PSA: The Way of the Bump, and How To Do So

[Chase 94]

Hi guys~

One of these days, I kinda want to hold an 'Ask Me Anything' and post it here in this nifty 'Mews' section so that the "way of the forums" becomes crystal clear as well as probably set the tone for giving out a little bit of information about who the heck I am (if other mods want to do the same thing), but that's not the matter of business at hand today, so moving right along...

It's recently come to the auths' attention that we as a community have no way to adequately bump threads when they are updated. Most thread users are giving their utmost effort to obey community rules and don't know how to shout out their new information from their desk chairs without "hard-bumping", or having to post for the sole purpose of bumping the thread to the top for the forum.

Hard bumps often come with risks. For example, if no discussion from other parties has taken place after the last post from the thread author, and the author wants to bump a thread with new information, their post would be considered a "double-post", because there are two posts from the same person one right after another. This -has- been deliberated and, so long as your new information is in the post, this will be the only time double-posting will be OK.

Another risk thread authors run would be reviving old threads, committing the forum sin known as "Necroposting". If you haven't seen my stickied thread about the topic, you should. Somewhere in there is a subsequent discussion about updating a seemingly dormant thread with new information. Again, as long as the new information is in the thread, you ARE allowed to revive the thread. My thread concerning necroposting is found in the pinned section of the Site Help forum.

Hopefully this clears a few things up. Bumping is an essential part of forum activity and other sites have silent bumps. It is very likely that this will be talked about in quite a few staff meetings because silent bumps are indeed useful. Unfortunately, they are also easy to abuse. Perhaps you guys can enlighten us from your own forum experiences about different ways we can go about this, so that abuse is minimalized and efficiency is increased.

Thank you all for your time, and now we shall bring you to your regularly scheduled program. Sorry, Episode 15 is not here yet.

~ Hilda, Forum Team.

[Sylvan Nephilim 0]

Bump

[Chase 94]

Whoa whoa whoa....where's the new information? (seriously don't do that.)

[garchomp550 0]

AMA's are cool

[XxSilentWinterxX 4]

May I ask how long it takes for a thread to be considered "old" and posting would be considered "Necroposting"?

Edit: I was asking because of threads in the Wasteland. I wasn't sure if we could post in those after they were dead or not. ^^;;

[madf0x 0]

I see what you did there.

[Jericho 114]

This is only my opinion, but I believe the wasteland can be more lax.

There isnt really a line in the sand. Is the info the thread still relevant? Is it outdated? It should still be relevant, and not outdated. Examples would be, right now posting in a topic that pertains to something from episode 13 is likely outdated and therefore would be considered necroposting. Posting in a thread about the Reborn League which no longer exists would no longer be relevant.

My general rule of thumb for time if you have to have one is if the last post was about 3 weeks ago or more. This obviously varies for the topic at hand. It would be much shorter in a bug reporting thread, opposed to a thread likely to be found in Reborn City.

But it really comes back to Is it relevant? And is it not outdated?

[Sheep 27]

For topics in the wasteland, they're often by nature things that are never really resolved so I take a more relaxed attitude there too.

[Godot 132]

Bumping this. I suggest newcomers to check I out.

We strongly discourage needless double posting.