So I've been trying to come up with new ways to deal with the problem of bumping. It's a moderation headache, but the rule also burdens people who want to post more. I liked the idea of getting rid of the rule altogether and just letting the algorithm decide which posts not to bump up.

So that system is already in place now and I've already removed the rules about bumping from our Terms of Service. This means that late followup posts and sale reminders should be okay as well as preview pics and upcoming scene announcements. Hopefully UMD can automatically keep those kind of posts from displacing the others.

The algorithm will only work if everything about any given scene (or sale) stays contained within the same thread, which was pretty much the rule already. So once you make a plug or preview about a specific scene, you must stick with that same thread for any further plugs, announcements, or followups, including becoming newly available on another site. If you make a mistake we'll just combine the threads. I'm also opening up the auto-lock times by a bit on all forums.

I'll keep tweaking the algorithm to better decide what's a bump or not, so any annoyance of bumping from now on is on me, not the user. If all this doesn't work, we'll just bring the rule back. Please note that all other rules about spamming and advertising limits still apply!

If you want to bypass the bump filter and display the threads by their actual last post date, there is a new preference for that. All Groups are currently set to bypass the bump filter, but can be adjusted individually depending on what the mods want.

Technical shit: A post is disqualified from representing the thread's last post date if it gets 3 strikes on a little test. It currently looks at whether the reply is made by the same person as the previous reply, how long it has been since the last reply, the ratio of that person's replies vs. others, and few other criteria that I'm still working on.

Peace,
Messmaster

That sounds brilliant! Presumably if someone wants to see all the followups to a given thread they should follow it and then check regularly for updates?

Thiught: could following a thread disable thd filter for that particular user's view of that particular thread? So people can chose to see all followups to stuff they are interested I without it affecting everyone else?

BUMP

Right, the notifications still work the same way, so followers of the thread (or the producer) shouldn't really be affected.



Well the bump filter works at the main forum level, preventing whole threads from rising to the top by way of a bump. Nothing is actually hidden. The thread will remain sorted by its last non-bump reply date, and once you click the thread, it'll look the same.

If you were suggesting to use the actual last reply date only for followed threads and effective date for others, I don't think I want to go that far at this time.

Hopefully it works.

Thanks for looking after this MM!

What about adding "multi-quote" replies? I'd hate to have a thread be classified as "bumpy" because I responded to 3 questions...and now it looks like I've just bumped it 3 times.

You can already do that manually. Hit "quote" on first reply, click mouse inside rest box, Ctrl-A, Ctrl-X. Then click the back button to return to the thread, click "quote" on second reply. Click mouse inside text box, Ctrl-Home to move cursor to very start of box, Ctrl-V to paste in the quote from the first one. Then Ctrl-A, Ctrl-X, click Back again, repeat process for third reply. That way you can build up a full set of quoted replies, arranged in order, and then answer them all, interlaced (put reply to each quote just under it, so obvious what is reply to what) all in one post. I always do this when I get multiple replies to a promo post, to avoid looking spammy and so people only have to read one post to see all my responses.

DungeonMaster One: you're so cool with all your key strokes. All I do is cut and past the html code...

Still refining the algo. Just 30 seconds ago I updated it NOT to mark those types of replies as bumps if it's only been minutes since the previous post (currently set at 30 minutes). We never really considered those bumps anyway and now it's formalized in code Keep the suggestions coming!

So what I'm gathering is that there will be changes to how we do bumps

MM, as you well know, 5% of a new algorithm is writing it. The other 95% is dealing with edge cases, error handling, exploits, and missing semicolons