the others are closed as duplicates, linked to the "duplicate target".
    – Andrew Leach Mod
    Jan 21, 2019 at 22:56
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    Editing the question will already move it to the top of the list of active questions, so people who have not seen it before will see it for the first time. I would also suggest creating a list of bounties with no deadline on meta and turning that post into a featured question.
    – Tsundoku
    Jan 22, 2019 at 18:42
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    How would this differ from editing the original question to add the new phrasing and better examples? If "not at all" (as it appears to me) then editing is probably the better option, just in case somebody has seen the question and is confused by being only able to find a later one when he looks.
    – Tim Lymington
    Jan 24, 2019 at 22:58
  • @TimLymington I didn't know it worked the way Christophe said in the comment above yours: "Editing the question will already move it to the top of the list of active questions, so people who have not seen it before will see it for the first time." Now that I know, I totally agree that simply editing the question is obviously the better option :)
    – Hannah
    Jan 25, 2019 at 9:57
  • @AndrewLeach Aren't duplicate targets required to be questions that have at least one Answer?
    – Ed Grimm
    Feb 24, 2019 at 8:13
  • @EdGrimm No. For example, a user may repost a question because the original was closed as off-topic, without being answered. The second can be closed as a duplicate of the first.
    – Andrew Leach Mod
    Feb 24, 2019 at 8:21

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Yes, you can either edit your original question or delete it and post a new one. To attract more attention you can place a bounty on your questions. – user240918 Jan 21 at 11:31

That said,

Editing the question will already move it to the top of the list of active questions, so people who have not seen it before will see it for the first time. I would also suggest creating a list of bounties with no deadline on meta and turning that post into a featured question. – Christophe Strobbe Jan 22 at 18:42

As such, the only difference that you would accomplish from the extra work is to gain the attention of those people who are using the Newest sort order, rather than the Active sort order. That is, you would bother people who were specifically not wanting to see old posts again. Therefore, it's probably better to just edit it rather than delete and re-ask.

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