Super Mario Bros. X Forums

When I was first introduced to forums, I used to bump a lot of threads without knowing, and I was severely infracted for it.
I know there's a general rule here that you shouldn't bump old topics unless you want to continue the discussion in a normal manner, and the fact that a lot of sites have this rule makes it seem as though it's OK to go around bumping old topics just to revive and add to the discussion. I used to do this a lot, and I was shouted at by other members to stop bumping topics (this isn't here, by the way, it was a completely different forum).
Even worse, other members sometimes get shouted at for making a new thread when another thread exists for the same thing (it's usually a topic more than a month old and considered dead), while if you went and bumped it, you would be shouted at not to bump the topic, and sometimes topics get locked for it, even if the reply is perfectly fine and relevant to the discussion.

So I brought up this thread to ask these questions about bumping old topics:
When should you bump an old topic, and when should you just make a new one? What is wrong with bumping old topics? Is it mainly using common sense, or is it more complicated than that?

It's okay to bump a thread if you have something substantial to contribute. Most of the time here people don't, though.

Bumping topics isn't the same as making a contributing post to an old thread. Bumping is like saying "bump," asking a dumb question, or a really short and unneeded comment.

Actually, by definition, bumping a thread is anything that will "bump" it back to the top of the thread listing.

Is it okay to use the bump feature?

Uzendayo wrote:Is it okay to use the bump feature?

Yeah, what does the bump feature do, exactly?

It pushes the topic up to the top of a forum listing.

I think you can only do it with your own threads. If you have a good reason to use the bump feature, feel free.

Joey wrote:I think you can only do it with your own threads. If you have a good reason to use the bump feature, feel free.

Oh, that's cool. Of course, I didn't know that since I haven't read the FAQ and I only just now made a thread.

OK, thanks for the info, it's all clearer now about when bumping isn't tolerated. But for the other question, I made a topic in General and someone pointed out that another person had made the same topic and I should have just used the search function, but the last reply was back in March and the topic was on page 9. Was it perfectly fine to have made another topic in that case, or should I have just used the search function?

As an extension to this, is there a rule or a guideline that you should look around before making new topics?

You should always make sure that the topic you want to make hasn't already been made. If it's buried several months back or more and you feel that a new topic would be better than bumping the old one, it's fine to make a new one. If the staff disagrees, we'll just merge the two threads.