What does bump mean on a forum?
Dr. Mike, in response to an then unresolved WordPress text editor problem, wrote:
Someone kindly bump this for me please.
I had seen this term before, but I never cared to figure out what this Leet speak term meant. I tend to be more of mailing list person than a forum person, but this is mostly because of frustration with most forum software’s interfaces.
I searched the Web for the meaning and found a link to the meaning back at WordPress’ documentation (codex) in an article titled Using the Support Forums — an amazing article on its own. The link was to Wikipedia of course:
To bump a thread on an internet forum is to post a reply in order to raise the thread’s profile by returning it to the top of the list of activethreads.
Back at Using the Support Forums I confirmed that bumping is bad:
DON’T BUMP
Bumping is poor etiquette! It’s like jumping into the front of the line–that just upsets people. Bumping will not get your questionanswered faster–volunteers look for threads that only have one (1)post, but if you bump your thread, you immediately increase the postcount to two (2) and that makes it harder to find an unanswered thread.Volunteers go through the individual Forum sections looking for noanswers to posts. If you bump your post, it will show that there hasbeen a response and it will get overlooked.
I think Dr. Mike was looking to remind himself of the then unresolved problem, and joked about “bumping” the topic. Does his audience know what he meant? I didn’t.
6 Comments
Bumping in itself isn’t necessarily poor etiquette. I’ve run and modded several forums with some varying stances on bumping. Basically, the rules were something like this:
-If you feel like you must bump your thread, do so in a way that adds to the conversationg contained within. Do not bump a post with irrelevant comments (”Will someone please reply?” or “Bump”)
-No thread necromancy. If a thread has not been replied to in a considerable amount of time (several months, years), there is probably a good reason for it. You can create a new thread with new information pertaining to the old thread, and link to the old thread. But please, do not raise those threads from the dead.
I knew exactly what drmike meant. Once he leaves the library which has high speed internet service and goes home he has only dial-up service (copper wiring only since the hurricane) thus he doesn’t work the forum from home.
I tend to “catch” these bump requests and bat them back up the forum to him when I see he’s on the forum the following day.
The etiquette for “bumping” is exactly what Dan has described above. You don’t bump your own thread just to get attention. That is really bad form that can be met with a “swat back” (get back in line and wait your turn) type of response.
There’s also the timezone thing to consider too when discussing “bumping”. For example if someone leaves a “technical” question for drmike that other volunteers like myself can’t answer and they live on opposite coasts then that “technical” question can be buried among a lot of repetitive questions that others can answer.
In that case I will scan all the questions on the forum and find the technical ones I can’t answer and “bump” them up to Mike ready for him when he comes in. Then I will answer the simple ones in order from oldest to freshest. In maost cases the bloggers posting the easy ones could have answered by using the pink stickies at the head of the forum, the FAQs and/or the forum search box.
I’m betting this is more than you ever wanted to know about “bumping” on the wordpress forum, right *lol*.
The problem still exists. Slang or jargon is confusing language to the people that you are trying to help. Is there a concise way to “bump this”? Would a feature to the forums help?
I always start from where I left off on my last post when I view the support forums. If the thread is still below my last post, that means I won’t see it which is why I ask usually for someone to bump. I usually leave in a mention that I’ll have to hit it tomorrow or I need to look at it later on.
The unoffical rule for bumping on the forums is 24 hours. If done earlier, I usually just delete the post and respond to the question. If they get rude, then I explain how 99% of the time, it’s going to be a vollenter who answers and ask that they cut us a break.
I’m actually wondering what a “Entomology Assistant” is myself.
Bump!
As long as you write quality questions and posts you should not have too many problems. Some forums will explain the proper procedures for reminding people. For example, they may ask you to reply to your post if it has not been addressed in a certain amount of time.