Within the first hour or so of a topic being created, if you edit your post it will be pushed to the top of Latest in Ask, but after, regardless of the edit’s size, editing will not push it to the top.
This is a good way to prevent abuse, but I feel some changes should be made. For example, regardless of timing, any small edits such as changing punctuation and stuff should not be considered “edits” (but it would still count toward the edit count) and shouldn’t be pushed. And bigger edits, such as adding a paragraph or such should always push, even outside of the hour or so limit.
Yes, there is already a risk of people copying and pasting masses of text into their topics, but it honestly shouldn’t matter, as action is usually taken quickly. But, we don’t want to overwork the moderators, so edits should also push based on the trust level.
For example, TL0’s edits wouldn’t be pushed, regardless of the size or timing (this may backfire, because they are usually the ones looking for help anyway). TL1s would be pushed as long as they were reasonably sized edits within the hour period of time. TL2s edits would always push if they were large enough, and TL3+ would push regardless of edit size and timing.
Honestly, the timing system could be raised though, as users that don’t get responses quickly will want their posts seen by more people. So, this could possibly be raised to something like a day, when users will usually lose motivation. The timing could also be another factor affected by trust level.
Regardless of the way it should be done, something should be done. As larger topics such as guides get edited with more new information, people should be able to see these edits quickly IMO.