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The question What is the best program to uncompress .tar.gz files on Windows Server 2008? has an accepted and multiple up-voted answers more than five years old.

Then suddenly it receives three new answers within a couple of hours. All of those answers are somewhat similar sounding (mentioning the same two programs already suggested in five year old answers), and were posted by users who posted nothing before today.

Is this just a bunch of newbies who don't understand this site, or is something else going on? What's the best way to guide these people? Should such answers be flagged?

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    For what it's worth, I'm not seeing signs of either sock-drawer or canned ham in their details. This might be organic, or a tweak in Google rankings bringing this question up suddenly.
    – sysadmin1138 Mod
    Commented Jan 16, 2015 at 0:11
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    @sysadmin1138 The fact that it got bumped to the "front page" probably accounts for a higher Google page rank.
    – HopelessN00b Mod
    Commented Jan 16, 2015 at 1:34

2 Answers 2

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There's nothing new in any of those three answers, and so I've cleaned them up.

It appears that one individual decided to post his answer to the question, which brought it back to the front page. Most people who have been around a while can recognize an old question immediately, but the clues aren't always obvious to new users, which is the most likely reason it then got two more responses from two other new users.

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"Me too" answers are flag-worthy, as are old questions that are now off topic.

I've gone ahead and closed and locked the question for that reason

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