Point taken on this issue - there are a few of the older topics being bumped and they get archived if they are no longer relevant (which I have done here, so the link may not work - but your point remains).
There is probably some admin we need to do on older, open topics, but the principle of bumping is still useful, but I agree that there might be some benefit of a limit on post age
Iām just deleting old stuff that gets bumped that is of no future value.
(Usually because it refers to old versions of Discourse which may not exist in the previously discussed form.)
In considering implementation of auto bumping, this has been my concern. We have a problem solving category where Iād like to see unsolved topics bumped, except in cases where it is clear the OP has abandoned the topic. Typically we tag these with an āincompleteā tag and after enough time has lapsed either delete them or move them out of the category and unlist them.
Any thoughts about adding an admin-configurable option to the auto-bumping settings to exclude topics based on tags?
Is there any reason you donāt have āauto-close {x} days after the last replyā set in this category? That would resolve the situation, since all topics would eventually close as stale, unless someone replies to them.
We do, but the goal is to solve, not just to close. If the auto-close timer is longer than the auto-bump frequency, this could conceivably exacerbate the problem for abandoned topics.
So auto-bump {x} topics per day is enabledā¦
ā¦ and the topic will be auto-closed if there are no replies in {x} days, which is as clear an indication of abandonment as I can think of?
Maybe thereās a tiny edge condition where the OP is only editing their post, not replying, but thatās incredibly rare.
When a customer posts an issue heās having, it can fall silent for two reasons.
Yes, auto-close could take care of the former. (We still have to deal with the impact to our target goal of a high percentage of āsolvedā topics in the category.)
Iād like to use auto-bump to help with the latter. If a topic is bumped, the Community would be reminded that this person still needs help.
But if I implement auto-bump, I would need to to exclude the topics where the OP has fallen silent, and thought perhaps a tag-exclusion would serve that need.
Iām failing to see how I could auto-close topics without closing those where the Community needs to be reminded to answer, or auto-bump topics without bumping the OP-abandoned topics.
@tophee, I think you would understand what Iām trying but apparently failing to explain, as it seemed to be the same problem you ran into. Can you help me here?
No, sorry, Iām also lost. The problem I described seems quite different to me: I donāt want to close topics as long as itās not easy for people with a similar issue to reply-as-linked topic and because of that I canāt use auro-bump because it will bump stuff that probably shouldnāt be bumped.
Oh, maybe you are saying that your requested feature (prevent auto-bump based on tags) would also solve my problem? Is that what you mean? - Well, technically yes, I could tag go ahead and tag all those old open topics to prevent them from being bumped, but no, I donāt think Iād bother. Iām fine with leaving them open for now. I guess my point was a more general one of making closed topics āless closedā in a sense.
But back to your problem: as I understand it, you have two types of old topics,
I think what Iād do is simply turn off auto-close and instead use auto-bump as a follow-up mechanism that reminds staff to manually close the topic when they think the time is ripe.
Another way of putting this is: how do you know whether any given open topic is abandoned or pending? The only way of knowing is by looking at it (possibly repeatedly) and making a decision. Auto-bump is the mechanism that helps you do precisely that.
Ok, thanks for trying to help me.
Yes, with the difference, I guess, being that weāre already tagging and it would be additional work for you.
I had not thought of bumping as a mechanism to remind moderators to take action. 
Maybe once I have it implemented I can either make it work as itās designed, or do a better job of explaining my request.
The way I would love to see this feature work is bumping topics that have no replies, we have a photo critique category and posts can quickly fall off the map with so many posts, it would be great to have these brought back up to ensure everyone receives a reply.
it seems that the bumps are counted in the unread list. isnāt it better if the bumps arenāt count as a reply?
I understand the feature request you are making but feel the bump would be way too soft if we did not make the staff post, it would also make latest look pretty confusing
I really canāt understand this part. Can someone elaborate on it?
Hopefully I will be corrected if Iām wrong, but hereās how I understand it worded a little differently.
The automatic bumping process will run as long as there is at least one topic that is:
I think this also implies that:
yes. this is also something I am mostly confused about it. 
According to your explanation, if we enable this option for a category, there is always something bumped less than 24 hours ago
Is this 15 minutes configurable? I didnāt find it in options. for my community something like every 3 hours is a better option.
Above is the actual line of code. bumped_at is a date value and 1.day.ago is a date value. Itās saying that the bump date of a topic needs to be less than (older than) a day ago (24 hours ago). So if the topic was bumped within the last 24 hours, it will not be bumped again.
Exactly - that restriction is there to prevent the same topic from being bumped repeatedly. Say you only have 2 topics that meet the rest of the criteria (open, visible, not pinned, etc.), and configured 4 topics to bump daily - the 2 topics will each be bumped once, then not bumped again for at least 24 hours. Without this setting the two topics would be bumped every 12 hours (in the case of 2 topics with a bump setting of 4).
Please remove the auto bump message if someone replies to the topic.
Hmmm ā¦ very very mixed on that ā¦ at best it should be an option, but I donāt want to flood us with options.