Improving thread "bumping"

[MrKowz]

As we all know, a user bumping their unanswered thread has its good points and bad points. The good thing is that their thread gets pushed to the front page, and people are able to see the thread again. The bad part is that their thread gets removed from the "Unanswered Threads" list, which myself (as well as many other memebers) like to browse to see what still hasn't been answered.

I am no php programmer, but an idea I had was to give the user another button next to “Edit” that is a “Bump” button. By pushing this button, it could push the thread back up to the front page without requiring the user making a reply. That way, not only would it be up front for the people who don’t check the “unanswered threads” list, but it would remain in that list as well. Perhaps even give it a slightly different icon so it is visually indicated that the user has posted the question hours ago and has not received an answer. A timer, similar to the edit button, could even be put in place that would allow the user to bump it only once every x-hours. After a reply has been made to the post, the bump button could be removed, as it wouldn’t really serve its main purpose any longer.

Sorry if this sounds a bit scatterbrained, just throwing out ideas!

 

[Joe4]

One thing to understand, is that I am pretty sure that this board structure wasn't created from scratch. I believe it uses a pre-built template by PHP, so I think you are limited in the things you can do with this. I don't that changes major things like "structure" and "functionality" are possible. I believe that there are some basic "settings" you can change, but I don't know how much programmable customization you can do, especially to the exent that you proposed here.

 

[Von Pookie]

The "unanswered list" isn't really "unanswered," anyway.

It's just filtering the last day's worth of question by number of replies.

 

[Jon von der Heyden]

I hardly think it's worth the effort, personally. And personally I probably wouldn't target bumped questions anyway because it's not unusual that the reason no-one has answered is because the question is poorly constructed. And, again personally, I wouldn't want bumped threads appearing in my unanswered list, again because it will load it with poorly constructed questions.

In my experience questions that are well constructed tend to get answered, even during busy spells. Of course some questions are very technically challenging, or require too much involvement, and therefore such questions often go unanswered too.

Anyway, if you want to target bumped threads, then:

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