Feature idea: remove the incentive for topic bumping

feature
1

There’s an issue on our forum - one or two members aren’t following our etiquette on avoiding bumping. They’re also prone to posting several times in sequence.

Mods tried PMing and gentle moderation but it’s being ignored. The members in question are important to the forum but occasionally their behaviour is disruptive.

I have a suggestion - Discourse chooses to avoid bumping a topic if the last reply is either:

  • Part of a series of replies from the same user
  • Posted by a user that’s dominating the topic (e.g. 25%+ of posts)
  • Posted by a user that the mods have added to a group (called “Pipe Down” or somesuch)

By “avoiding bumping” I mean that the topic doesn’t rise up the homepage when a reply is added.

5 Likes
2

I think there are some interesting concepts here but also a lot of subtlety…

3

I like the idea, but…

I worry that this could hide issues from site staff. If the topic isn’t bumped and staff don’t track the topic, how will they know about the new reply?

Also, adding “exceptions” like this could be confusing. In one case a user bumping the topic with a post like “bump (20 characters)…” would be discouraged, but that could just as easily be “So I said above that I would test this over the weekend…”, which you would want to be bumped.

6 Likes