Rules of 'bump'

[flickst]

Forum URL: support.proboards.com/board/9/roleplay-forums

Hi there.

Recently a support forum mod drew a few advertisers' attention to a bump rule that states we can only bump our threads with the single word 'bump'.

I was wondering if anyone could tell me why replies can't be more? Surely it's nicer, and more useful to those advertising to have more than pages and pages of a single word? Is the ad board not better served when those using it can actually advertise? The bumping frequency rule I can absolutely understand, but I fail to see how useful it is to anyone, board admin or prospective member, to flood the forums with 'bump' 'bump' 'bumpity bump', when it could be so much more.

Please let me know if there's another avenue I need to take with this query/request. My thanks in advance to anyone who can answer!

[Craig]

It is because of the nature of the board. It is generally a forum listing, and as such does not want to elicit discussion about the forum as there are other boards on the forum for those purposes, for example the opinions board.

It is also based on past experiences with the board when it was first added to the forum. At first, people could reply with what they wanted, but this lead to numerous issues. The way it worked best was with this rule in place.

If you have updates you want to include about the forum, you can edit the first post to include new relevant information.

Craig

[Kami]

I can actually answer this, since I was the one that revamped the ad board around 2010, though the staff has made some adjustments as time has passed.

The way that clicking into a thread works is that it shows you the first unread post which, for most people, will always be the first post in an advertisement thread because they are looking for new forums. It is unlikely that someone will read through all of the additional replies (especially when some threads are several years old) or visit the advertisement thread multiple times without joining.

Also, the same link occurring multiple times in a thread + having the same type of content occur in a single thread (and no where else on the forum) leading to the same website results in a negative hit to the advertising's site's SEO as most indexing bots will mark repetitive keyword content around the same link in the same relative space (ie a thread) to be spam.

This was also a way that many people snuck in rule amendments to allow for content that violated PB TOS, under the assumption that the mods here wouldn't read through their content. However, this wound up leading to me sleeping approximately 2-4 hours a night because otherwise the ad board would be impossible to catch up with. To reduce the lift on the staff and to preserve the healthy sleep schedules, it is much easier to moderate with this rule in place.

I'm no longer a mod here, so I'm not here to say this will not be changed or anything, but I wanted to provide insight as to why we made this change originally.

[flickst]

Thank you for your responses. While I can appreciate the extra work it involved in the past, and would not wish extra responsibility on anyone who wasn't being financially rewarded for their work, I do think that Proboards continuing to narrow their scope for their users at large is contributing to board admins jumping ship for greener pastures.

Any of us who have used PB for play-by-forum roleplays in the last decade actually considered the Advertisement Board and features to be one of the biggest draws, because it seemed to attract and redirect traffic to our sites. This is unfortunately not the case any more, and I don't believe neutering the potential for engagement through advertising helps.

Anyway, something for me to think about. Thanks again all!

ETA: The majority of resource sites that allow advertising have a once a month, or once a fortnight bumping rule. This would surely be more preferable than pages of the same ads 'bump'ing over and over? And less work, for everyone.

[Lynx]

Jul 3, 2020 13:51:51 GMT -8 flickst said:

Thank you for your responses. While I can appreciate the extra work it involved in the past, and would not wish extra responsibility on anyone who wasn't being financially rewarded for their work, I do think that Proboards continuing to narrow their scope for their users at large is contributing to board admins jumping ship for greener pastures.

Any of us who have used PB for play-by-forum roleplays in the last decade actually considered the Advertisement Board and features to be one of the biggest draws, because it seemed to attract and redirect traffic to our sites. This is unfortunately not the case any more, and I don't believe neutering the potential for engagement through advertising helps.

Anyway, something for me to think about. Thanks again all!

ETA: The majority of resource sites that allow advertising have a once a month, or once a fortnight bumping rule. This would surely be more preferable than pages of the same ads 'bump'ing over and over? And less work, for everyone.

People are not required to come here and bump every 24 hours - so the "workload" is really a question of "how often do I want to bump?". As far as "pages of the same ads bumping over and over" - why is this a big deal? Are you actually going through every page just to read "bump" when ALL of the information the person posts about their forum is right in the OP? To me, it's easier to just go to the thread list and click the thread I want to read about and having all the info in the first post - rather than having to go through pages and pages to find pieces of info added here and there. To me, makes more sense to have it all in the first post.

As far as the bumping - my guess is that, since bumping puts there thread at the top of the list, they're just doing what they can to keep their thread visible. I mean, how many people would actually go, page by page, looking to see what threads are there. Honestly, I typically don't get past page 3 - so all those who are on page 4 or after aren't viewed by me. By bumping, they keep themselves more visible, as it were.

Just my $0.02 and my opinion.

[Kami]

Jul 3, 2020 13:51:51 GMT -8 flickst said:

Thank you for your responses. While I can appreciate the extra work it involved in the past, and would not wish extra responsibility on anyone who wasn't being financially rewarded for their work

That's the thing though. The Support Board moderators (orange and green display names) are not paid. The ad board is a mutually beneficial courtesy between PB and its users, but is entirely moderated by volunteers.

That said: 

For additional context: we DID in fact try a reduced bumping frequency, as well as allowing people to repeat their advertisement once for every page in the thread. I have a lot of anecdotes about how poorly this went, which do not need to be aired here. Suffice it to say that the current iteration of rules was the maximum we could do at the time to ensure both users AND staff/forum needs were met.

The community sentiment may have changed by now, but I suspect that it hasn't since more frequent bumps allow for people's ads to remain on the first page of threads.

I understand entirely where you're coming from, and quite frankly were this any other forum I would 100% agree with you. However, speaking from experience , the community needs and wants are entirely different and most RP community rules enacted on this forum do not mesh well with its average user—that was genuinely a mistake that I made during my time here and some of my proposals, thinking that community rules designed for a few hundred, maybe a couple of thousand people could scale up and be sustainable on a forum with hundreds of thousands of people.

Just my 0.02 as well, speaking from the perspective of both an RP forum admin as well as a former mod here. Of course, if the current mod team feel it would be beneficial to the current community AND they have the time / moderation capacity for it, I don't see a reason not to give it a shot on a trial basis.

[dragonfli]

Is it against the rules to bump with a stylized bump? Maybe a picture that says bump?

[Scott]

Jul 8, 2020 6:23:34 GMT -8 dragonfli said:

Is it against the rules to bump with a stylized bump? Maybe a picture that says bump?

Since the rules state: "You may bump your thread once every 24 hours - with the word "bump" only. ", then the answer would be "yes" a picture would be against the rules.  If you want the word 'bump' to be bold, italic, or a color - I guess that would be acceptable, however I'd be curious why you would want to?  

As stated above, the purpose of bumping is just to give your thread a higher "front page" placement in the board. No one is going to read pages of 'bump' when the pertinent information is in the first post.  Why waste the effort?