Topic Boosting / Replacement for "bumping"
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Hey everyone,
I've been working on a new feature for the forum and wanted to get your thoughts before it goes live.
Something that's been brought up a few times - both by me and some of you - is the constant bumping of topics. People replying with "bump" or "+1" just to push their thread back to the top. It clutters up threads, adds nothing to the conversation, and honestly doesn't look great.
So I built something to solve that properly: Topic Boosting.
If you find a topic useful, interesting, or think it deserves more visibility - you can boost it. One click, no pointless reply, no clutter. The topic gets its exposure and the thread stays clean.
Here's what I've got so far:
(1) Boost button and timeline entry when someone boosts a topic
(2) Boost count visible in the category list
(3) New sort by options
Each user can only boost a topic once every 24 hours to prevent abuse, and there are new sort options -
Most Boosted and Recently Boosted - so you can actually surface the content the community values most.
There will also be a daily limit on how many topics can be boosted, including a minimum reputation.Once this goes live, we'll also be implementing measures against regular bump replies. The whole point of this feature is to replace that behavior with something that works properly, so expect that to be enforced going forward.
Nothing is shipped yet - I'm still refining things and want to make sure the direction is right. So before I push it out:
- Would you actually use this?
- Anything you'd want done differently?
- Should boosters be visible or kept anonymous?
Open to any ideas or feedback, even if it's completely different from what I've shown here. Now's the time to speak up.
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I really like this idea
I think others could probably think of issues or improvements, but personally I prefer this system over the "bump" system! -
why would u name it "boost?" bumping is what is widely recognized on here. just my unsolicited 2 cents. sorry
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Considering how many threads are littered with meaningless messages, I see this option as quite a good one. However, it would be better to consolidate the most relevant boosts into a single bar with the total number of boosts and, optionally, display who raised the topic.
In my opinion, it's important not to impose strict word filters. Instead, make regular bumps, in their current form, ineffective, meaning they don't raise the topic. And, over time, begin to purge the threads of them.
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I was just thinking about this the other day. I really appreciate asking for community feedback before pushing such a big change. As for suggestions:
I support the idea and echo consolidating the Boosts.
Keep a timestamp for the most recent Boost similar to messages or the timeline events shown in your first sample picture.
In addition to adding Sort by Recently/Most Boosted, add a Sort by Popularity in searches where the Popularity is based on the number of Boosts and/or the number of Upvotes, and where the Popularity decays over time starting from when the Topic was first published, optionallyโafter decaying past a certain point or after a certain durationโrefreshed based on a threshold of consecutive Boosts and/or Upvotes in a short time.
Bring attention to the change somehow so that the transition from bump replies to Boosts isn't confusing for users.
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boosting post is better than bumping them, as it can cluttered past messages that people left behind, causing some post can be buried, for example a post where someone already shared a file or something technical, sort the boost by date too, where it said "boosted (days/month here) ago" which would be nice
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Having all the "bumps" gone would save me a lot of time and confusion because until reading this I still didn't know what "bumping" meant. Its very annoying. Making the boost a topic in a different area than the text is a massive upgrade. Make it easy to do so people actually do it the boosting.
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Sounds like a pretty decent idea, having a butt-ton of "bump/+1" posts in a topic can clutter it quite quickly. It's had me searching through topics before to find assets many many times. The idea sounds good but the fact it puts it in the discussion/feed doesn't really make a difference, it should be implemented with a small drop-down menu on the button or a line of text on the original post, that way it all stays clean and organised. Then making the words related to bumping not work/be filtered come in a later update.
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yes please, im tired of bumping, i'd take this any day
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you dropped this
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A admin referenced this topic on
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It would make threads easier to read for sure, so it's definitely an improvement. However, I think a 12 hour limit on bumping would be better. The purpose of bumping is to keep a topic visible so hopefully someone with a file or that has the money to purchase a file sees it, right? It's more likely for this to happen if you're able to boost things during different activity peaks, since we're all spread across various timezones and tend to check the site at different times of day.
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I think this is a good idea in general. I'm not sure if the timeline entries are entirely necessary, on one hand it's nice to be able to see who boosted the topic and when, but I kinda think it still bloats the topic unnecessarily? Very on the fence with that one still so don't take it too seriously, I'd be happy with or without em. Being able to see the amount of boosts in the tags and on the boost topic button itself is nice tho!
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Good idea, but minus the daily limit. The whole point of adding it would be to remove clutter, but if you added a daily limit then people would just post replies again even if you add measures for it. That just feels a bit to limiting on our end. Plus if there is a 24 or 12 h time limit you wouldn't need a daily limit. I'm sure there are people out there with a million topics they are bumping, but most people are not. I do agree with the min rep though, I can see people making alts to abuse it. I would keep them anonymous, no need for extra coding. On our end, unless you wanted to log that internally.
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I feel like everything is fine with this, aside from previously stated problems such as each individual "bump" or "boost" being posted instead of "USER and NUMBER other people bumped this!" similar to discord reactions. I also feel like bringing down the daily limit from 24 to 12 hours would be great as well. Another thing that I would bring up is the fact that it's possible to have the "solution" to a thread be posted at the top, so the whole "bumping gets things cluttered" argument falls flat on that aspect. One more thing I should mention is this could also potentially just.. not work, with people either not "boosting" and continuing to comment "bump", or few people "boosting" and just not saying anything.
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to be honest we probably just need a a new category were new posts slash topics can be seen immediately instead of relying on bumps Couse then they never get seen that's just my opinion and idea though also feel free to ignore this reply as i have no idea what yall are talking about i just wanted to pitch in
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