OK when posting a new scene or some pictures I have seen excessive replies quoting individually thanking every reply in a new reply box rather than replying to many in one post. So say six people reply to a post the producer/poster replies to every reply individually, bumping the post and the replies when they could of replied to everyone in one post.

Is this acceptable

I've started a thread in the Mod group on this, didn't spot this one first. The way I look at it is that not everyone has the technical skill to combine multiple quotes into a single post, while it's straightforward if you have a good understanding of copy-and-paste and how the quote markers work, some people find such things baffling / beyond their capability, in which case one reply per response seems reasonable, as long as they are all done fairly quickly one after the other.

I suppose one solution would be a "quote all" function that quoted all the posts between "now" and "the same user's previous post" (so all the replies under a post but not the initial post itself, and then later all the replies between the last one the OP made and "now"), but that would need coding work from MM and would enough people use it to justify it?

For anyone who does want to be able to quote multiple previous posts in one reply (and is using a Windows computer), this is how I do it:

Say you have a thread which has been replied to three times and you want to combine-answer all of them with one post but with everything still quoted:

Click "Quote" on first reply. Click mouse inside text box. Ctrl-A to select all, Ctrl-X to cut to clipboard. Click "Back". Click "Quote" on the next reply, click mouse inside text box, Ctrl-Home to put cursor at start, Ctrl-V to past in quote from previous post from clipboard above the quote of this post, then Ctrl-A Ctrl-X to select and cut everything to clipboard. Repeat this procedure on all the replies you want to quote, then at the end of the process you can place your individual replies to each block inbetween all the quotes in the text box, in a single post.

Thank you DM1 I wonder if it is because they don't get the quotes system which I don't quite often but if it's completely acceptable to thank everyone individually great.

The way I look at it is that not everyone has the technical skill to combine multiple quotes into a single post,

I don't think I've even figured out how to put even one quote into my replies...

I prefere to reply to everyone in a day or so from when I posted and again in another day or two depending on the amount of replies. Then I think that's pushing it replying three or more times in the same post. We are all thankful for such lovely replies to our posts but I'm mindful I'm not being annoying !

it seems to be acceptable based on the way THIS forum is set up. For comparison, a different forum lets older topics fall further and further down, regardless of the interest in the topic. Arguably, it is somewhat unacceptable as a way for a producer to keep their production at the top of the list?

Let's say the producer/poster posts 6 "thank you" postings all in one day... whether they happen to be individual posts, or collected together in one post. As you say, each posting bumps the whole thread TTT (to-the-top)

So after the first day, the newer posts from other people (along with other TTT bumps) begin to appear above the original posting. 6 months from now, someone purchases the production, and the posted comments and the "thank you" replies bumps the thread back to the top of the list... This is great for a discussion topic because it shows people want to continue talking about a particular subject. It's a cheap way for a producer to keep their product at the top of the list without bringing forward new material.

Fear not, i think. Producers who are making inferior products might think they are winning against their competitors, but the popular producers don't even need to bump their postings, because of dedicated/repeat customers who favor their material. Besides that, ALL producers can bump their new postings in a similar way...?

Deliberate bumping of threads is not allowed, however I don't think that's what happened here. It's not as obvious now as the timestamps just display "Friday" or "Saturday", but at the time it was clear all the multiple replies had been posted directly one after the other, with just the time needed to type the replies between each one.

So I don't see that as deliberate bumping but just as someone politely replying to everyone who'd responded to the thread, but as separate posts instead of combining into one post, but all done at the same time. Deliberate bumping would be replying to the first response, then waiting a few hours, then replying to the next one, then waiting another few hours, then replying to the next, and so on. That would constantly bump the thread and be out of order. But just hitting quote on first response, type reply, post, immediately hit quote on next one, type reply, post - it'd all be done in ten minutes, so even though technically that is a form of bumping it's not the same as deliberately stringing out responses to try and dominate the forum, or replying to your own posts just to bump them back up.

One notable feature of the way MM runs things here is that he very deliberately steers away from "rules lawyering". For the most part, unless there's an egregeous breach like linking to kids shows, posting about banned substances, or piracy, the rules are a guide rather than an absolute - the admin guidelines specifically state we shouldn't bark bits of the ToS at people, but rather aim to educate and build understanding. If someone is clearly and deliberately breaching things then of course MM reserves the right to restrict or ban them, but the idea is to generally operate through consensus and understanding rather than a Dalek-like "YOU WILL OBEY OR YOU WILL BE EXTERMINATED!" Forums and users have a tendency to echo the the way the admins behave, so keeping things fairly light touch unless there's a significant reason to intervene will tend to encourage everyone else to be friendlier and gentler too.


At the top of each post there's a "Quote" text link. Click it and you get a reply post with the one you've quoted included inside (quote) and (/quote) tags. That's how I've just quoted you here.


That's how I do it, combining all the quotes into a single post. But if someone replies to all individually but all at the same time (so only a few minutes apart each) that's reasonable I think.

What triggers the flame or hot thread ? Is it replies or views ?

This is my reply to Cinq and Soug over inbox:
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I think the deciding factor is timing. If he's just replying to posts within a day or three, it's just no big deal. We give people that latitude.

You could reply to your fans individually, too. I mean, if it's within hours of them writing, or even if it's within a couple days, it's OK.

You'll begin to recognize the REAL bumpers as those people who actually wait for a strategic amount of time, and THEN reply like weeks later to get their stuff back up on top. Or they'll do something like keep responding to their own thread forever.

It's not really the frequency of the replies, it's the overall bump effect that they'll have. That's what we look for. I'm not too worried about producers replying lots of times if it's within a small time span, because it doesn't have that much effect... I chalk that up to their style of conversation and it's all gravy

On the flip side, if they keep on doing it on that thread for days on end to keep it buoyant, that's a different story. At some point it gets deliberately "chatty" as I say, and it's obvious they are just doing banter back and forth to keep the post alive forever. That doesn't look like the case here yet as it's only even been 1 day so far.

I love this conversation as I think we can get on the same page about the nuances about how we moderate the site. Nothing is black and white so we can only try to gauge the intentions of people over time.

> What triggers the flame hot thread symbol? It that views on the post or replies ?

That's totally the number of replies within a certain timeframe. Right now, the threshold for the flame is that the thread has to have at least 1 reply for every 2 hours of its age, plus have at least 10 replies to start with.

> Its an interesting subject how actions are viewed over time rather than in a smaller time frame. Im always mindful of bumping my post when I reply on it cause I dont want to anoy anyone.

Yep, as you'll see, that's how we approach most things--over time. I prefer to let people be human, at least as much as I reasonably can. Sometimes they do something that we let slide, that we wouldn't let another user do, and that's purely because we are looking at the history and trying to gauge actual user intent rather than be a lawyer about some stupid technical rule. If a person replies a lot, or even if they reply after 3 weeks, that's fine too. But if they KEEP on doing it, the picture becomes obvious, which is why flagging over time is so important even if no action is taken each time. We are only really ever worried about people trying to game the system. Otherwise I'd rather leave the users the hell alone

> I wait a day or two then reply to all..

That's extremely thoughtful of you. You don't really have to do that though. The whole point of the bumping rule is that other people's posts will get moved down... but there is not that much of an effect if your replies are timely, even if you do a lot of replies.

Its just nice to know I'm not annoying people ! Thanks for clearing all this up for me MM

Correction. I don't know what I was saying. The flame threshold is currently set to 5 posts a day to get the flame. My bad