So, there are two components to sort topics (by default option):
- Topic bump score
- Post time.
Between two components, topic bump score is the first priority.
Topic bump score depends on:
- Bumpers' bump power: depends on activity and earned-merits last year.
- Mini bump: through post
- Super bump: through bump button
It almost means that users with more earned merits last year have more bump power, because earning merits is issue, not earning activity.
I imagine that will we see another type of abuse, bump power abuse?
- Thread owners can pay fees to bump their threads, both through mini bump (posts) and super bump (bump button).
- If it actually happens, how will the forum deal with it?
With data on user bumping activities, that admin is likely has; and new rules added to unofficial rules of the forum, that I am not sure.
The minimum period between bumps to get maximum effects on bump score is 36 hours (when previous bump effects on bump score entirely decayed), so one user can sell their bump each 36 hours, or nearly 19 times per month (I use 28 days/ month for this calculation). I think it is still a significant effects, and might lead to another black market.
. di (24*7*4)/36
18.666667
Do you know where the idea of bump button come from and when did it occur?
Q: Where the idea of bump button come from? A: It came from
community generated suggestions to improve the forum (+ eventual voting on them). It takes theymos' attention, and after around one year, he brings it to life.
An example: a bump button sounds good as a fix for certain very visible problems, but it also codifies a broken system. People would use bots to bump all of their threads constantly, giving "industrial" posters a huge advantage over casual posters. A captcha could maybe help a little, but there are services where you can pay a tiny fee to have captchas solved for you. (Which opens another question: maybe a comparatively tiny fee should be allowed as an alternative to having you solve a captcha.) A better solution would be to replace the concept of traditional bumping with something quite different, with different bumping models for different types of sections. But that requires further thought. If implementing a bump button was free, perhaps it'd be worthwhile to at least do it for now and fix a few minor problems with bumping today. But since it's a clearly-imperfect solution, this isn't even on my miles-long to-do list.