Time limit on bumps

I know there's been some discussion of time limits on AntiPoints and post bumps, and I know everybody has noticed all the old threads showing up on the front page. Well, I've finally seen something that makes me want to jump on the bandwagon. I'd like to share with you all a couple of screen shots of what I saw on the front page at 3:30 this morning.

I have to do this in 2 posts because I can only post 1 attachment per post, but you can clearly see what has happened here. In shot 1, you can see that the last post was in the thread "Unknown device (hardware question)" at 3:19. There's 3 minutes between my system clock and the AO clock, so that puts the time of the last post at 3:22 my time. Between 3:22 and 3:25 (see my desktop clock in the upper right corner), somebody bumped 9 threads all more than a month old to the front page. In shot 2, you can see that in the next 2 minutes, somebody bumped 6 more for no apparent reason.

Isn't there supposed to be a limit of 1 bump every 5 hours? I find it hard to believe that 15 people all decided to randomly bump old threads within 5 minutes of each other. There needs to be some kind of check in place to prevent this sort of thing. I'm in complete agreement with Terr and others that there needs to be some kind of time limit on this stuff. Or something.

I apologize for the attachments being a little on the large side, but I think everybody should see this.

This is screenshot 2.

alright I know this is off the topic a little....but I was intrigued by the interface. I'm assuming that is linux, correct? And if it is....what version?

Now to the topic....I agree it's a bit ridiculous seeing threads from march just appear all of a sudden like that.

But hey, JP made it so that only a person that has participated the thread can bump it up. It should be rather easy to see who has posted to each of them? Unfortunately I don't have the time to do it just now myself. :(

Yup, there are about 12 threads by the same user on the front page. And they're all old!

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I was intrigued by the interface. I'm assuming that is linux, correct? And if it is....what version?

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It's Gnome 2 on Gentoo LInux.

OK... I've been thinking about this all day, and here's what I've come up with:

How about having threads auto-close if nobody posts to them within..... say..... 2 weeks or so? Once they close, they can't be bumped or replied to, so they stay buried where they belong. They're still available for people searching, and newbies don't reply unwittingly to old stuff. Opinions?

If the auto-close feature is implemented the limit should be about half a year or more. Two weeks is the current time after which the date on the posts start blinking.

Time limit on bumps however is a good suggestion, could be even 15 hours or something.

Okay, say maybe a month or two on closing. If you look at all the old threads that have been bumped up in the last few days, a 6-month limit would have still allowed most of them onto the front page. I think a month is plenty of time for somebody to respond if they're going to.

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could be even 15 hours or something

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I know I've posted questions when I didn't get any answers, ao I waited until a time (sometimes a better day) when I felt like more poeople were on and I would have a better chance of getting a reply. If you're going to make it that short, you may as well get rid of it, IMO.

This is an admirable idea to be sure, and the same thing is being discussed in reference to AP's in a thread started by Terr. You know, this wouldn't even be an issue if people would just pay closer attention to what they read....that flashing date is kinda hard to miss, yet miss it some people do all the same.

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You know, this wouldn't even be an issue if people would just pay closer attention

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Yeah. And if a frog had wings...... :)

I've been following the discussion in that thread, and I agree. The thing is, this would also take care of the AP problem, since you can't assign APs to a thread that is closed. I really think closing the threads after X amount of time is the solution to all of this crap we've been seeing.

[EDIT] I'm not so sure that people paying attention would fix it, even. What I posted in my screenshots above isn't an accident from a newbie. It's outright abuse of the system. Whoever did that knew exactly what they were doing. The user I suspect of doing it has been banned now, but it's not just newbies I'm thinking about here. It's the abusers as well.

The way I see it, the issue isn't people bumping up really old threads... That's why there IS the bump feature. The issue is someone bumping up a whole BUNCH of old threads for reasons unrelated the the merit of the threads.

Now what is the motive? Perhaps to get another round of spectator-AP-assigning, for threads with really controversial or great posts. Do you think that if there was an AP Statute Limit (heretofore APSL) that many seeming weird-bump-sprees would stop, or do you guys think there are other motives at work besides wanting the discussion reopened for it's own sake?

Well....Terr(BTW I totally agree with you about the APSL thing), someone also might bump threads up in the hope the thread poster or someone else might get negs for their views...JMHO :)

I agree that the motive was probably AP related. All the threads except one were started by the same user who, at that time, had 2 red dots when I checked his profile. So yes, I'm sure he was trolling for greenies. What he got instead was banned.

I'm not sure that removing the ability to assign points would eliminate the problem, but I'm sure it would reduce it at least. A lot of users might bump their threads trolling for points without knowing that they can't get any. Heck.... we can't even get some people to read the FAQ enough to even know what APs ARE. :)

But there are other kinds of bumps that are problematic. In the last week or so, we've had 1 newbie who's been responding to everything in sight with what amounts to "me too" posts. I won't mention the user's name because I don't want to embarrass anybody, but I'm sure we've all seen it. I've negged this user a couple of times about this, but the message doesn't seem to be getting through.

The thing is, closing the threads IS an APSL. It will take care of that problem and then a couple of more. Why fix just one problem when you can kill 2 birds with one stone?

Basically, is there any reason NOT to close the threads after a month?

[EDIT] A couple of things I've noticed since I started thinking about bumps:

1) You do not have to be a participant to bump a thread. At least *I* don't. :) I bumped a thread I haven't posted in just to see if I could, and sure enough, it went straight to the top.

2) I've read somewhere on here that there was a limit of 1 bump every 5 hours, but this also is not the case. I suggest enforcing it at 12 hours instead of 5.

3) The posts should say someplace who bumped it last.