Answered: to bump or not to bump?

[ArmsMerchant]

For some reason, people sometimes complain about threads being bumped. Are we so besotted with novelty that we prefer shitty new threads to quality old ones?

Someone even suggested that bumping is--or should be-- infractable, which is ,I think, nonsense.


I sometimes bump old threads to bring up topics which have not been addressed lately , but which might be of interest to new members, usually--but not always--in forums I moderate.

Granted, someone who gratuitously bumps dozens of old threads with malicious intent should be infracted for flooding. Granted, it can be a tad disorienting to come upon a bumped thread--I have found myself replying to a bumped thread that I already replied to--but where is the problem in that? The solution is to pay attention.

My guess is that people who complain about threads being bumped either bear some personal resentment towards the bumper, or simply love to complain.

[Rizzo in a box]

Agreed.

[ergoat]

No, there are a lot of threads here that I've missed. When someone bumps a thread for a good reason (i.e. it's a good thread) then I'm usually pretty stoked.

[Shrike]

Greyfox, stop pretending this is about bumping. It's not, it's about you. Bumping a thread if you have something new to say is perfectly fine.

You however bump months-old threads to carry on one half of a long-dead conversation, or to add some irrelevant nonsense. That's what people call you out on, not the actual fact of bumping.

[TheDarkRodent]

Originally Posted by Shrike

Greyfox, stop pretending this is about bumping. It's not, it's about you. Bumping a thread if you have something new to say is perfectly fine.

You however bump months-old threads to carry on one half of a long-dead conversation, or to add some irrelevant nonsense. That's what people call you out on, not the actual fact of bumping.

^I do see serious issue with the ridiculous amount of argumentum ad hominem such as this.

I see no problem however, with bumping threads that had/have intelligent well presented points of view on topics of substance.

*EDIT* with a relevant reply of substance.

[Fish]

Bumping a thread to say something relevant is just as allowed as posting in a live thread to do the same. Bumping a thread to say something inane, irrelevant, or off-topic only draws attention to the fact that you are bumping a thread to say something inane, irrelevant, or off-topic. On more than one occasion, I've simply deleted those comments (if others haven't already chimed in to keep the thread bumped), effectively un-bumping the thread.

There was a time when my opinion on the matter was that in order for a bump to be "valid," the quality of the bump post needed to be proportional to the age of the thread. Nowadays, I'm more of the mind that it's just a yes/no question of whether the comment was worth posting in any thread, and if not, then I may de-bump the thread just to make a point.

And there are some users (you know who you are) that like to bump their own threads, just to try to remind people of that one great time when they like, totally owned a guy over the internet.

[ArmsMerchant]

Originally Posted by Shrike

Greyfox, stop pretending this is about bumping. It's not, it's about you. Bumping a thread if you have something new to say is perfectly fine.
.

Incorrect. I bump threads that I deem bumpworthy, regardless of the OP.

That said, I probably bump more of my own threads than those of others, if only because I start more threads than most other people do. As of right now, for instance, I have started about 500 threads (including auto-threads created when I warn or infract someone), and have a total of almost 6,000 posts.

[Dfg]

I agree with Fish on this.