Check a box in post editor to prevent edit bump

[James_B]

I did not find anything like this so far. This is a feature suggestion to include a new checkbox in the post editor that will prevent the topic from getting bumped after saving the edit.

The thread title could still be highlighted for an edit, but this would let someone choose not to bump their topic for a minor edit if they did not want the topic bumped. This would only show for a post that is being edited, not a new post.

I am still learning Discourse so I might not be looking at this right, I would welcome counterpoints or explanations about why this would work away from the intended use of edit bumps.

The reason that I am suggesting this is because now that I am aware, I now get a slightly guilty feeling when only making minor edits. If it is an important or useful edit, I will still make it. However, this might work to discourage some from editing. On the other hand, it might work to encourage better posting in the first place so that minor edits are not required as often.

I am sorry if this has already been discussed. The next similar thing seemed to be this: Discourse Meta

Any thoughts, feedback, clarification greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[sam]

We only bump if you are editing the last post on the topic. I would very opposed to making it optional. It would heavily encourage “bump” posts and add confusion when making posts.

[codinghorror]

Only bumps if the last post is edited. Unless we are talking about an extremely slow moving conversation, it is exceedingly unlikely that this would be a problem in practice. I rarely see edit bumps “in the wild” on any existing Discourse forum.

So really, not a problem in practice.

[downey]

Reminds me of the “minor edit” options in some wiki software. I might use this occasionally, but hopefully it’d be pretty unobtrusive. I think it might be more about what the user perceives as to what will happen rather than what actually does happen. In other words, I might be more likely to edit if I don’t have to worry about sending out a bunch of notifications.

[sam]

If we only had “Sam is typing a reply”. :trollface:

[codinghorror]

Does not matter, my reply was more awesome and I like everyone else, I always follow the sunk cost fallacy on top of that. Once I have started unleashing the kraken, you think a mere notice that anyone else is typing is gonna stop me?

[sam]

It would have stopped me from typing, mainly cause I am on mobile at the moment, however you would not really show this info porn on mobile anyway and it’s an edge case, way more tasty fish to fry

Hence the troll face

[James_B]

OK, thanks. Now I understand. I see what is meant by “last post” now. I must have missed that part. Alright, that doesn’t seem like such a big issue to me now.

[lubos]

I really need some sort of Minor edit checkbox when editing last posts as a moderator of the forum. Regular users don’t need this feature.

Here are two examples where I want to edit the last post in the topic and don’t want it to bump to the top:

• Fix spelling mistakes or formatting without altering meaning.
• Fix hyperlinks on very old posts. For example, I have a lot of posts with hyperlinks which need to be changed and point to the new location. I can’t fix it right now because that would make 50 very old topics be bumped all the way to the top of discussion for no good reason.

So let’s compromise here. Why not allow Minor edits feature for moderators only. I agree that end-users don’t need this feature.

[codinghorror]

Why not do a global replace at the database level in that case? Assuming you mean a universal change in name.

[lubos]

How about fixing spelling mistakes or improving formatting by moderators? That would be valid use-case for Minor edit where moderators don’t want to bump the topic to the top since they didn’t add any new information to the post, right?

My point is this, without Minor edit, moderators won’t be improving quality of posts (as not to bump them) which will ultimately hurt content on Discourse forums.

Jeff, you have luxury of running forum for community of technical people who are also good in English. So I understand where you are coming from and why you are fighting against Minor edit checkbox since you would never use it. However I would use it all the time, mostly because my community consists of non-technical audience of whom many are not native English speakers.

I just don’t think fixing spelling error or improving formatting by moderators is justification for bumping the topic to the top.

[codinghorror]

This is very specific to the last post in a topic. Editing the first post or any other post will not bump.

The specific example you cited was about remapping one URL to a different url which is best done as a global replace rather than a manual edit.

[erlend_sh]

Continued here:

No-bump for admin edits on first and only post in a topic

Continuing the discussion from Re-categorizing 10-year-old topics in my forum bumps them to the top of the Latest list. It would be great to have a “no-bump” option for admins when performing wrench actions or edits for posts that don’t need to be brought back to the top.