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On other SE sites, the correct or best answer to something such as a programming conundrum might not ever change.

But travel deals with the actual physical world and everything changes from decade to decade, year to year, and even week to week.

Prices go up and down. Good places go bad or are closed. Better new places open up. This goes for hotels, flights, even national economies!

This is not a problem in answers, but a question like "Is it safe to travel to Tohoku Japan / Tunisia" or "Is it cheap to travel in Australia" when asked at different times will tend to redirect to the previous question, but that question might have accepted answers from previous years which are no longer true. It's possible to ask a duplicate question at a different time that would not expect to get duplicate answers and all such questions would appear in web searches I assume.

Obviously it won't be a problem during the beta phase but it will be a problem for us not too long afterwards and we should think about it early.

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Your concern about Travel being unique in a world of changing information is somewhat unfounded. A large portion of Stack Exchange sites are technical, and technology is changing constantly. That's why Stack Exchange includes aspects of a wiki which allows all the information you see here to be constantly edited, updated, and improved.

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Travel SE's peer review and editability provide a huge advantage over traditional forums and blogs. The only way this site will continue to work is if it has an active and vibrant community to pitch in and make sure the answers are always relevant, correct, and of the highest quality.

But your concern about week-to-week changes are exactly why questions about pricing, good places to go, etc, are a poor choice for this site. Almost as soon as you ask them, they are of no further use to anyone who comes after.

But if the question is time-relevant only in the sense that "everything changes," then that's simply part of maintaining this site that makes this whole thing long-lasting and worthwhile.

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  • So are you saying we can change the accepted answer to a question when it becomes out-of-date?
    – hippietrail
    Jun 27, 2011 at 3:28
  • We would also have to reword the questions which duplicates redirect to or come up with policies for when to stop closing questions as duplicates when the situation in the place has changed.
    – hippietrail
    Jun 27, 2011 at 6:10

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