Double-posting (aka bumping?)
 

Okay here's what I don't like in that bumping is against the rules.

1) If I have a post asking for dares, and I don't bump it, it will get moves past the 2nd page and no one will ever read it.

2) You're not supposed to have duplicate posts. So if I made a new request, for the same types of dares, technically I would be breaking the rules since I have a request:

http://getdare.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=15990
(Created on 10-06-08 with no replies)

3) I'm not allowed to bump my own thread so that it doesn't get lost in the vase sea of pages that no one reads. And since I technically am not supposed to create a new thread as per my 2nd point, and I will get shunned for bumping my old thread that I made a month ago, what am I supposed to do?

Most sites with forums that have requests allow threads to be bumped every 24 hours. Once me post gets to the 2nd page, I feel that I can't bump it or make a new one, which is stupid. The rule really needs to be changed so that we can bump every 24 hours.

Anyway there is my rant. Feel free to tell me how I'm supposed to "legally" request dares now without bumping or making duplicates.

I've never needed to bump but I do think that this is a good idea.

I vote yes. :O

i think another useful addition to this would be that after a certain time period from the last post- the topic gets locked automatically - this would stop all of the old threads floating to the surface and clogging up the first page

Btw, I have a question that is kind of related to this.

Say I make a thread in the 'Dare' section called "slavemichi's amazing dare list!" Which I'm not going to cause that's cheesy. Anyways, I want to post all my dares there. So I post my first dare "Eat a chicken." No one replies, and it has NOT been even 24 hours. Can I post again, with "Tickle a sea lion."? And just list my dares in my thread with a new post for each new dare or group of dares? Editting wouldn't work well cause users wouldn't be notified when I updated. :( Those were obviously just examples.

@ultimatedualist: As far as the TorD online section is concerned, if you have a thread in there that gets to the 2nd page after a few days I don't see any problems then when users create another thread. Lately I have locked a couple of threads when users had made multiple threads there but those had been posted in the same day or the day after and they were still on the first page. But allowing a few days in between, I personally see no problem with that.

@slavemichi: No problem in such cases :) As long as users are contributing to threads to add content then we don't actually consider it as bumping. For ex. if a user post in an old thread in the Dare section to add new ideas and such then that's fine. :) Same with the s/m lounge, if someone would post in a discussion thread to add there ideas/opinions, etc.

Actually, the area of the site where we tend to enforce this rule a bit more is the s/m area where bumping and multi-posting used to occur a lot more often then in the other sections.

Most of the time, when old threads get locked it is either because someone posted in another user's thread in TorD to give them dares and that these threads are really outdated but in general we tend to try to let threads open as much as possible :)

That would be stupid, what would be the point in putting effort into thinking up a truth or a dare and posting it if it ended up getting locked for no good reason?

You do make a good point, but there are times where I really wish that an "auto-lock" mechanism did exist. My desire for this feature usually crops up when I find a thread, usually with a title like "home for a couple of hours -- send dares" that has been recently updated, but the creation date, and the situation, are so old that the author is probably not going to act on anything posted. Especially when the posts are more than a day later let alone a few months later.

Yes, the person making the post should take notice of the creation date and not add to the thread, but the simple fact is that people are in too much of a hurry, or simply do not care, and they post anyway. If the thread had been auto-locked after a period of inactivity, the reply couldn't have been made, and it wouldn't have popped to the top to clutter things.

I do agree that an auto-lock mechanism would probably cause more harm than good as there are likely more cases that fit your example than mine. Something that might not be as harsh as auto locking a thread would be to have both the creation date and the last update date on the thread index entry. This, along with the title, might give a reader enough information to avoid reading meaningless updates such as the 'give me dares' example.

That is excatly what I was worryed about. It doesn't give new threads a time to prosper. 100% against it!

Bumping is just posting something like "bump" adding actual constructive content to a thread is not considered bumping. So if you have something useful to say in a thread you can push it up to the top, if you want to just shove it to the top with nothing useful add to it, well that's just a bit rubbish isn't it.

That's something we do allow actually once a week to be fair to all :) Only when users bump it several times like every 1-2 days then we need to tell them to either not bump or add some more infos to their post but I think once a week for all is a fair compromise :)